Field data collection for various disciplines, such as forest ecology or environmental technology, traditionally relies on paper records that need subsequent manual data entry and processing. As part of a 7-year interdisciplinary project called FutureScapes, that merges ecological and environmental sciences with machine learning, the participating teams will be trialling and, potentially, swapping to the QGIS based field work mobile application, MerginMaps. Our team is leading the trials and deployment of the app. We will present our experience with the obstacles and difficulties of unifying data collection and management between different disciplines that have various approaches to handling data. We will also provide an overview of the benefits that a QGIS based field work app can have in an academic setting with short term projects and, often, changing field staff. The overview will include insights from the data management perspective, such as how setting up clear and concise data collection forms improves clarity within teams themselves. In a country where summers are short like in Estonia, there is a limited time window for most field work. Advancements in field data collection, especially for increased efficiency, could lessen the burden of tightly packed field campaigns. Furthermore, we will discuss whether and how MerginMaps can benefit not only field-based recordings of data but also sampling in the field and the following sample processing in the lab.