Good template for keeping maintenance records?

Question

I'm looking for ideas on templates to use to record service for multiple vehicles. Excel is preferred format, but open to all in interest of gathering ideas. Anyone have any templates?

Answer 1

I have mine in just a simple spreadsheet, I use Google Docs rather than Excel so that it is easily accessible from any computer (and my phone now) and much less likely to lose the data as Google is taking care of it instead of sitting on an aging hard drive with likely no backups.

The columns are description, part number, price, quantity, vendor, manufacturer, website link, date purchased, date installed, mileage.

I have sheets for items installed, waiting install, spare parts, wish list and tools (tools is separate and doesn't have install date and mileage so that I can track it not being car specific).

I move the line from sheet to sheet when appropriate, filling in the additional information. Such as move a part from wish list to waiting install, updating the price if it changed and mark the purchase date.

Having the divided sheets make it easy to quickly summarize the prices to see how much money I've spent or how much money I need for new stuff. The installed sheet is in order of date installed so you can see the maintenance history of the car in a time progression.

For multiple cars you could either add a column of what car it applies to or just keep individual spreadsheets.

MPG Tracking
I thought I'd mention here also that I track my fuel mileage on a per tank basis.

I described my method in this answer Does the tachometer provide any indication of fuel usage?

Having the maintenance records along with the MPG history is very useful as you can look see the impact of general maintenance work or aftermarket parts added to the vehicle.

Answer 2

EZM Web. http://www.ezm-web.com/ - full disclosure I work there, but I saw your question on twitter and thought you might like to know about it. Full Vehicle Maintenance Module. Automated notification for maintenance on multiple vehicles.

Setting up preventive maintenance schedules for a vehicle or for entire fleet maintenance in EZM Web CMMS software is easy!

Regular and recurring preventive maintenance, along with “non routine” (emergency) maintenance, can be scheduled quickly and easily. Simply enter routine preventive maintenance needed for each piece of equipment and its schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).

PS I don't get a commission or anything so this is just information for you to use if you like.

Thanks and good luck, Steve

Answer 3

I'm relatively technical, and I've been thinking about writing something like this for a while, as a (free) web-based app. With smartphone apps too. I did a simple web-based fuel log/MPG calculator for myself a while ago, but never polished it up enough to let others use it.

I can't make any promises, but I guess I'll follow this thread... give me an up-vote or a comment, and when I get some free time, I'll start working on it... my thought was a simple web app to track maintenance done, scheduled maintenance (with reminders, but you'd probably need to input it for your vehicle), and a fuel log/MPG calculation.

If anyone else out there (preferably with PHP/Ajax experience) would be willing to help, understanding that this wouldn't be a for-profit service but just something to help people out, and maybe generate enough ad revenue to support the site, feel free to contact me.