Set up territories & customer groups
This page helps you organize your sales areas into territories and your outlets into the right trade channels and outlet types.
Set these up early. Territories and customer groups are the backbone of everything else — they decide who covers which area, which channel an outlet belongs to, and how schemes and must-sell lists reach the right shops.
Territories: your map of sales areas
A territory is a geographic sales area — a region, a city, a route zone. Territories form a tree: a big area at the top, smaller areas nested under it. For example, you might have a country at the top, regions beneath it, and individual zones beneath those.
Why the tree matters:
- Every rep and manager is assigned to a territory. A manager assigned to a parent territory automatically covers everything nested under it.
- Schemes, must-sell lists, and reports can be scoped to a territory — and a territory covers all of its children.
You manage territories under Settings → Outlets & Territory → Territories.
📷 [SHOT: territories-and-groups-1] — web — Settings → Outlets & Territory → Territories, tree expanded — caption: "Territories nest into a tree — parent areas contain their child areas."
Add or rename a territory
- Open Settings → Outlets & Territory → Territories.
- To add, choose where it belongs in the tree (which parent it sits under) and give it a clear name.
- To rename, open the territory and change its name.
- Save.
Best practice: Build the tree top-down — create the broad areas first, then nest the smaller ones underneath. Name territories the way your team already talks about them, so reps and managers recognize them instantly.
Customer groups: channels and outlet types
Customer groups organize your outlets. They also form a tree, and the tree has a special meaning at the top level.
The top-level customer groups are your trade channels. A trade channel is the kind of retail an outlet is — for example a small neighborhood shop versus a supermarket chain. The standard channels are:
- General Trade — independent shops, kiosks, traditional retail.
- Modern Trade — supermarkets, chains, organized retail.
- Institutional — bulk buyers like offices, schools, hospitals.
- Horeca — hotels, restaurants, and cafés.
This is the canonical order: General Trade, Modern Trade, Institutional, Horeca. Any channel you add beyond these sorts alphabetically after them.
Underneath each channel, you create outlet types — the more specific kinds of shop within that channel. For example, under General Trade you might add "Kiosk", "Wholesaler", and "Pharmacy". An outlet is then filed under the type that fits it, and through that type it belongs to the channel above it.
Note: There is no separate "channels" list to manage. The top level of the customer group tree is your list of channels. Add a top-level group and you've added a channel; the outlet types live one level down.
📷 [SHOT: territories-and-groups-2] — web — Settings → Customer Groups, tree showing channels at top with outlet types nested — caption: "The top-level groups are your trade channels; outlet types sit underneath them."
Add or rename a customer group
- Open Settings → Customer Groups.
- To add a channel, create a new group at the top level.
- To add an outlet type, create a group nested under the channel it belongs to.
- To rename, open the group and change its name.
- Save.
Warning: Renaming a channel or outlet type affects every outlet filed under it, and channels drive which must-sell lists, schemes, and promotions apply. Change names thoughtfully, and avoid moving an outlet type to a different channel once outlets depend on it.
Tip: Keep your channels to the standard four unless you genuinely sell into another kind of trade. Fewer, clearer channels make scoping schemes and must-sell lists far simpler.