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The Vehicle Maintenance Log

1 Background

I created the Vehicle Maintenance Log to keep track of the service history and periodic maintenance requirements on my cars. I was continually losing the receipts from service stations and unable to answer questions like: How old are those tires? When was the last time the radiator was flushed? How much is this all costing me?

The Vehicle Maintenance Log allows you to save information about the servicing of vehicles in one location, accessible from anywhere. You may define scheduled (periodic) maintenance requirements and it will notify you (via email) as they become due. Scheduled maintenance can be due based on periodicity (time), usage (miles, km, or engine hours), or both.

Additionally the Vehicle Maintenance Log can plot the maintenance cost vs time and vehicle usage vs time. It can export your data either as a csv file or as a report suitable for printing.

A Web Interface:

This allows access to the maintenance log from any computer with an internet connection and just about any operating system. See Appendix A for more information on browser compatibility.

Periodic Maintenance Tracking:

The Vehicle Maintenance Log allows you to define the scheduled maintenance requirements for your vehicles and it will track these requirements as they become due. See Section 7 for more information.

Graphing:

The Vehicle Maintenance Log can generate plots of vehicle usage (miles, km, or hours) vs. time and maintenance cost vs. time. See Section 6 for more information.

An Email Summary:

The Vehicle Maintenance Log can email you reminders of the periodic maintenance required on your vehicles. See Appendix B for an example email.

High Quality Printed Output:

The only really reliable long term storage for information is on paper. Hopefully people will still know what paper is in 15 years when the internet crashes. The Vehicle Maintenance Log can export any portion of the log as a high quality hardcopy. See Section 9 for more information.

Automated Backup:

The Vehicle Maintenance Log is backed up nightly to at least one other computer. While I'm not about to offer any sort of data reliability guarantee, I personally have a lot of entries in the Vehicle Maintenance Log and don't want to lose my data either. See Section 9 for more information.