Adding your aircraft with Smart Setup

Adding an aircraft is the first real thing you'll do in TachMinder, and it's where the app earns its keep. You have two paths: hand the wizard your existing paperwork and let it do the reading, or type everything in yourself. Either way you end up with a working aircraft record — the document path just gets you a much richer one, faster.

The Smart Setup wizard, stage by stage

From your dashboard, go to My Aircraft and choose Add aircraft. The wizard walks you through six stages:

1. 1

   Choose your path

   Pick upload documents if you have your registration, logbooks, work orders, or oil analysis reports handy — even as phone photos or scans. Pick manual entry if you'd rather start with just the basics and add records later.

2. 2

   Upload your documents

   Drag and drop as many files as you like, all at once — registration, logbook pages, work orders, oil analysis reports. You don't need to tell TachMinder what each file is; every upload is automatically classified as a registration, logbook, work order, or oil analysis document.

3. 3

   AI processing

   TachMinder reads each document and pulls out what it can: aircraft identity, logbook entries, installed equipment, and AD references. Files it can't read are reported honestly — you'll see "read X of Y" with each unreadable file listed by name, never silently dropped.

4. 4

   Review the aircraft profile

   Check the tail number, make and model, engine, and times the wizard extracted, and correct anything before it's saved. When documents disagree about the aircraft's identity, the registration document wins — it's the most authoritative source for who the aircraft is.

5. 5

   Preview the ADs it found

   Any AD numbers found in your documents are checked against TachMinder's AD catalog. You'll see what was found and confirm each one. Only ADs you confirm and that resolve in the catalog are committed to your compliance record — nothing gets written on a guess.

6. 6

   Finish and save

   The final step reports what was actually imported — logbook entries, installed equipment, ADs — and, just as importantly, what has gaps, so you know exactly where your record stands.

When documents disagree

Real paperwork is messy, and the wizard is built for that. If two documents show different tail numbers, it won't quietly pick one — it asks you to confirm which aircraft the records belong to. And if documents share the same airframe serial number but carry different tails, TachMinder proposes the older tails as possible prior registrations of the same airframe. Those are applied only if you confirm them — the app never decides your aircraft's history for you.

An honest accounting of gaps

The finish step doesn't just celebrate what came in — it tells you what didn't. Some logbook entries may import without tach or Hobbs times if the original entry didn't record them. Entries with no date at all are flagged instead of imported, because a maintenance record needs a completion date to mean anything. You'll see all of this listed plainly, so you can go back to the physical logbook and fill in what matters.

The manual path

Prefer to skip the paperwork for now? Manual entry asks for the essentials by hand: tail number, make and model, engine, and current times. You can always upload documents later — see uploading documents.

Maintenance templates come free either way

Whichever path you take, TachMinder automatically seeds your aircraft's maintenance schedule: FAA-required items that apply to every Part 91 aircraft, plus manufacturer-specific items matched to your make, model, and engine. You start with a real schedule, not a blank page. To understand how due dates on those items work, see how next-due dates work, and for the AD side of the house, read understanding AD tracking.