The problem every boat owner knows
Owning a boat on the Broads comes with a small mountain of paperwork: the Boat Safety Scheme certificate on its four-year cycle, insurance that renews annually, the Broads Authority toll (which needs proof of insurance before it's issued), a gas certificate, perhaps a radio licence — plus the jobs that don't come with a certificate at all, like blacking the hull or changing the anodes every couple of years.
Most of that lives in a drawer at home, an email somewhere, or a folder on the boat. Nothing reminds you. The first you hear of an expired BSS is often when the toll renewal won't go through, and the first hint the blacking is overdue is a surveyor's report when you come to sell.
What the Boat Vault does, in plain English
The Boat Vault is a private record store for your boat inside the free Norfolk Broads Electrical app. You photograph or upload each document once, tell it the dates (or let it read the dates off the document for you to confirm), and from then on it does the remembering:
- Fixed renewals — BSS, insurance, Broads toll, gas certificate, radio licence — are tracked by their expiry date, with a countdown and a green / amber / red status for each.
- Recurring jobs — antifouling/blacking, anode replacement, engine service, winterisation — are tracked from the date the work was last done. Log a blacking job and the vault quietly starts counting toward the next one.
- Reminders arrive early enough to act. Paperwork nudges start around two months out. Haul-out jobs like blacking start nudging about three months out, because a boatyard slot and a lift-out have to be booked ahead.
One summary screen for the whole boat
Open the vault and the summary tab answers the questions that actually matter: when does the BSS run out, when does the insurance renew, is the toll paid, and what's the next maintenance job coming up? Your insurance card shows the broker's name and phone number right next to the expiry date, so acting on a reminder is one tap, not a hunt through old emails. A single "next actions" list merges every expiry and every due job into one date-ordered view.
Built for selling well, too
Buyers and brokers pay for confidence. Because the vault accumulates your boat's full history — every certificate, every service, every blacking with its date and cost — it can export the lot as a single PDF handover pack. It also adds the numbers up, so you can see what the boat genuinely costs to run each year, with the BSS fairly spread across its four-year cycle.
The Boat Vault is part of the free Norfolk Broads Electrical app, alongside the instant electrical simulator — so warranties for batteries, inverters or solar fitted to your boat slot straight into the same record. If you're planning time on the water rather than paperwork, our holiday planning guide and tide times guide are the places to start.
All your paperwork in one place
BSS certificate, insurance, Broads toll, gas certificate, radio licence, surveys, warranties, mooring agreement — uploaded once, stored against your boat, findable in seconds.
Reminders before things expire
Traffic-light status in the app and emails ahead of every renewal, so BSS, insurance and toll dates never creep up on you.
Maintenance that reminds itself
Log each antifouling, anode change, engine service or winterisation once, and the vault works out when the next one is due.
Key contacts to hand
Broker, boatyard, surveyor and recovery contacts stored with your boat — with the broker's phone number sitting right next to your insurance expiry.
Know what your boat really costs
Every cost you log rolls up into a yearly running-cost picture, with the BSS spread over its four-year cycle.
A handover pack when you sell
One tap exports the whole vault — spec, documents, contacts and full maintenance history — as a tidy PDF for the buyer.
Boat Vault questions, answered
The Boat Vault is a private area inside the Norfolk Broads Electrical app where you keep all of one boat's paperwork and maintenance history together. It tracks the renewal dates that matter — BSS, insurance, Broads toll, gas certificate, radio licence — and reminds you before they expire.