Firewood delivery records: orders, deliveries and the driver's list, with no internet
Short answer: keep one list of customers and one list of orders, each order with its load size, delivery day and whether it is paid. A view of orders filtered to today and sorted by area is the driver's list. It all works on a laptop with no internet. If the driver needs it on a phone in the lane, read where this is honest first.
On ArbTalk, a UK firewood seller described how most small outfits still do it: “Currently we record orders and schedule deliveries manually.” The driver gets the drops over WhatsApp. They asked whether someone could help with “setting up a basic database and giving the driver what is needed”, because “all the online software seems to tailored to companies the size of Tesco, not someone who just delivers Firewood.” (The thread, from November 2021, read 4 November 2026.) The two replies were a daily schedule built by hand around a printed map of postcodes, and invoices in Google Sheets.
So the job is not route planning or a stock system. It is three questions answered without a notebook: who ordered what, what goes on the truck tomorrow, and who still owes for last week's load.
How the lists fit together
| List | What one row is | Points at |
|---|---|---|
| Customers | One household: name, phone, address, postcode area, where to tip the load, notes like “gate code” or “no lorry access” | |
| Orders | One load: date ordered, wood (seasoned, kiln dried, kindling), size (bag, half load, full load), price, delivery day, delivered yes or no, paid yes or no | A customer |
Open a customer and every order they have ever placed is listed under it, so a repeat call takes one search. Make a view of orders where delivery day is today and delivered is no, grouped by postcode area, and that is the run sheet. A second view of orders delivered but not paid is the list of people to chase.
A database that lives on the laptop
Bionic Forms builds a small app from a spreadsheet or a sentence, such as “keep my firewood customers and each order with the load size, price, delivery day and whether it is paid”. Our desktop app for Windows, macOS or Linux keeps a full, encrypted copy on the computer. With no connection at all you can:
- Take an order the moment the phone rings, one row per load.
- Print the run sheet for the cab (how printing works).
- Search and sort: every order from one village, every kiln-dried load this month, every customer who has not ordered since last winter.
- Attach a photo of where the load was tipped, if a customer asks (files on records).
When the laptop finds a connection again, the changes go up by themselves. The driver can then sign in to the same app on a phone and open the run sheet, seeing only the drops you choose to show (who sees what). Every change is kept with who made it and when, so “I paid cash on the doorstep” has a record behind it (how history works).
Getting old records in
If last season is already in a spreadsheet, drop it on our home page. Each sheet comes in as its own list, so one sheet of customers and one of orders, with the customer's name on each order row, is the easiest shape. Free covers unlimited apps and 10,000 entries per app; three hundred customers ordering four loads a winter is 1,200.
Where this is honest
- No offline phone app yet. Offline is the desktop app only. On a phone, ours runs in the browser and needs a signal, so a driver in a lane with no bars should carry the printed run sheet.
- No route planning. It sorts and groups by postcode area or village. It does not work out the shortest drive.
- It does not take card payments or send invoices. It records who has paid. You can download any list as a spreadsheet for your accounts.
- No stock count by itself. There are no formulas, so cubic metres left in the shed is a number you keep up to date, not one it works out.
- Set it up while you have a connection. The AI that builds the app runs on our server. Using it afterwards does not need one.
- We are small and pre-launch. We say plainly which parts are not finished, and your data can always be exported again.
Build it now. The box already says what this page is about. Change it if you like.
About 25 seconds. No signup to see the result.
Already keep a spreadsheet? Drop it on the home page instead.
Or open the live demo first. No email.
Rather not do it yourself? Tell us what you track and we will build a working version and show you. No fee.
More: tree service records, sawmill log inventory and a snow plowing log, or printing a record.