Navigating the app

The sidebar, the shop dashboard, and where each part of the app lives.

Every page shares the same frame: the sidebar down the left side with your railroad's name at the top, and across the top of the page a light/dark theme switch and a notification bell. Your own name and role sit at the bottom of the sidebar with Sign out.

On a phone the sidebar folds away behind a menu button at the top left; tap it to open the menu and tap outside it to close. Wide tables scroll sideways inside their card, and the busiest ones — Compliance Due, FRA filings, work order lines — turn each row into a card so nothing is cut off.

The sidebar

The sidebar is grouped by what you are doing rather than alphabetically. It only lists the areas your role can open, so two people at the same railroad may see slightly different menus. What general members can open is set by an administrator — see Settings & permissions.

Dashboard — the shop overview, described below.

Calendar — every date the railroad is working to on one month, each kind in its own colour, plus the work-day schedule. See Calendar & work days.

My Career — your own service record, hours, and certifications, across every railroad you work with. See My Career.

Compliance

• Compliance Due — every tracked inspection and test obligation across the fleet, with what is overdue, due soon, and current. See The compliance dashboard.
• Locomotives — the fleet roster. See Locomotives.
• Inspections & Tests — every filed inspection, test, repair, and alteration. See Recording inspections & tests.
• Approval Inbox — what is waiting for your signature, what you submitted that someone else still has to sign, and, for administrators and purchase approvers, requisitions waiting on a decision. See Approvals & signatures.
• Waivers — waivers and special approvals and their filing deadlines. See Waivers and special approvals.
• Regulations — the 49 CFR reader. See Regulations library.
• Documentation — opens this documentation in a new tab.
• Support — open a ticket with the RailCompliant team. See Getting help.
• Import Data and Export Data — bulk load and CSV export. See Importing and exporting.

Maintenance

• Work Orders, Parts, Requisitions, Vendors, and Labor. See Work orders, Parts inventory, Requisitions & vendors, and Labor and volunteer hours.

Operations

• Excursions & Runs, Rolling Stock, Fuel, and Stores. See Excursions, Rolling stock, Fuel and mileage, and Consumable stores.

Admin

• Form Templates — the forms inspections are filed on. See Form templates.
• Crew — the roster, qualifications, and account access. See Crew and qualifications.
• Cost Center — everything the railroad spent this fiscal year. See Cost Center.
• Settings — roles and permissions, the fiscal year, and receiving rules. See Settings & permissions.
• Billing — the subscription and ownership. See Billing.

Out of the box the Admin group is for administrators only: general members see it only if an administrator has opened Form Templates, Crew, or the Cost Center to them. Settings and Billing are always administrator-only. On pages a person can view but not change, the New, Edit, and Delete buttons simply do not appear; if they follow a link to something their role cannot open, the page says which area it is and that an administrator decides.

If your login belongs to more than one railroad, click your railroad's name at the top of the sidebar to switch between them.

The dashboard

The dashboard is headed Shop Overview and opens on your railroad's name. Two buttons sit in the header — Compliance, which jumps to the due board, and New work order.

Across the top are stat cards, each of which is a link:

• Fleet — locomotives on the roster.
• Compliance overdue — with a due-soon count underneath.
• Open work orders — with a note of how many are high or urgent.
• Awaiting sign-off — approvals sitting in your inbox.
• Fleet compliance — the percentage of tracked intervals that are current.

Below that, Shop activity shows hours, volunteer hours with their in-kind value, and paid labor over the last 30 days, with a chart of hours for each of the last eight weeks and a link to the full labor log. Needs attention lists the obligations that are overdue or coming due, with a link to the work order where one is already open; when there is nothing to do it says so plainly rather than showing an empty table. Fleet status gives one row per locomotive with its worst interval status, Open work orders lists what is in progress, and Recent activity shows the most recent entries from the record history — who did what, and when.

The notification bell

The bell at the top right shows unread notifications: approvals routed to you, obligations coming due, qualification expiries, waiver deadlines, requisitions, and billing notices. Click through to mark items read or to open the record. What arrives by email as well as in the app is up to you — see Notifications.

Filling in a form

Each field says what's wrong with it as you go: leave a field and, if something's off, a short message appears under it in red — a number that isn't one, hours over 24, a password that's too short, a confirmation that doesn't match. Fix it and the message goes as you type. If you press save with a problem still there, nothing is sent and the first field that needs attention is selected for you.

When a save doesn't go through

If RailCompliant can't save a form — something your role isn't allowed to change, a record someone else has just submitted, or a problem on our side — you stay on the form with everything you typed, and a message in the bottom corner says what happened. Fix what it says, or dismiss it with ×, and save again. A save that was turned down changes nothing. If the message says something went wrong on our side, or that RailCompliant didn't answer, open the record to check what was saved before you try again.

Fields your role can see but not change, such as Certified by on an inspection for members without certifying authority, are shown greyed out. Buttons and forms for things your role can only view, such as logging hours on a work order when your railroad has made work orders view-only for your role, aren't shown at all.