Documentation
How TrailsIQ actually works
The whole manual, open to anybody. No account needed to read it — and it is the same documentation you get inside the app, next to the screen it describes.
51 articles
Find what you need
Written for the person doing the job — a trail crew lead, a volunteer coordinator, a builder pricing a bid — rather than for somebody evaluating software.
Getting started
Getting started — your account, your workspace, and your first week
Make an account, understand what gets created with it, and work through the six steps that turn an empty workspace into one your crew can use.
Reading your Dashboard
The four numbers at the top of the Dashboard, the Trail Health table beneath them and the column beside it — what each column counts, why a trail can read as closed without anybody closing it, and how to find the one trail that needs you today.
Field app
TrailsIQ Field App — install, login, and daily use
The crew mobile app — install on iOS / Android / PWA, log in with your TrailsIQ credentials, flip trail + lift conditions, file maintenance items with photos, drop POIs, record GPS traces, and rely on the offline queue to sync when signal comes back.
Offline downloads — take a network with you
Download a trail system to your phone before a trip with no signal — trails, tasks, photos, infrastructure, points of interest and terrain shading — plus what cannot be downloaded and why, how to keep a download current, and how to check one.
Trails
How to create a network
Networks group your trails geographically. This article walks through creating one, every setting on the form, attaching trails, using areas for sub-groupings, editing conditions, and the delete flow.
How to create a trail
Three ways to add a trail to TrailsIQ — import a GPX / KML / GeoJSON file, plan one from the dashboard, or record it in the field — plus a full reference to every setting on the trail edit page.
Import trails — GPX, KML, GeoJSON, and bulk uploads
Bulk-import trails from GPX, KML, or GeoJSON — up to 25 files at once, pre-tagged with difficulty / primary use / networks. Covers what gets set automatically, validation errors, reimporting geometry, and exporting planner recordings into real trails.
Sharing one trail with a builder
Lend a single trail to a contractor without giving them the rest of your workspace. They see it read-only and can work its maintenance; it stays yours, and you can withdraw it at any time.
Trail Planner — record, draw, or find a sustainable line
Plan trail before you build it: record a line in the field, draw it on the dashboard, or let the route finder search the hillside for you. Covers activity profiles, the half rule, the terrain analysis, build-cost estimates, editing and comparing options, walking a line more than once, public proposal pages, and exporting a finished plan into your live network.
Clients and the job pipeline — who the work is for, and where it has got to
For teams who build trail for other people: keep a client record, attach jobs to it, and track each job from lead through quoted, building and handed over. Stage and archived are separate axes, and a client carrying jobs cannot be deleted.
Contracts for won jobs
A contract assembled from the job — parties, trails, price and payment schedule — with your own terms under it, signed by you and then by the client from a link with no account. Frozen and fingerprinted at signing, downloadable as a PDF by both sides, and workable end to end from the field app.
Handing a job to another organization
One code hands a whole job — every planned trail, its branches, waypoints, notes and photos — to another organization as their own copy in their own TrailsIQ. Planned trails only: your maintenance items, your costs and your client notes stay with you.
Inspecting trails
The tap-only trail inspection in the Field App, and what its wetness answer does: a recent walk outranks the forecast in the trail-status engine, fading out over about ten days when it reads wetter and four when it reads drier.
Maintenance
How to create a maintenance item
File maintenance items from the field app, a climbing route, or a public report. Covers every field on the form, the approve / reject moderation flow for anonymous reports, how open items age visually on the map, and how filtering + export works.
Discussions
The conversation on a maintenance item, a structure or a planned trail: where to find one, who can add and remove messages, how a partner organization is identified, what being named with @ changes, how to silence one, and what happens to a message typed with no signal.
Checklists
The work that comes round every year, written down once: where each task needs doing (once, every trail, every structure, or the places you pick), starting a fresh copy each season, checking things off, what flagging a line files for you, how it behaves with no signal, using one for a machine service, and repeating one on a schedule.
Projects and work planning
Group maintenance items AND planned trails into projects so you can track a "spring rehab" or a "ridge expansion" as one thing — one page with every attached issue, the trails on a map, rolled-up hours, a combined build estimate that charges machine mobilization once, and a single public proposal link for the whole job.
Infrastructure
How to create and edit infrastructure
Structures — bridges, kiosks, signs, counters — are filed from the field app and edited from the dashboard slide panel. Covers all six default structure types, per-type attributes, the bridge materials calculator, inspection tracking, and the delete behavior.
Inspecting structures
The tap-only inspection wizard in the field app: one question per screen, a photo per question, what the answers add up to, when it offers to raise the work for you, how it behaves with no signal, and how to write your own questions for a structure type.
How to create and edit points of interest
POIs — viewpoints, campsites, water, trailheads, parking — are filed from the field app and edited from the dashboard slide panel. Covers the nine default POI types, per-type attributes, photos, trail linkage, why POIs are private, and the delete behavior.
Bridge materials calculator — a lumber list from a bridge record
Turn a bridge structure's recorded dimensions into deck boards, stringers and fasteners, exportable as a PDF for quotes and work orders — with the spacing and stock-length assumptions stated, and a clear line at the span where the answer becomes an engineer's job.
Trail counters — use data from the trail itself
Register your counting units, attach them to the network, trail or infrastructure they sit on, import readings by serial number, and read the numbers honestly — including what a counter can and cannot tell you before you quote it to a funder.
Lifts — chairs, gondolas, T-bars, and daily status
Add and manage lifts on TrailsIQ — from the seasonal status of the machine to the day-of "wind hold" flip that lift ops make from the top shack. Includes inspection cadence, map behavior, and the field-app quick-update sheet.
Daily reports
Daily report — day notes, timeline, and the public hub
Read, write and publish the daily report — the rolling narrative of what's happening across your trails and lifts. Covers day-note posts, the auto-generated event timeline, and how the public /hub/{slug} page pulls from the same data behind the visibility switches.
The annual report
One document for any period: volunteer hours, work done, days the trails were open, weather, inspections, events and spending, on a page and as a designed PDF ready to hand to a board.
Team
Members, roles & permissions — invite your team
Everything about getting your team into TrailsIQ — the four roles (Owner / Manager / Field worker / Volunteer), the full permission catalog, inviting people, the invitation email + accept flow, per-user overrides, multi-org membership, and removing members.
Work hours, expenses, and per-issue time logs
Log crew time and spend three ways — quick time logs on a maintenance issue, payroll work hours on the dashboard, and expenses for reimbursement. Covers the shared draft → submit → approve flow, mileage, category setup, month rollups, and PDF exports for payroll + finance.
Inventory — stock, assets, checkouts, and reservations
Manage the org's shared catalog of tools, lumber, and gear — consumable stock with per-location counts, assets with checkout / check-in, low-stock alerts, reservations against in-progress maintenance items, and a full field-app surface for the shelf and the trail.
Job costing — estimated against actual
Every project page compares its build estimate against the hours and expenses booked to it. Only approved work counts, anything unreviewed is called out separately, and hours are compared as hours because TrailsIQ does not know what anybody is paid.
Recording volunteer hours
Every way volunteer time can be recorded — team members on a task or a timesheet, a whole crew at once, outside groups, event signups and walk-ins, and TrailsIQ Go check-in — how they add up to one count, and the Volunteers page that lists everybody who has helped.
Maps
The TrailsIQ map
A base map we build ourselves, drawn for trail work rather than for driving: paths carry the weight, it comes offline with a download, and it is never rationed. How to switch an organization onto it, why coverage follows the trails, and what it deliberately does not do.
Map overlays — streams, wetlands, public land and property lines
The overlays that come from public agencies rather than from your own data: what each one answers, why property lines appear in some places and not others, and why a parcel boundary is not a survey.
Terrain analysis — slope, aspect, and contours
Three overlays generated from open elevation data around your trails: slope shading for steepness, aspect for which way the ground faces, and labeled contour lines. Where to switch them on, how to read them, why they stop at the edge of your network, and what to check when one paints nothing.
Settings
Workspace modules — showing only the sections your team uses
TrailsIQ serves teams who run trail networks and teams who build them. Pick which you are at signup and the menu matches; switch individual sections on and off afterwards in Settings. Switching one off hides it — it never deletes anything, and it is not a permission.
Plans and limits
Plans mostly limit how much you can have going at once rather than which features you get: everything your crew does is on every plan including the free one, and only a short list of planning overlays is held back. Archiving a finished project or client gives its slot straight back, and branches off a planned trail never count.
How to enable weather automation
Turn on the weather engine, pick a mode, and see where per-network recommendations show up on the dashboard and in the field app. Covers prerequisites, close signal, where your weather data comes from, which trails a network-level call is actually about, how a recent inspection outranks the forecast, and the twice-daily cron.
Email preferences
Every user picks which emails they want — public reports, weather condition changes, plan alerts, new team members, expense reminders. Defaults to opt-in; unchecking a toggle stops the stream immediately.
Public reports setup
Enable or disable TrailsIQ Go for your org, understand the trail-user flow, moderate the pending-review queue, and tune the alerts your managers get when a report lands.
Custom domain — your public pages on your own address
Serve your public pages from your own domain instead of a TrailsIQ address: a subdomain beside your existing site or your root domain as your real website, the DNS records to add, what pending means, and how to switch to a different domain without your pages going offline.
Bring your own Mapbox token
Skip the plan map-load cap by pasting your own Mapbox access token — your account absorbs the tiles and TrailsIQ stops counting.
Passkeys — confirm with your device instead of a password
Add your phone, laptop or security key to your TrailsIQ account so the handful of actions that ask you to confirm take a fingerprint rather than a typed password. Optional, reversible, and your password keeps working either way.
Your brand color
One color paints every page your visitors see — your public site, the daily report, shared trail pages, proposals and QR codes. The dashboard and the field app are deliberately not painted with it: the tools look the same in every workspace.
Website
Website builder — pages, blocks, and templates
Compose your org's public website in a block-based editor — home page, custom pages, shared header/footer, and the templates that render every news post and event. Includes theme, publishing, and vanity domain setup.
News — write, publish and show articles on your site
Write and publish news posts that render at /news/{slug} on your public site and feed the News grid block. Body is the same block canvas as the website builder, so cross-posts and rich sections are one drag away.
Events — signups, waivers, waitlists and reminders
Create events with per-event public pages, RSVP forms, waivers, waitlists, iCal feeds, and day-before push reminders. Includes recurring events, walk-in signups, and the pivot that pins open maintenance issues to volunteer workdays.
QR code builder — branded codes for signs and print
Generate styled QR codes for trailhead signs, junction posts, report forms and printed maps — dot and corner styles, colors, a center logo, and the error-correction level that decides whether a code with a logo on it survives being printed and weathered.
Files and uploads
Upload documents and images once, reuse them across your website as downloads, and manage them from one library under Settings.
Website templates, donations and forms
Switch your website between templates without losing a word, add starter pages, take donations through your own PayPal or Stripe and see who gave, and read what visitors send through your forms.
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Read it, then try it
The free plan is a real workspace, not a trial: your trails, your team and the mobile apps, with no card and no clock on it.
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