Setting up chemical tracking

Admin access and Premium required

Chemical tracking is part of the Premium plan. You must be an administrator to set up presets and sprayers.

Chemical tracking gives you a spray diary inside SortScape. Your crew records what they applied on each visit, and SortScape keeps who applied it, where, when, with which sprayer, at what rate, and the weather at the time. You can then pull every record into a report for audits, or add it to the service report you send the customer.

Before your crew can record anything, set up two things:

1. Application presets: the mixes and fertilisers you use, with your rates.
2. Spray equipment: your sprayers, their tank sizes, and how much area a full tank covers.

Both live on one page: Settings → Time & materials → Chemicals.

If you’re on Premium and don’t see Chemicals in Settings, chemical tracking hasn’t been switched on for your account yet. Send us a message in the chat and we’ll turn it on.

Application presets

A preset is a named recipe your crew picks on a job. It holds one or more products and the rates your business uses them at. For example:

• Woody weeds: Glyphosate 450 at 20 mL per L
• Summer broadleaf mix: a herbicide at 50 mL per 5 L, plus a wetting agent at 10 mL per 5 L
• Lawn feed: a granular fertiliser at 50 g per m²

A preset with one product is perfectly normal. If you use the same product at two strengths (say 20 mL/L for woody weeds and 10 mL/L for general weeds), make two presets. Your crew then picks one option and SortScape works out the mix.

Create a preset

1. Open Settings → Time & materials → Chemicals.
2. Under Application presets, click Add application preset.
3. Give it a Name your crew will recognise, such as “Woody weeds”.
4. Choose the Application method:
   • Spray for anything mixed in water and applied with a sprayer.
   • Granular for anything spread dry, such as fertiliser or pre-emergent granules.
5. Leave Requires a licence ticked if only a licensed applicator should record this preset. It’s ticked by default for spray presets and unticked for granular ones.
6. Optionally add a Default target, such as “broadleaf weeds”. This fills in the target pest or weed each time the preset is recorded. The crew can change it.
7. Under Products, add each product in the mix (see below). Click Add product for a tank mix.
8. Click Create.

You can also create a preset straight from the recording form on a visit. Admins see Create application preset at the bottom of the preset list.

Adding products

Start typing in Product name. In Australia, the United States and Great Britain, SortScape searches the official register:

Country	Register	Search by
Australia	APVMA (PubCRIS)	Product name or APVMA number
United States	EPA Pesticide Product Information System	Product name or EPA registration number
Great Britain	HSE pesticides register	Product name or MAPP number

Picking a registered product fills in the product name, registration number and active ingredients. Where the register has a label, a View official label link appears.

Can’t find the product by name? Type the approval number printed on the drum instead. In Australia you can type the whole number, such as 88829/126513. Some products are sold under a different name to the one on the register, so the number is the most reliable way to find them.

Wetting agents, dyes and most fertilisers aren’t on a pesticide register. For those, type the name and choose Use “your product name”. You can fill in the registration number and active ingredients yourself, or leave them blank. Products you’ve used before show at the top of the list, marked Your product.

In other countries there’s no register search, so type each product name yourself.

Entering the rate

Each product has a rate made of four parts: an amount, its unit, per, and what it’s per. For example:

• 20 mL per 1 L (a rate per litre of water)
• 50 mL per 5 L
• 5 L per 1 ha (a rate per area)
• 50 g per 1 m² (granular)

If you leave the “per” box blank, SortScape treats it as 1. When a rate is per more than one litre, SortScape shows the strength per litre underneath (for example “That’s 10 mL per L”) so you can check you’ve typed it correctly.

The rate is your business’s rate, not the label rate. Always check the current product label before application.

Units follow your company’s country. Australian, New Zealand and UK accounts use mL, L, g and kg, with areas in m² or ha. US accounts use fl oz, pt, oz and lb, per US gallon, ft² or acre. Granular presets only offer weights per area.

Editing or deleting a preset

Click a preset to edit it, or use the row menu to delete it. Changing or deleting a preset never changes applications that have already been recorded. Each record keeps the product, rate and preset name exactly as they were on the day.

Spray equipment

Add each sprayer your crew uses, from a backpack to a ute-mounted tank. SortScape uses the tank size and calibration to work out how much product goes into each tank.

Add a sprayer

1. Open Settings → Time & materials → Chemicals.
2. Under Spray equipment, click Add sprayer.
3. Enter a Name (for example “Backpack sprayer 1”) and the Tank size.
4. Under Calibration, enter Covers per tank: the area one full tank covers at your normal walking pace and nozzle. Set Calibrated on to the date you measured it.
5. Click Create.

Recording a new calibration

Calibrate again whenever you change a nozzle, pump or operator pace, and at least once a year. Click Record calibration from the sprayer’s row menu, or from inside Edit sprayer. Each calibration is added to the sprayer’s history with its date and who recorded it. Older entries can’t be changed, so you have a record of every calibration. You can correct the latest one if you made a mistake.

A sprayer shows Not calibrated until it has a calibration, and Calibration due once the last one is 12 months old.

Why calibration matters

When a rate is per area (such as 5 L per ha) and the crew is spraying a whole area, SortScape needs to know how much area a tank covers to work out the mix. So for those sprays, the crew can only pick a calibrated sprayer. If a sprayer is overdue for calibration, the crew sees a warning but can still use it.

Spot sprays, rates per litre of water, and granular spreads don’t need a calibrated sprayer.

Licence numbers

If a preset has Requires a licence ticked, the person applying it needs a pesticide licence number on file.

• Admins: open Settings → Company → Employees, edit the employee, and fill in Pesticide licence number and Licence expires.
• Each crew member: open My profile from the profile menu, click Edit, and add their own licence number.

If the licence is missing when someone goes to record, SortScape asks for it in the recording form and saves it to their profile. Only admins can add a licence number for someone else.

Each record keeps the licence number that was on file when it was recorded, so renewing a licence later doesn’t change old records.

Next step

Once you have a preset and a sprayer, your crew can start recording chemical applications on their visits.