A highlighter on a paper map is not a field plan.
Somebody spends an evening colouring streets, somebody else retypes clipboard notes at midnight, and a volunteer still gets sent across a boundary into doors that cannot vote for you.
pplCRM cuts your list into walkable turfs that stop at your race’s own lines, prints each one as a walk sheet, and puts the same doors on every volunteer’s phone. Every knock comes back live.
Pick a list. Pick a turf size. Done.
Point the cutter at any list — likely supporters, one poll, the whole riding — and choose how many doors one volunteer should walk. It previews the turfs before anything is saved, with a walk-time estimate per turf.
3 doors unplaced — listed below
Turfs are cut inside the finest voting-subdivision map your workspace holds for the race — the polling division or precinct — or the riding, ward or district map if that is what you have. A boundary line in real life follows a river, a rail line or an arterial road, so no volunteer is ever sent across one.
Doors are ordered street by street: up one side in ascending house numbers, back down the other. The phone app, the turf page and the printed sheet all use the same order, so pin 7 on the map is row 7 on the paper.
A household without coordinates is reported as unplaced, never quietly left out. And if you have no boundary map at all, turfs are cut by proximity alone and labelled unbounded — not dressed up in a fake area name.
Status nobody has to remember to update.
A turf’s badge is computed from the knocks actually recorded — never a dropdown somebody forgot to change on election morning. The field report rolls the same truth up by turf, by canvasser, and by your race’s own areas: “By polling division” for a riding, “By precinct” for a district.
Cut and ready, nobody assigned yet. Assign a roster and each volunteer gets their own personal link.
The links went out by email and text to the contacts already on each volunteer’s record. Nothing knocked yet.
A knock landed in the last six hours. The map and the report are moving while you watch.
Exactly what it says — counted from the knock records, not from anyone remembering to close the turf.
A turf holds a whole crew. Each canvasser gets their own personal link — sent automatically by email and text to the contacts on their record — and the turf page shows doors and conversations per canvasser. Removing one person kills only their link.
Cut from a smart list, a turf can re-read it mid-campaign: new movers appear, people who left the list drop off, and every knock already recorded stays exactly where it was.
Paper is a feature, not a fallback.
Some of your best canvassers will never install anything, and phones die at 4 p.m. Every turf prints as a walk sheet: a map with numbered doors, the door list in walking order with blank result columns, and a QR code that scans straight into the same turf on a phone.
| # | Address | Residents | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 214 Alder St | Elena & Marco Ramos | ✓ Supporter | |
| 2 | 218 Alder St | Wei & Lily Chen | ✓ Not home | |
| 3 | 222 Alder St | Denise Cole | ||
| 4 | 226 Alder St | Priya Natarajan | ||
| 5 | 230 Alder St | Marcus Lee |
Doors already knocked print with their result, so a paper round never retreads finished ground. The map, the phone and the sheet share one walking order — pin 3 on the map is row 3 on the paper.
A volunteer handed a sheet at the launch can scan its QR code and carry the same turf on their phone — or stay on paper all day and have someone type the sheet in later. Both are first-class.
The sheet’s map is a grayscale street map with the route drawn over it. No Google Maps key configured? It falls back to a schematic with street names and keeps printing.
Your volunteers’ phones, without the app store.
A volunteer opens their personal link in the phone’s browser. Nothing to download, no password to invent — a one-time code to the email or mobile already on their record proves who they are.
A turf is a neighbourhood; a shift is a street. The app opens narrowed to one street — nearest first once the phone shares its location — and apartment buildings fold into one row that opens into a unit list.
Support recorded anywhere in the CRM shows at the door, so a turf is useful on its first morning. And if somebody already knocked this door in the last 30 days — on any turf in the campaign — the app says so before you ring.
Knocks queue on the phone and send when the signal returns. Anything the server refuses lands in a visible blocked list with a reason and a Try again button — a recorded conversation is never silently discarded.
“Wants a yard sign” creates a delivery request. “Wants to volunteer” marks them a prospective volunteer. “Do not contact” suppresses them on the spot. The clipboard-to-database evening shift stops existing.
No accounts for volunteers. Real security anyway.
“Just share the spreadsheet link” is how a voter list ends up public. The companion works from personal links, but a link alone is never enough.
Every canvasser gets their own personal link to their turf — and the first open asks for a one-time code sent to the contact details already on their record. A forwarded link on its own gets nobody in.
A first-time volunteer waits for an admin’s approval — once per person, not per link. Approve from the app, or straight from the text message it sends you.
Print a QR code for the launch event. A walk-in who is not in your CRM scans it, signs up on the spot, and lands on the exact turf the code was scoped to — pending your approval.
Removing one canvasser kills only their link. Revoking a volunteer signs them out of every device they ever verified. Either way, a volunteer only ever sees their own turf — never your list.
The limits, from us, before you ask.
A turf is cut from doors placed on the map, and placing them is the metered part: address lookups run on the Movement plan, spread over a daily budget. District columns imported from your voter file filter, count and export immediately — but a district name does not place a door.
Turf cutting, walk sheets, field reports and the companion app are on the Movement plan. Every new workspace’s demo data unlocks all of it, so you can cut turfs and knock demo doors before paying anything.
pplCRM ships official boundary maps, not people. The list is yours: your voter file, your sign-up forms, your years of door notes. We would rather say that plainly than let you assume otherwise.
Cut a turf before lunch. On us.
Your free workspace opens with sample people, households and turfs already cut. Open one, knock a few demo doors from your phone, print the walk sheet. No card, no time limit.