Who Should See What: Reporting Lines for a Field Team

The question of who should see what looks small when a team has five people and gets serious at fifty. A rep who can see every doctor in the company can copy the list, and a manager who cannot see their own team's visits cannot manage. Getting this right comes down to two things: who each person reports to, and how far each role is allowed to see. RxRep keeps both simple on purpose.

One field decides the hierarchy

Every user has a Reports To field, which holds their manager. That single field is the whole hierarchy. RxRep reads it upward to find who approves a request, and downward to find everyone who reports to a person. There is no second chart to keep in step, so when a rep changes manager you change one field and the approvals and the visibility both follow.

Territory is separate. A user also has a territory, the area they work in, and areas are arranged in their own tree, for example region, city and zone. That gives two ways to group people: by who they report to, and by where they work.

Five levels of access

Almost every permission in RxRep is graded by a level, not a plain yes or no.

None means no access. Self means only the records the person created or owns. Team means everyone in the user's own territory. Hierarchy means the user and everyone who reports up to them, wherever they work. All means the whole organization.

The difference between team and hierarchy is worth understanding. A manager with the team level sees colleagues who share their area. A manager with the hierarchy level sees their own reporting branch, even if those reps work in other territories. Pick the one that matches how your company is actually organized.

Start from the ready-made roles

Every new organization starts with a set of roles, and you can change them or add your own. Admin has every permission at its widest. A Sales Manager leads the sales team, sees and approves the work of everyone who reports to them, sets their targets and sees the distributors in their areas. An Area Manager manages a few reps and visits doctors too, approves their plans, new doctors and expenses, and hands out samples. A Medical Rep works in the field: plans and logs visits, gives samples, claims expenses and asks the manager to add or change doctors. An HR Manager looks after user accounts, employment records, pay, attendance, payroll and announcements for the whole company.

Notice how the Medical Rep asks the manager to add or change doctors. Roles can hold the right to change something directly, or only the right to request the change. Requests go to the first person above the rep who can approve them.

Check the chain before you rely on it

Approvals only work when the reporting line has someone who can approve. For most requests, such as a new doctor or an expense claim, a missing approver means the request approves itself. A submitted visit plan behaves differently: with no approver in the line, nobody is notified and the plan waits. Both are easy to miss, so after you set up reporting lines, look at each rep's chain and confirm there is a manager who can approve. The posts on visit plans and expense claims show where this matters.

A setup order that works

Add the areas first, then the roles, then the people. Give each person a role and a territory, set their Reports To, and then ask one rep and one manager to confirm that each sees what you expect. A short check with real people catches a wrong level before the whole team is on the system. The page on territory management explains how areas are laid out. The number of users is limited by your plan, and adding a user past the limit is blocked with a clear message. For the product as a whole, see pharma field force management software.