Know when a batch will be ready — and whether it hit target.

Start it as air or kiln, get a duration estimate from board thickness and method, and enter what the meter reads when it's done — right next to the number you were aiming for. No sensor. Works offline, like the rest of the app.

Start free See pricing

5 packs a month, no card required · Free forever

inventory.sawmillsmart.com/drying
SawmillSmart Inventory — active drying batches by kiln and shed, on a phone — desktop
SawmillSmart Inventory — active drying batches by kiln and shed, on a phone
Batch running, grouped by kiln or shed — phone
Step 1

Batch running, by kiln or shed

Start a batch as air-drying or kiln, pick where it's sitting — every batch running right now sits in one queue, grouped by kiln or shed.

Action: Start a batch as air-drying or kiln, pick where it's sitting — the app already knows air goes to a shed and kiln to a kiln, so the location list is never the wrong kind.

Result: Every batch running right now sits in one queue, grouped by kiln or shed, with the target moisture next to it.

inventory.sawmillsmart.com/packs
Finished batch, target vs actual moisture — desktop
Step 2

Finished — target next to actual

When a batch comes out, the measured moisture goes in next to the target it started with — the shrinkage is worked out automatically.

Action: When a batch comes out, you type in the moisture you measured. The target it went in with is shown right there for comparison.

Result: The pack carries its final moisture from then on — dried packs show it directly on their card — and the shrinkage is computed from the drop, not re-entered.

What this removes.

01

Chalk on the kiln door

Was: a batch number and a date chalked on the kiln door or pinned to a wall calendar, remembered — or not — by whoever loaded it last. Now: every batch, air or kiln, sits in one queue grouped by location, so anyone can see what's running without walking out to check.

02

Whoever's done this the longest

Was: how long a batch takes is whatever the most experienced hand in the yard remembers for that species and thickness, with no record of what was assumed versus what happened. Now: thickness and method go in, an expected day range comes out — not locked in one person's memory.

03

Nobody checks it against the target

Was: a batch comes out, someone eyeballs it or scribbles a moisture reading on a slip that never makes it back to what the order actually needed. Now: the target set on day one and the moisture measured at finish sit on the same record, permanently, side by side.

What's recorded, where it's visible, what exports.

Method, moisture, and shrinkage tracked per batch — one queue for everything currently running.

inventory.sawmillsmart.com/drying
SawmillSmart Inventory — active drying batches by kiln and shed, on a phone — desktop
SawmillSmart Inventory — active drying batches by kiln and shed, on a phone

Recorded per batch

Method, location, target moisture %, timestamps, and the shrinkage % worked out from the moisture drop.

One run per pack

A pack can't be sent into drying twice at once — starting a second batch on an already-drying pack is refused.

Visible everywhere

One queue grouped by kiln or shed, plus this month's completions — on the phone and the web, at the same time.

See it on a working mill.

Free doesn't expire. If you'd rather look before you start your first batch, every new account opens on a guided tour through a working demo mill, on real screens, with real (demo) data — including a kiln and a shed already mid-run. Leave it whenever you're ready to switch to your own.

Start free

What drying tracking doesn't do — and why we don't pretend it does.

We don't measure moisture for you.

There's no sensor in the kiln and no probe reading the stack. The number is whatever your own moisture meter says — you type it in, once optionally at the start, always at the finish. Any countdown you see tracks time against a planned finish date, not a live reading of how dry the wood actually is.

We don't pause a drying run.

A batch is running, finished, or aborted back to green if it was started by mistake. There's no half-finished state — abort undoes the start, it doesn't stop a batch partway through and leave it hanging.

The duration estimate isn't tuned to your mill.

It only knows board thickness and method — no species, no memory of how your own kiln has actually run before. Treat the range it gives you as a starting point for scheduling a kiln, not a promise for this specific batch.

After drying batches, here's what's next.

Drying batch questions

Do I need a moisture meter to use this?

For finishing a batch, yes — you enter what your meter reads, because the app doesn't measure moisture itself. At the start it's optional: give it a starting reading if you have one, skip it if you don't. Either way, the target you set stays on the record so it's there to compare against later.

Can I run air-drying and kiln batches at the same time?

Yes. Each batch is tied to one pack and one location — a shed or a kiln — so you can run as many at once as you have space for. They all show up in one queue, grouped by location.

What if I started drying the wrong pack, or in the wrong kiln?

Abort it. The pack goes straight back to green — nothing is marked dry that wasn't — and you start a corrected batch. There's no half-finished state to untangle.

How does the duration estimate work?

You give it board thickness and method — air or kiln, kiln runs roughly ten times faster in the estimate — and it returns a day range. It doesn't know your species or your kiln's own history yet, and if you skip a starting moisture it assumes green wood, so treat the range as a planning figure, not a schedule.

Does it work out how much volume I lose to shrinkage?

If the batch went in with a starting moisture on record, yes — the app works out the volume shrinkage from the drop and adjusts what the pack shows as available, automatically, the moment you finish the batch.

Start your next drying batch in under a minute.

Free forever. No card. No contract.

See full workflow → · Pricing → · Back to overview →

Built in Europe
EU data residency · GDPR
iOS via PWA · Android · Web
25 languages