What it does
- A work board. Every boat in the yard, oldest-untouched first, with who has it and how long it has been sitting. Filter by technician, status, customer, or a partial hull number.
- Intake by hull number. A boat can exist before its owner does. Type the HIN, start the job, and invite the owner whenever you are ready — or never.
- Inspection checklists. Pre-service, haul-out, winterisation, and a 21-point post-service confirmation, or build your own. A sheet stays private to your shop until you release it, so nothing half-finished ever reaches a customer.
- Turnaround you can defend. Working days and waiting days are reported separately, so a customer who took three weeks to approve a quote does not show up as your delay.
- Records that outlive the job. Everything you log stays on the boat. When the job closes your access ends — the history does not.
Built for the way a shop actually runs
Intake
A boat arrives before its paperwork does. Type the hull number and the job exists — no customer account, no invitation, no waiting. If the hull is already on VesselFile you attach to the existing record instead of starting a second one, so two shops working the same boat build one history rather than two halves.
Give the job a name and your own work-order number. Both are searchable, because “RO-4485” is what your paperwork says and “the Grady-White Casey brought in” is what your service writer says.
The board
Sorted the way you’d ask: unassigned first, then longest untouched. A job nobody has picked up and nobody has touched in four days is at the top, because that is the reason to open the screen at all. Filter by technician, by status, or type any part of a customer name, boat name, job number or hull number.
Checklists and inspections
Four starters — pre-service, haul-out, winterisation, and a 21-point post-service confirmation — or build your own once and reuse it. Answers are typed: pass/fail, a condition, a rating, engine hours, free text. Engine hours entered on a sheet flow straight into the boat’s log.
A sheet is private to your shop until you release it. Nothing half-finished, and nothing you were still arguing about, ever reaches a customer by accident.
Your customers
Invite an owner to claim their boat’s record and they get the whole history, with your shop’s name on the work you did. If the hull isn’t theirs they can say so in one click, and you find out you have the wrong HIN or the wrong contact — rather than never hearing back and never knowing why.
Owners can read what you logged and dispute an entry, and cannot delete it. Your record of the work stands.
Staff
Admins run the shop, members work jobs, viewers read. Assign jobs to whoever has them. Your technicians can pull up a boat and its full history on their phone while standing on it.
Knowing where you stand
Open jobs, unassigned jobs, and how many hulls are still waiting on an owner to claim them. Turnaround split into working days and waiting days, so the fortnight a customer spent deciding on a repower is not counted against your shop.
Why the record belongs to the boat
Most shop systems keep the service history inside the shop. That is fine until the customer moves, sells, or goes elsewhere — and then the work you did disappears from the only place it mattered.
VesselFile ties the record to the hull. Your entries carry your shop's name, the owner can read them and cannot delete them, and they travel with the boat when it is sold. It is a better record for the customer, and it is the cheapest advertising a yard has: your name sits on a document the next owner and their surveyor will both read.
Pricing
Priced by how many people need access, not by how many boats you touch. A one-person operation is free and will stay free.
| Plan | Launch price | Regular price | Staff | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | Free | Free | 1 | 5 GB |
| Starter | $19/mo | $35/mo | 3 | 25 GB |
| Shop | $49/mo | $95/mo | 10 | 100 GB |
| Yard | $99/mo | $200/mo | Unlimited | 500 GB |
Launch pricing holds for twelve months from the day you sign up, and we write to you before it changes — never with the invoice. Annual billing is ten times the monthly rate, so two months are free. Every shop is free while we launch, and nothing is charged yet.
Who it is for
- Mobile marine mechanics working out of a truck, who want the customer to keep a record of what was done.
- Independent repair shops with two or three people and no appetite for a system that costs more than a bay's rent.
- Boatyards and marina service departments running haul-outs, bottom jobs, repowers, and winterisation.
- Dealers handing a documented history to the buyer of every used boat on the lot.
Getting started
- Create a shop account — name, phone, and where you are.
- Take a boat in by its hull number. It takes about a minute.
- Log the work, or run a checklist and release it to the owner.
- Invite the owner to claim the record whenever you want to.