Mariner's Desk HQ User Manual

Getting started

Four steps get a new company to a working fleet view.

1. Create the company. Sign up, confirm your email, and create the company. You become its first admin.
2. Add your vessels. Go to Vessels and add each ship with its details and minimum crewing. You can add equipment and maintenance jobs now or later.
3. Set your requirements. Go to Compliance and either load the starter STCW template or set the requirements for each rank yourself. The template only fills gaps. It never overwrites what you've already set.
4. Add crew and invite them to link. Add each person under Crew, then send the invite. They enter your joining code in Mariner's Desk.

Invite your other shore staff from Settings, under HQ users and logins. Give each person the role that matches their job (see the roles table in section 18).

Signing in and pending invites

How people get into HQ, and what happens when they're invited to a second company.

Signing in

Use your email and password. If you forget your password, choose Forgot password? on the sign-in screen, enter your email, and then enter the 8-digit code from the email along with a new password. Only the newest code works. The code expires after 24 hours.

Invites to other companies

A person can belong to more than one company. When someone has an invite waiting, a banner shows it when they sign in. They can accept or decline it.

Shared computers

Each browser tab keeps its own sign-in. Signing in as someone else in one tab doesn't change the others. If you're on a shared computer, sign out when you're done, and close the browser window.

Dashboard

What needs your attention today, in one screen.

• Critical issues. Expired certificates, manning gaps, sea-service records waiting for sign-off, and leave requests waiting on your decision. Each one links to the right screen.
• Today's actions. A short list of what can be done right now.
• Certificate compliance. The share of mandatory certificates across the fleet that are currently valid. This is a certificate measure only, and it doesn't cover everything about readiness.
• Recent activity. The latest actions across the company. Each entry links to where it happened.

Crew

Everyone on your books, linked or not.

Adding crew

Add a person one at a time with + Add employee, or import a CSV. The import takes name, email, rank, department and vessel as columns. Each person also gets an employee number field, which you can use for your own payroll or ID references.

Inviting to link

Open a crew member and choose Invite. The app emails them a joining code. Once they've entered it in Mariner's Desk, the link is active. You'll see their status change from invited to linked on the crew list.

Sea-time records for people who don't use the app

Not every crew member will have Mariner's Desk. For them, HQ lets you enter sea-service records directly. These records are held by the company, so they're kept separate from anything the seafarer has declared themselves.

When a seafarer deletes their account

If a seafarer deletes their own account, their crew record stays, marked as account deleted. Rest-hours records and sea-service sign-offs that your company has countersigned are kept, and still show in the company's records under the person's name. Those records were confirmed by your company and remain part of your history.

Certificates and proposals

How certificates get onto a record, and why changes go through the seafarer.

Proposing a certificate

1. Open the crew member's profile and choose Propose.
2. Enter the certificate details, and attach the scan if you have one.
3. Submit. The proposal goes to the seafarer, and it appears as pending on your side.

You can propose a new certificate, or an edit to one the seafarer already has. Both go through the same route.

Importing scans in bulk

From the Certificates screen, you can scan a batch of photos or PDFs. The app suggests a type, number and dates for each one. Check every suggestion before you send anything, because the reading is a guess, and a wrong number on a proposal creates work for the seafarer.

Vessel certificates and documents

Vessel certificates and class documents can be stored against the vessel. Use the vessel's own screen to upload and find them.

Compliance and requirements

Who holds what, how close it is to expiry, and what your policy says they need.

The matrix

The matrix shows, for every crew member, which certificates they hold and how close each one is to expiry. It's read-only. Use it to see the whole company at a glance, then open a person to act.

Requirements

Requirements set what your company needs per rank. Each certificate type is marked Mandatory, Recommended or Not required. Changes here affect the compliance figures and the critical issues on the dashboard straight away.

The starter STCW template fills in sensible defaults for standard ranks. It only fills gaps, and it never overwrites a setting you've already made, so it's safe to run more than once.

Training

Training requirements go beyond the STCW minimum. Your company can define its own courses, and record each seafarer's completions against them. A seafarer's own app shows the same requirements to them.

Vessels

Everything specific to one ship, in one place.

Vessel details and minimum crewing

Each vessel has its details (name, flag, type and so on) and a minimum crewing table, which sets how many people of each rank the vessel needs. Gaps against that table appear on the dashboard and on the roster, with a Fill gap action.

Equipment and running hours

Register each piece of equipment with its criticality. Equipment can track running hours as well as calendar time, so maintenance can be scheduled either way. Each item keeps a history of completed work.

Defects, inventory and surveys

• Defects. A register of open and closed defects, with who reported and who closed each one.
• Inventory. Spares and consumables, with reorder thresholds. Parts used on a job are taken from here.
• Class and surveys. Class conditions, dispensations, and survey or drydock events, each with dates and status.

Planned maintenance

Jobs, templates and the fleet-wide view. Built to run the work, not just record it.

Creating a job

A job belongs to a piece of equipment and can be one-off or recurring. A recurring job repeats by calendar date, by running hours, or whichever comes first. Each job can have a checklist, so the person doing it works through the same steps every time.

Job templates

If the same job applies to several ships, build it once as a template and use it across vessels. Each vessel's jobs are its own once they've been created from a template.

Assigning work

You can assign a job in two ways:

• To a person. The job appears in that person's list in Mariner's Desk, and they get a reminder.
• To a rank. Every linked crew member holding that rank on that vessel can see the job and complete it. This suits jobs that go with the role rather than the person, which is most of them, since crew change.

Any linked crew member holding that rank can claim a rank-assigned job. A claim shows the others that someone is on it. It's a signal, not a lock. If the person who claimed it can't get to it, anyone else with the rank can take over.

Completing a job

Completion asks for a comment, the parts used from inventory, and optionally a photo as evidence. The completion is recorded against a version of the job, so two people completing it at the same time can't both count. Completion is added to the job's history.

The fleet view

The maintenance dashboard shows overdue and upcoming jobs across all vessels in one list, so you can see the whole fleet's workload and not just one ship at a time.

Roster

Assignments, cover, manning gaps and the rotation view, all on one schedule.

Assignments

Assign a crew member to a vessel with a start date. Leave the end date blank for an ongoing assignment. Before you save, the app checks for two things:

• Overlaps. The same person can't be on two vessels over overlapping dates. The database enforces this, not just the screen.
• Certificates. If the person doesn't hold the certificates the rank needs, you'll see a warning. You can override it, and the override is logged.

Views

• Coverage. Who is covering each rank on each vessel.
• Gaps. Where a vessel is short, and when the next joiner is due. Gap detection looks ahead, so a gap that a scheduled joiner will fill shows differently.
• Per crew member. One person's assignments and leave.
• Timeline. The whole fleet on one calendar.
• Rotation and relief. Every assignment that ends within the next 60 days, across the whole fleet. This is the view to use when planning sign-offs and joiners.

Leave and the roster

Approved leave goes onto the roster automatically. Section 13 covers how leave is approved.

Sea service

Your company's sign-off on a seafarer's voyages.

A voyage has two confirmations: the seafarer's declaration, and your company's sign-off. A voyage counts as fully verified only when both are in. A voyage with only one shows as waiting, so nobody can tell from the list that it's complete when it isn't.

1. Open Sea service and filter for voyages awaiting sign-off.
2. Check the vessel, dates and rank against your own records.
3. Sign off the voyage. The seafarer's record updates straight away.

Sea-time records you enter for crew who don't use the app are kept on the company side. See section 5.

Rest hours

The seafarer's rest-hours records, and your company's countersignature.

Seafarers record their rest and work hours in Mariner's Desk, and the app checks each day against the STCW rules. When a record is complete, it goes to HQ for countersigning.

1. Open Rest hours. Records waiting for countersigning are listed first.
2. Review the periods and any issues the seafarer's app flagged.
3. Countersign, with a comment if you need to explain an exception. The record is then marked as countersigned, with your name and role.

Countersigned records are kept even if the seafarer later deletes their account. They remain under the person's name, marked as account deleted.

Leave requests

How leave gets requested, approved and put on the roster.

Seafarers request leave in Mariner's Desk. Each request has a type (Annual, Sick, Compassionate, Unpaid or Other), dates, and an optional reason. Your company decides how requests are approved, in Settings, under leave approval routing.

A rejection at either stage ends the request. Approved leave appears on the roster and in the seafarer's own app, with no separate step.

Notifications and email

What gets sent, to whom, and how to turn it on.

• Leave requests and decisions, to the people who need to act or be told.
• Certificate proposals and responses, to the seafarer and the proposing staff member.
• Invites and joining codes, by email, when you invite someone.
• Expiry reminders, for certificates expiring within 90 days.

Most of these also go out as push notifications to people who have turned them on. Email comes from the Mariner's Desk address, so check your spam folder if a message doesn't arrive.

Audit log

A permanent record of what happened, who did it, and when.

Every significant action in HQ is recorded in the audit log: who did it, what they changed, and when. Entries can't be edited or deleted, and nobody can write an entry in another person's name. This is what you'd show an inspector or an auditor.

The log includes the reason for any override, such as a roster clash you approved, and the reason for any rejection.

Use the audit log to answer the questions that come up after the fact: who changed a requirement, who approved a leave request, when a certificate was proposed.

Reports, exports and backups

Getting your data out, for audits, for your own files, and for disaster recovery.

Settings

Company details, people and how the app behaves for your company.

The joining code

The joining code connects a seafarer's app to your company. Anyone who has the code can use it to link, so share it only with the people it's meant for.

Roles and permissions

Masters and Chief Engineers are limited to their own vessel. Everyone else sees the whole fleet.

Give people the lowest role that lets them do their job.

Common tasks

The jobs your office will do most, step by step.

Inviting a new crew member

1. Add them under Crew, with name, rank, department, vessel and email.
2. Choose Invite. They receive an email with your joining code.
3. They sign up in Mariner's Desk, enter the code in Settings under Company link, and the link is active.

Setting up leave approval

1. Go to Settings and find leave approval routing.
2. Choose the mode that matches how your company works.
3. Approved leave updates the roster automatically from then on.

Planning a sign-off

1. Open the rotation and relief view for the next 60 days.
2. Check which assignments end, and whether the replacement is in place.
3. Add the replacement's assignment, then check the gap warnings on the vessel.

Handling a certificate that's about to expire

1. Check the dashboard's critical issues, or the matrix filtered to expiring certificates.
2. Open the crew member and propose the renewed certificate.
3. The seafarer accepts it, and the old certificate is replaced in their record.

Good practice

A few habits that keep HQ accurate and your company protected.

• Keep requirements current. The compliance figures are only as good as the policy behind them.
• Check scans before you propose. A wrong number costs the seafarer a correction.
• Use the rank for recurring work. It keeps the job moving when crew change.
• Review the audit log monthly. It's quick, and it catches mistakes early.
• Back up regularly. Keep a full company backup outside the app.
• Remove people you no longer employ. Remove their HQ logins and crew links as part of leaving. The app won't let you remove the last admin, so keep at least two.