ATF waste records software for an end-of-life vehicle yard
If you run an authorised treatment facility, one end-of-life vehicle leaves the gate as several loads, and each of those loads needs its own waste transfer note. Skiplog is built to write those notes on a tablet in the yard, hold them when there is no signal, and turn a quarter of them into an EA return as a CSV.
How an end-of-life vehicle yard keeps its waste records today
An ATF is really two jobs on one site. There is the vehicle job: arrivals, depollution, and the paperwork that follows a car once it is off the road. Then there is the waste job, which is everything that leaves the gate afterwards. Shell metal to the shredder or the dealer. Tyres on their own carrier. Glass, mixed plastics and trim. The material drained and stripped in the depollution bay. The waste job is the one an area office asks about when it wants to know what came in, what went out and who carried it.
In most yards with one to twenty staff, that job runs on a triplicate book in the weighbridge hut, a spike of weighbridge tickets, and a spreadsheet somebody updates on a Friday. The carrier's registration number gets written down if the driver has it to hand. The load ends up recorded twice, by two people, in two sets of handwriting, and the typed version is the one everybody trusts because it is legible.
What goes wrong
The failures are small and quiet. A note is written for the metal and nobody writes one for the plastics off the same batch. An EWC code is copied from the line above, because that is what the last load was. A destination is written as a town rather than a site. Then a quarter closes, and whoever is building the return is working from a book with gaps in it and a spreadsheet that does not agree with the book.
The decision in front of an ATF is not really whether to go digital. It is whether the record gets written where the load is, with the driver still standing at the weighbridge, or afterwards from memory and a pile of tickets. Everything that is hard about an ATF's waste records comes from that gap between the load leaving and the record being made.
Why one vehicle makes several records
An end-of-life vehicle is the awkward case for a paper book, because it does not leave as one load. The shell goes one way, on one carrier, on one day. The tyres go to a different taker, often weeks later. Glass, mixed plastics and trim are separate streams again. One arrival becomes a handful of outbound records spread across the quarter, each with its own waste description, its own EWC code, its own quantity, its own carrier and its own destination.
A triplicate book keeps those records in the order the yard happened to work in, which is not an order anyone can read a quarter from. Nothing in the book tells you that the plastics off a given batch never left on a note.
Skiplog's transfer note is built around the fields the EA mandates: waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier details and destination site. The form is built to be completed in under two minutes on a phone or tablet. Two minutes is the number that decides whether an ATF uses it at all, because a yard writing five or six notes off one vehicle will not open a form that takes ten.
The figure the quarter turns on
The number an ATF is asked for most often is tonnage by waste type, and it is the hardest thing to pull out of paper, because it means sorting a book by stream and adding it up by hand. The site operator dashboard is built to hold exactly that: transfer notes logged, tonnage by waste type, and a compliance status overview on one screen.
Having it mid-quarter rather than at the end gives you arithmetic you can argue with. If the metal tonnage looks light against the vehicles that went through the bay, that is a note somebody did not write, and it is far cheaper to find in week three than in the week the return is due. If one dominant stream is your case rather than the ELV mix, there is a page in this section written for scrap metal recycling sites.
From the breaker bay to the quarterly return
- Write the note where the load is
The load is on the plate, the driver is in front of you and the weighbridge ticket is in your hand. The form asks for waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier details and destination site, the fields the EA mandates, and it is built to be finished in under two minutes on a phone or tablet.
- The note saves on the device first
Capture is offline first. The note is written to the device before anything goes over the network, and it carries a visible status of queued, syncing or synced, so you can see where it has got to rather than guess. When connectivity comes back it syncs on its own.
- Repeat for every stream off the vehicle
Shell metal, tyres, glass, mixed plastics and trim each get their own note, with their own code, carrier and destination. They stay separate records, which is how they left the yard, and they sit together in one register you can read end to end.
- Watch the quarter build instead of reconstructing it
The site operator dashboard shows transfer notes logged, tonnage by waste type and a compliance status overview, so the shape of the quarter is visible while there is still time to do something about a stream that looks light.
- Keep the registrations in date
Carrier, broker and dealer registrations are tracked on a dashboard with their expiry dates, and Skiplog is built to send an email alert for any registration expiring within 30 days, so a lapse is something you hear about before a load arrives at the gate.
- Export the quarter as a file
Quarterly EA return generation is a one-click CSV export in a configurable EA-specified column layout, ready to submit without manual reformatting. The return comes out of the notes you already wrote, in the columns your area office asks for.
What matters in a yard like this
A note per outbound stream, one register
The metal, the tyres and the plastics stay separate records with their own codes and carriers, and still sit in a single register rather than in a book, a spike and a spreadsheet.
The fields the EA mandates, asked for on the form
Waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier details and destination site. Those are what the note is built around, so the same five things are captured on the sixth load of the day as on the first.
Short enough to write at the plate
The form is built to be completable in under two minutes on mobile or tablet. A record written while the driver is still there is the only kind that does not need typing up later.
Signal is not a condition of recording
Notes save locally first with a visible queued, syncing or synced status, and sync automatically when connectivity returns. Breaker bays, metal buildings and the far corner of a yard are where signal goes.
Tonnage by waste type without adding it up
The dashboard shows tonnage split by waste type alongside the count of notes logged, which is the figure an ATF is asked for most and the one that is slowest to get out of paper.
Registrations watched on a clock
Expiry dates for carrier, broker and dealer registrations sit on one dashboard, with email alerts built for anything inside 30 days.
The quarter is an export, not an event
One click gives a CSV in a configurable EA-specified column layout, so the return is a file you check rather than a weekend spent reconciling a book against a spreadsheet.
A price a small yard can hold
One site, unlimited transfer notes and unlimited registrations tracked, on a monthly or annual plan, with a 60-day free trial before anything is paid.
What the note carries, and where it turns up
| On the note | Where it comes from in the yard | Where it turns up later |
|---|---|---|
| Waste type and EWC code | The stream the load actually is: shell metal, tyres, glass, mixed plastics, trim | Tonnage by waste type on the dashboard, and the waste lines of the quarterly CSV |
| Quantity | The weighbridge ticket for that load | The tonnage figure for the quarter |
| Carrier details | The driver's name and registration number, taken at the gate | The register, beside the registration expiry dates you track |
| Destination site | The site the load is going to, not the town it is near | The transfer note and the quarterly return |
| Date of transfer | The day the load left the yard | The quarter the note falls into |
What it costs an ATF yard
Annual, £1,188 a year
The same product for £99 a month, billed once a year, for yards that plan a season ahead. One site, unlimited waste transfer notes, unlimited registrations tracked. A 60-day free trial. Card payments are handled by Stripe.
Monthly, £129 a month
The same product paid month by month, cancel whenever you like. One site, unlimited waste transfer notes, unlimited registrations tracked. A 60-day free trial. Card payments are handled by Stripe.
Questions
Does one end-of-life vehicle need more than one transfer note?
In practice, yes. The streams off one vehicle leave on different carriers, to different destinations, often weeks apart, so they cannot sit on a single shared record. Skiplog is built around a note per outbound load, each with its own waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier details and destination site, and all of them land in one register.
Will it record a load in the breaker bay where there is no signal?
That is what offline-first capture is for. The note saves on the device before any network call, shows a queued, syncing or synced status so you know which it is, and syncs automatically when connectivity returns. There is a separate page in this section on offline capture and on the yard routine for recording a load with no signal.
How long does a note take to write at the weighbridge?
The form is built to be completable in under two minutes on mobile or tablet, with the EA-mandated fields on it: waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier details and destination site. That is the design constraint, because a yard writing several notes off one vehicle will not use a form that takes longer than the weighing.
Does the quarterly return come out ready to send?
Quarterly EA return generation is a one-click CSV export in a configurable EA-specified column layout, ready to submit without manual reformatting. It is built from the notes already on your register, so the figures are whatever the yard recorded during the quarter, which is why the dashboard is worth looking at before the quarter closes.
Does Skiplog guarantee that our ATF is compliant?
No. Skiplog is built to help you meet the record-keeping requirements. Whether a record stands up depends on the accuracy of what the yard enters, on the permit and the technical competence held on site, and on rules that can change outside the product.
How do the weighbridge and the office sign in?
People sign in with an email address and a password. Accounts can be added for the people on your site, and each note names who wrote it, so the weighbridge and the office are not sharing one login. There is a page in this section on logins for multiple people in one yard.
What happens to the records once they are written?
Records are kept while the account is open, because waste records have to span quarters and inspections. A transfer note you remove comes off your register and your returns but stays on file for the two years the regulations require. A lapsed trial does not lock the records away: they stay readable and exportable. Deleting the account removes it all at once.
What is tracked for carriers who take loads off site?
Carrier, broker and dealer registrations are tracked on a dashboard with their expiry dates, with email alerts built for anything expiring within 30 days. There is a page in this section on checking a carrier's registration before you let a load tip.