Invoices, warranties, papers: organising your boat’s admin

Registration papers, insurance certificate, survey report, invoices, warranties, manuals, expiry dates: a boat piles up documents you need at the worst possible moment, usually far from a desk. Here is how we organised myCloud’s admin so that any paper can be found in under a minute.

What disorder costs

Disorganised paperwork goes unnoticed until the day it costs you. A warranty lost because the invoice cannot be found. A part ordered twice because nobody noted the right reference. Clearing into a neighbouring country, as on our trips to Vanuatu, where the vessel’s and crew’s papers have to be shown. A claim where the insurer asks for proof of maintenance. A sale where the buyer wants the full history. Each time it means time, energy and sometimes money.

The documents to have, always

• The vessel’s papers: the French registration deed (acte de francisation) and navigation papers, depending on the boat’s status. myCloud, formerly PARIGOT III, sailed under the Vanuatu flag before 2015 before being registered in Noumea: that flag history is part of the file.
• Insurance: the policy, its specific conditions, the current certificate, any endorsements, and correspondence in the event of a claim.
• The survey: the pre-purchase report, and any later ones.
• Safety equipment: an up-to-date list with expiry and service dates.
• Invoices and warranties for everything bought or repaired.
• Manuals for the equipment, ideally in digital form.

For the exact list of required documents and procedures, check with the Direction des affaires maritimes de Nouvelle-Calédonie and with customs: the rules change, and they depend on the boat’s size, use and cruising area.

File by equipment and by zone, not by date

The instinct is to file invoices by year. That works for the accounts, but it is useless the day a bilge pump fails and you are hunting for its warranty. So we file every document twice over: by piece of equipment, and each piece of equipment by zone of the boat.

A concrete example: the invoice for the Liebherr fridge fitted in June 2026 is linked to the “fridge” equipment record, which sits in the zone of the port forward bulkhead rebuilt by Patrick. In one place you find the invoice, the warranty, the manual and the installation photos. Someone looking for “the fridge” finds everything; so does someone looking for “what was done in the port hull”.

Warranties and manuals: good habits

• On the day of purchase, note the date, the warranty period and its conditions, such as professional installation.
• Keep references and serial numbers in the equipment’s private file. Those numbers are never published, but they are always asked for.
• Download the manual as a PDF as soon as the item is installed, before the box goes in the bin.
• Photograph hard-to-reach rating plates: it saves a lot of contortions later.

Dates that do not forgive

Depending on how the boat is equipped, safety gear includes items with a limited life or periodic servicing: flares, fire extinguishers, liferaft, distress beacon, cartridges in automatic lifejackets, not forgetting the first-aid kit. Those dates cannot be caught up once you are at sea. We record every one of them with a due date and a reminder, and we go through the list before every passage.

A routine rather than a big clear-out

The once-a-year big filing session never lasts. What works is a short, regular routine:

• every invoice is photographed and linked to its equipment on the same day, before leaving the yard or the shop;
• once a month, ten minutes to empty the tray of pending papers and check the deadlines coming up the following month;
• before every passage, a check of the vessel’s papers, the insurance certificate and the safety-gear dates.

Paper, digital, and both

Our system has three layers. Important originals stay dry, ashore. A waterproof folder aboard holds the copies you might need for an inspection or a clearance. And everything is scanned and reachable from a phone. Since the myCloud app does not work offline, we also keep a PDF copy of the few documents that are essential on passage on the phone itself.

In the myCloud boat management app, the boat’s 199 documents are linked to its 165 pieces of equipment and 53 zones. Insurance and regulatory safety have their own deadlines and reminders, the medical kit has its own inventory, and the sale file can be generated as a PDF or shared through a time-limited buyer link. AI invoice reading is ready and being switched on; in the meantime, every invoice is filed by hand.