Sawmill log and lumber inventory, with no internet

Last updated 4 November 2026.

Short answer: keep one list of logs on the yard, each with its tag number, and one list of what the saw produced. A view of logs not yet sawn is the yard count; lumber grouped by species and grade, with a total, is board feet on hand. It works on the office computer with no internet. Read where this is honest before you count on it.

On the Forestry Forum, a small mill owner posting as Kansas asked what “smaller to medium size sawmills use for their accounting”. Months later they came back with what they had settled on: “I have a part time bookkeeper that has set the log tag system up in excel.” Every month she ran a report of board feet in logs on hand and adjusted for what was cut, because “Theres no way we can try to measure and account for what lumber flows out of each individual log.” Another sawyer in the same thread had looked for a ready-made program: “Have not found a written program to just plug into.” (The thread, from 2007, read 4 November 2026.)

That is the honest shape of the job. Most small mills do not trace every board back to its log, and they do not need to. They need to know what is on the yard, what came off the saw this week, and what is stacked and sold.

How the lists fit together

The link from lumber to a log is there if you want it, not because you must fill it in. Leave it empty for pallet stock and mixed cuts, and use it for the walnut log a customer wants to see the boards from. Open that log and every stack cut from it is listed under it.

Board feet can be worked out for you. Describe it in a sentence, such as “when a lumber stack is saved, set board feet to thickness times width times length divided by 12, times the piece count”, and an automation fills it in on each save. Thickness and width go in inches, length in feet.

A database that lives on the office computer

Bionic Forms builds a small app from a spreadsheet or a sentence. Our desktop app for Windows, macOS or Linux keeps a full, encrypted copy on the computer, so a mill with poor signal can still:

• Log a load in as it comes off the truck, one row per tag.
• See the yard: logs not yet sawn, grouped by species, with a total.
• See what is stacked: lumber grouped by species and grade, summed in board feet, filtered to kiln dried if that is what a buyer wants.
• Print a tally for a buyer or the shed wall (how printing works).

When it finds a connection again, the changes go up by themselves, and a second person can open the same app from their own computer or a phone. Every change is kept with who made it and when (how history works).

Getting old records in

If the log tags already live in a spreadsheet, drop it on our home page. Each sheet comes in as its own list. Free covers unlimited apps and 10,000 entries per app; a mill tagging a thousand logs a year and tallying three thousand stacks fits for two years.

Where this is honest

• It is not accounting software. It holds the yard and the stacks. It does not do your books. You can download any list as a spreadsheet for whoever does.
• No log scale built in. It does not know Doyle, Scribner or International. Enter the scaled board feet from your rule or ticket.
• No barcode scanning or scale tickets. Tag numbers are typed.
• No offline phone app yet. Offline is the desktop app only. On a phone, ours runs in the browser and needs a signal.
• The total is only as good as the rows. Like Kansas's monthly adjustment, someone still has to mark logs sawn and stacks sold.
• 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.