Chemical Logs Overview (Chemical Logs)
Last updated July 6, 2026 · Owners, licensed pesticide applicators, and office staff
If your company applies pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or fertilizers commercially, you almost certainly have a legal obligation to keep application records — federal law requires records for restricted use pesticides, and most states extend record-keeping rules to general-use products applied commercially. The Chemical Logs module gives you one place to keep those records: a product catalog, a dose calculator, permanent application-log records, and a filterable register with PDF exports you can hand to a state inspector.
Compliance disclaimer: Record-keeping requirements vary by state (and sometimes by product and license type). This software helps you keep organized, consistent records, but it is not legal advice, and using it does not by itself make you compliant. You are responsible for knowing and meeting the regulatory requirements that apply to your business — when in doubt, check with your state’s department of agriculture or your licensing authority.
Before you start
- The module lives in the sidebar under the Work group. You’ll see three entries there:
- Chem Log — the application-log register (the list of every recorded application)
- Dose Calculator — a standalone calculator for working out product and water totals from a label rate
- Chemical Products — your company’s chemical catalog
- Any operator account with access to the Work menu can use all three pages.
- Nothing needs to be configured to start — but the log form requires a chemical product from your catalog, so setting up Chemical Products first is the natural starting point.
Steps
The module is built around a simple workflow:
- Set up your chemical catalog under Work → Chemical Products. Each product stores its EPA registration number, active ingredient, signal word, restricted-use flag, re-entry interval, and default label/mix/carrier rates. See Set Up Your Chemical Product Catalog.
- Work out the dose with the Dose Calculator (standalone page, or built right into the log form). Pick a product and enter the area — it computes total product, water (carrier) volume, tank counts, and product per tank, with all unit conversions handled for you. See Using the Dose Calculator.
- Record the application with a New log entry. The log captures who applied what, where, when, at what rate, in what weather — and freezes a snapshot of the product and site details so the record can’t drift later. See Application Logs, the Register, and PDF Reports.
- Report and export from the Chem Log register: filter by date, product, applicator, or customer, then export a Record PDF for a single application (with a signature line, ready for an inspector) or a PDF summary of the whole filtered register.
What happens next
Once logs are being recorded, the register becomes your compliance archive:
- Logs are snapshot-based legal records. When you save a log, the product’s name, EPA reg number, active ingredient, and restricted-use status — and the job site’s address — are copied into the record and frozen. Renaming a product or editing a job site later never changes what an existing log says.
- Logs are never deleted. If a record was entered in error, you void it with a required reason. Voided records stay in the register (marked VOIDED) so your audit trail stays complete.
- Restricted Use Pesticides are enforced. If a product is flagged RUP in your catalog, the log form requires an applicator license number before it will save (a supervising applicator’s number is acceptable).
Tips & best practices
- Enter the catalog once, carefully. The EPA reg number and restricted-use flag you set on a product flow into every log that uses it — get them right at setup and every record after that is right too.
- Log the same day. Weather, start/end times, and target pest are much easier to capture accurately on the day of application. The form defaults the date to today and has a Use current weather button for one-click weather capture.
- Log from the visit when you can. On a job’s summary page, each visit row has a Chem Log button that opens the log form pre-filled with the customer, job site, visit date, measured area, and the visit’s weather snapshot.
- Export a PDF summary periodically (e.g. monthly or per season) and file it — you’ll have a dated paper trail even independent of the software.
- Know your state’s retention period. Many states require records be kept for 2–3 years or longer; the register keeps everything indefinitely, but your obligations are defined by your state, not by the software.
Troubleshooting
- I don’t see Chem Log in the sidebar — expand the Work group in the sidebar; the three chemical entries (Chem Log, Dose Calculator, Chemical Products) live inside it.
- The log form won’t let me save without a license number — the selected product is flagged as a Restricted Use Pesticide in your catalog. Enter the applicator’s (or supervising applicator’s) license number, or correct the product’s RUP flag if it was set by mistake.
- A log has wrong information on it — open the log and use Edit to correct it (voided logs can’t be edited). If the whole record shouldn’t exist, use Void with a reason instead — records are never deleted.
- An old log shows a product name we no longer use — that’s by design. Logs show the product details as they were on the day of application, not today’s catalog values.
Related articles
- Set Up Your Chemical Product Catalog — add products with EPA reg numbers, rates, and the RUP flag
- Using the Dose Calculator — turn a label rate into totals for the area you’re treating
- Application Logs, the Register, and PDF Reports — record applications, understand snapshots and voiding, export PDFs