How to import a paper logbook without losing a weekend

The reason most pilots never digitize their logbook is that they assume every single line must be re-typed. It doesn't. The FAA cares that your record is accurate and that endorsements are preserved — not that every flight from 2011 has its own database row.

Step 1: Decide your cutover date

Pick a date — usually your last flight review or the start of the current year. Everything after it gets entered flight-by-flight. Everything before it can be carried forward as summary totals, exactly like the "amount forwarded" row at the top of every paper page.

Step 2: Carry forward totals, not history

• One summary entry per category: total time, PIC, dual, cross-country, night, instrument, landings.
• Keep the paper book — it remains your legal record for the summarized period.
• If a checkride or insurance audit needs detail from 2014, the paper page is still the source document.

Step 3: Enter the recent window flight-by-flight

Recent flights are the ones that matter for currency math — the last 90 days of landings, the last 6 months of approaches, the last 24 months for the flight review. Enter those individually so the currency engine has real data to work with.

Step 4: Verify against the paper totals

Sum the digital entries plus the carried-forward row and compare against your paper book's running totals. If they disagree, the error is almost always a transposed decimal — 1.2 entered as 2.1 — or a missed line at a page boundary.

What about endorsements?

Photograph every endorsement page. Endorsements don't expire when you go digital, but you'll be asked for them at every checkride and rental checkout for the rest of your flying life. Store the photos with your digital logbook so they're one search away.