The Conversation You Want to Continue and the Address You Can't Find
Door-to-door ministry generates conversations that warrant follow-up — people who asked questions, expressed genuine interest, or requested specific literature. The problem isn't identifying these contacts in the moment; it's maintaining continuity across weeks and months of territory work. A contact made in March who asked about a specific topic, received a magazine placement, and asked you to return "in a few weeks" is a warm conversation that goes cold if the next visit doesn't happen or happens without the context of what was discussed.
This template is the return visit system that maintains that continuity.
When to Return and Topic for Return Visit: The Two Fields That Drive Scheduling
When to return is a datetime field — a specific scheduled return, not a vague intention. When this field is populated and sorted ascending, the list becomes a work schedule: who needs to be visited, in what order, and by when. The Topic for return visit field captures what the conversation was building toward — a specific question to address, a scripture to discuss, a magazine article to follow up on.
Without the topic field, a return visit risks starting from scratch because the person doesn't remember what you discussed and you don't either. With it, you open the conversation with "last time we were discussing [topic], did you have a chance to think about that?" — a continuity that signals the contact was memorable and that you were paying attention.
Placement: The Literature Record That Shows Engagement
The Placement multichoice field records what literature was left: which magazine, which book or brochure, which month's issue. Magazines Placed is a separate multichoice with specific publication tracking. Together, these two fields build a placement history that allows the follow-up conversation to be grounded in what the person actually has in their home.
Monthly booleans — Jan through Dec — provide a twelve-month visit calendar at a glance. When you open the record in October and see that January through September are all checked, you have a contact who has been consistently engaged throughout the year. When you see a gap from April through August, you know there was a period of interrupted contact that may need to be addressed.
First Contacted, Area, Location: The Territory Management Layer
First contacted date and Area (a choice field tied to a territory map) place the contact within the field ministry's organisational structure. Location (GPS coordinates) enables navigation to the address without retyping it. The Area field lets the territory overseer filter contacts by zone and ensure that return visits are being made in proportion to initial contacts across the territory.
Add as Contact links the return visit record to the main contact database entry — a Memento entry-linking field that maintains the relationship between the operational record (this template) and the personal data record (the contact entry), keeping the two systems synchronised without duplication.