The day should write its own report.

Composed, not compiled

A daily report is a summary of things that were already recorded somewhere: rounds completed, jobs closed, bunkers taken, hours run, what was found and what was fixed. On most ships each of those lives in a different book, and somebody spends part of the evening copying between them.

If the rounds, the jobs, the bunkers and the logbook are one record rather than four, the report is a view of that record. It does not need writing. It needs reading and signing.

It is also then impossible for the report to disagree with the ship, which is a quiet but real class of problem: the noon report says one thing, the logbook says another, and both are signed.

What shore should read it for

One number on it is routinely misread, and getting this wrong does real damage: the number of findings raised.

A fleet raising more findings is a fleet that is looking. A vessel that reports nothing for a quarter is not a good vessel; she is a vessel where nobody is writing anything down. Software that lets a manager read a rising findings count as bad news will, within two quarters, have taught every master aboard to stop raising them — and the fleet will look immaculate right up until it isn't.