A daily work report is a short record of what an employee did during the day: where they went, what work they did, whether it is finished, and what comes next. For field staff the best format is one row per job or visit, with a status and a next step on every row. The free Excel template below uses one layout for sales, service and site staff, so a manager can read the whole team in one sheet.
Why field teams need a daily work report
When staff work at a desk, a manager can see what is happening. When they are spread across a city or a district, the daily report is the only view the manager has. A good one answers four questions quickly:
- Who worked where today?
- What got finished, and what is still pending?
- What is stuck, and why?
- What money came in or went out?
If your report cannot answer these without a phone call, it needs different columns.
What to include in a daily work report
| Column | Why it matters | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Lets you spot missing days and compare weeks. | 29-09-2026 |
| Employee | Who did the work. | Imran Shaikh |
| Role | Sales, service, site or delivery. Lets one sheet hold the whole team. | Service |
| Customer / site | Where the work happened. Use a fixed list of names. | Patil Cold Storage |
| Work done | One short sentence. Specific enough that someone else could continue the job. | Compressor check, replaced relay |
| Status | Done, partial or pending. The column a manager filters first. | Partial |
| Time spent | Shows where the day went and helps with costing jobs. | 2 hrs |
| Quantity / amount | Boxes ordered, units installed, rupees collected: whatever number the job produces. | ₹9,600 |
| Expense | Fuel, parts, food or tolls spent on the job. | ₹150 |
| Issues / blockers | What stopped the work. This is where managers can actually help. | Part not in stock |
| Next step | What happens next and when. Turns the report into a to-do list. | Revisit on 01-10-2026 |
Examples for sales, service and site staff
The same columns cover very different jobs. Here is how one day looks for three people in the same company.
Sales staff
Ravi visits grocery shops on a fixed route. His rows are mostly orders and collections:
| Customer | Work done | Status | Amount | Next step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Om Sai Kirana Stores | Order for 20 boxes biscuits, payment collected | Done | ₹9,600 | Deliver Wednesday |
| Balaji Provision | Owner not available | Pending | ₹0 | Visit Friday morning |
If sales is most of your team, the daily sales report format adds columns for products, order value and payment mode.
Service technicians
Imran repairs refrigeration equipment. His rows need the fault, the parts and whether the job is closed:
| Customer | Work done | Status | Time | Blocker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patil Cold Storage | Compressor check, replaced relay | Partial | 2 hrs | Fan motor not in stock |
| Hotel Sagar | Deep freezer gas top-up | Done | 1 hr |
For AMC and warranty work, a dedicated service report format with equipment and parts columns works better.
Site supervisors
Suresh supervises a construction site. His rows are about progress, manpower and hold-ups:
| Site | Work done | Status | Headcount | Blocker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tower B, Green Park | Inspected slab shuttering, 2nd floor | Done | 14 | Cement delivery late |
Rules that keep daily work reports useful
- One row per job, not one paragraph per day. "Visited 6 customers, all good" tells a manager nothing they can check or act on.
- Status on every row. Done, partial or pending. Pending rows are tomorrow's priority list.
- Numbers as numbers. Write 9600, not "around 10k". Numbers can be totalled; words cannot.
- Blockers in their own column. Problems buried in remarks get missed.
- Report the same day. A report written two days later is a guess.
Common mistakes
- Reports that describe effort, not results. "Worked hard on the site" is not a report. "Shuttering done, casting tomorrow" is.
- A different format for every team. Managers end up merging three sheets by hand. One shared format with a role column avoids that.
- Nobody reads them. If staff never hear back about their reports, they stop writing them properly. Reply to blockers the same day.
- No check for missing reports. Silence is easy to miss in a busy week. Keep a simple list of who reported and who did not.
Making the daily report easy to send
Most field staff do not dislike reporting. They dislike typing a long report on a phone at the end of a tiring day. That is why so many daily work reports arrive late, or as a single vague line in a WhatsApp group. For more on the options, see how to track field staff daily work.
With vBol, staff send a WhatsApp voice note, photo or location after each job, in their own language: Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, Bangla, Punjabi, Malayalam, Odia, Urdu or English. There is no app to install, no login and no training.
vBol turns that into the fields your company uses, reads it back in the same language with buttons to confirm or fix a field, and writes the confirmed record as a row in your Google Sheet, an Excel workbook on OneDrive or SharePoint, or Ekatm ERP, with photos and GPS location attached. Every evening at 7 PM you get one WhatsApp message with what was filed, by whom, and which staff sent nothing. Vritti sets up your record types and sheet with you.
It is free for 30 days (up to 5 confirmed reports per person per day during the trial), then ₹199 per user per month for teams of up to 100 users; bigger teams get a custom plan. See pricing.
Want to start on paper or Excel? Download the free template on this page. It has the columns above, dropdowns for role and status, and one example row each for sales, service and site work.
Frequently asked questions
What is a daily work report?
A daily work report is a short record, filled in by an employee at the end of each day or after each job, of what work was done, for whom, how far it got and what comes next.
What should be included in a daily work report?
The date, employee name, customer or site, work done, status (done, partial or pending), time spent, any quantity, amount or expense, problems faced, and the next step. Keep it to what a manager will actually act on.
How do I write a daily work report for field work?
Write one line per job or visit, not one paragraph per day. For each line say where you were, what you did, whether it is finished, and what happens next. Add numbers such as quantity or amount wherever they exist.
Is a daily work report the same as a daily sales report?
A daily sales report is a daily work report for sales staff, with extra columns for orders and collections. The general format here fits sales, service, site and delivery staff in one sheet.