Getting Started
This guide walks you through setting up Loggistics and recording your first chain of custody from tree removal to finished board.
Before you begin
You will need:
- A Loggistics account (sign up at loggistics.app )
- Your organization’s operating address or GPS coordinates
- Basic information about your first tree removal: species, removal date, and location
Create your account
Go to loggistics.app and sign up with Google, Microsoft, or an email address.
After signing in you will be prompted to name your organization, then choose a plan and start your 15-day free trial. See Plans & Billing for the difference between Single User and Multi User.
Set your operational location
Go to Settings and enter your yard’s address under Operational Location. This address is used for:
- USRW certification fields (where the wood was processed)
- Transport distance calculations
- Pre-filling location fields when you create milling sessions
You can also add sub-locations — named spots within your facility like “Kiln Bay 1” or “Pile #4” — to track where inventory is physically stored.
Record your first source
A source is the tree removal event. Before you can create a log, you need a source record.
Go to Sources → New Source and fill in:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Removal address | Where the tree was removed (street address or GPS) |
| Species | The tree species |
| Removal date | When the tree was removed |
| Removal reason | Why the tree was removed (demolition, decline, hazard, etc.) |
| Removed by | The arborist, crew, or municipality that removed it |
The removal reason and species directly affect your USRW score — fill these in as accurately as possible. See USRW Compliance for details.
Looking for a species in a long list? Every species field in Loggistics — here, the New Log form, and the bulk import table below — lets you type to search instead of scrolling. Type a few letters of a common name (e.g. “wh” narrows to White Oak, White Pine, and so on) and the list filters as you go.
Don’t have exact coordinates yet? Leave the location blank. Loggistics can pull GPS coordinates straight from a photo’s built-in location data instead of you typing them in — useful when you’re removing several trees on the same job site that are only a few feet apart, since one shared address for all of them would lose that precision. Two ways to do it:
- Before creating the source — click 📷 Pull GPS from photo on the New Source form to read a photo’s coordinates on the spot, no upload required.
- After creating the source — leave the location blank and save. The first geotagged photo you upload to that source afterward (from the source detail page) fills in the origin automatically.
If a later photo’s GPS doesn’t match what’s already saved, Loggistics shows a banner on the source page so you can pick which reading is correct — it never overwrites saved data on its own.
Your source gets a SRC-XXXX ID automatically.
Create a log from the source
From the source detail page, click Add Log. The species and source link are pre-filled.
Confirm or update:
- Species — must be confirmed to the specific species level
- Dimensions — length and diameter at intake
- Scaling method — how you measured volume (Doyle, Scribner, International, etc.)
The log gets an ID based on species: your first Ash log becomes ASH-001, your first White Oak becomes WOK-001.
Move the log through the pipeline
Each log moves through four stages:
- Intake — log received, basic info recorded
- Yard Detail — defects noted, log marked as ready to mill
- Milling — active milling session, boards entered as you cut
- Complete — all products recorded, log closed
From the log detail page, use the Mark as Ready button when the log is staged and ready to mill, then Begin Milling to open a milling session.
Enter boards during milling
The milling session page has a board entry form. For each board you cut, enter:
- Product type (board, slab, cookie, turning blank, cant)
- Dimensions (thickness, width, length)
- Grade
Boards appear in the session as you add them with live board-feet totals. Each board gets an ID automatically: ASH-001-B01, ASH-001-B02, etc.
Recording multiple sources at once
If you’re working from a forest management plan, a city removal project, or any list of trees that already has an outside ID, DBH, and removal date recorded, you don’t need to enter them one at a time.
Go to Sources → Bulk Upload. You have two options, side by side:
- Upload a CSV — download the provided template and fill it in. The columns are Species, DBH (in), Removal Date, External ID, Latitude, Longitude, Address, and Notes — every column is optional, so leave blank anything you don’t have. Loggistics matches each species name against your species list automatically and classifies each removal date as already-happened or still-planned based on whether it’s in the past.
- Enter trees manually — skip the CSV entirely and add rows one at a time in the same table. Useful for smaller batches or when you’d rather not build a spreadsheet.
Either path lands you in the same editable review table — nothing is created until you check it over and click Create Sources. From there you can fix any field, resolve a row with no confident species match (pick the right one, use Unknown, or leave it blank — the source is still created either way, just without a species), or remove a row entirely before submitting.
A tree ID from another system (e.g. a forest management plan’s tag number) goes in the External ID column. It’s kept for your own reference and is never shown on the source’s public page.
Filtering and sorting the Sources list
Once you have more than a handful of sources on file, the Sources page can be filtered by ID, species, DBH, location, removal reason, contractor, and removal date — and sorted by any of those, or by newest/oldest first.
Custom species
Loggistics ships with 196 built-in species covering the common North American hardwoods and softwoods plus a range of imported/exotic species. If a species you work with isn’t on that list, add it as a custom species — it then shows up alongside the built-in ones everywhere a species is picked (Sources, Logs, bulk import, Traece import, the calculator tools).
There are two ways to add one:
- Inline, right where you’re working — type a name into any species search box. If nothing matches, a ”+ Add as new species” option appears at the bottom of the list. Clicking it opens a small form for the name, wood type, and (optional) density — no need to leave the page you’re on.
- Settings → Operations → Custom Species — the same fields, plus a full list of your org’s custom species that you can edit or archive later.
Only common name and wood type (hardwood/softwood) are required. Density is optional — it only feeds the weight and carbon estimates in the calculator tools, so it’s safe to leave blank and fill in later.
Picking a wood type shows the current org-wide average density for that type as placeholder text in the density fields — it’s a starting reference, not an automatic fill-in. Nothing is saved unless you actually type a number, so a saved density value is always a real reading, never indistinguishable from a guess.
Custom species appear in their own Custom section at the top of every species dropdown (right after Unknown), so your org’s own additions are easy to spot when you’re browsing rather than typing a search.
Archiving a custom species removes it from all the dropdowns going forward, but any Source or Log that already used it is unaffected — nothing is deleted or broken. If you archive one that’s still in use, the Settings list flags it with how many Sources and Logs still reference it, so you know at a glance whether it’s worth restoring instead.
Next steps
- Learn how IDs are structured — the naming system embeds the chain of custody in every ID
- Understand chain of custody concepts for the full pipeline
- Browse the built-in species list to check whether a species is already available before adding it as custom
- Set up QR codes and sharing to give buyers public access to provenance data