Car Maintenance Computer Program?
 

I am the happy owner of a massive binder of 20 years of car maintenance records.
As a software developer, I am irked that I don't have these cleanly digitized.

Is anyone aware of software for storing, organizing, and searching your car's maintenance history? While I intend to continue my paper trail, I would love to have a system whereby all work is electronically available. A spreadsheet is insufficient, because I want to have everything from attached photos to order email text, all searched and cataloged.

If there isn't anything like this available, perhaps I should write one. Is there a general interest in this?

I have a nice little pivot table I built for tracking my parts purchases. I could see adding attributes for maintenance, mileage on said parts, life expectancy etc... being able to call up images is a whole layer of complexity that I'm not sure is necessary.

I am interested though!

Yeah, I feel your pain. Years ago (early '90s) I used ClarisWorks databases on my Macs. That morphed to AppleWorks and then died. I migrated the raw data to Excel, but you are correct, a spreadsheet is not sufficient. My needs may not be as comprehensive as yours, but still more demanding than a spreadsheet can provide.

I'm a sysadmin, not a developer, but I wonder about building a web-service of some sort. A PHP web-application with mySQL backend could work nicely.

I'm envisioning something that lets you track as much or as little data as you like. I would like the ability to produce "reports" so you can quickly see your oil changes, or send a prospective buyer an overview of all major service.

For example, right now I'd just load in scans of all the docs I have in the binder, and their mileage and date. When I have time, I can pull up those events and split out prices, part numbers, and so forth.

I created a database that is searchable.
Written in paradox (every heard of it? Didn't think so.)
Anyway, it holds all the records.
At this point, I don' t have records scanned into system.
That's another project.

Neatdesk?

NeatDesk - High Speed Desktop Scanner & Digital Filing System

Very slick and professional looking! Rather pricey too...

I thought a DB would be overkill. At the end of the day how many records could you really be looking at? A couple hundred at most?

Isn't that the old DOS database? I've heard of it, but it's been a looooong time...

Here is what I use:

Car Maintenance Schedule Software : Vehicle Maintenance Software

It does lack the ability to attach documents though (actually, it looks like it does after reading the online description - guess I've never done it though)

- Keith

That looks like a pretty complete product. Of course, now I have the bug to write my own. I didn't see a spot where it talks about attaching pictures or documents for service events, orders, parts, etc.

Automotive Software Screen Shots

take a look at the "Vehicle Maintenance" screenshot - there is a tab for attaching invoices. Of course, I've never used that so I can't comment on how well it works (ie. does it embed the attachment or just store a link to it).

Overall, it's a decent program. I use it to track maintenance for the cars in my family (had 7 at one point - 4 kid owed cars, 2 daily drivers and my 911). Now that the kids are out on their own I don't use the program as much. I know when my daily needs service.

Oh hell yeah I remember Paradox. Was out during the heyday of Quattro Pro, circa 1992.

The fact that you're still using it is quite impressive!

just put the filename or linkage into a cell of your spreadsheet (?)