The quickest way to see what Plotstead does is to give it the one thing on your property that already has a deadline: the car. In New Zealand, type the plate and its WOF and rego come back with the dates on them; anywhere else, type the inspection and registration dates off the papers, which takes about as long. Everything else you add after that is the same idea with a pin on it.
Keep the help page open in another tab. It explains the whole app in plain words, and beside the words that need it there is a short clip of the app doing the thing, so drawing a run, hiding the pins, ticking a reminder off or printing the map is watched rather than read about.
1. Sign up, and confirm your email
app.plotstead.co.nz/register, an email address and a password. No card, and one property is free for as long as you like. An email arrives asking you to confirm the address; do that before the next step, because the plate lookup needs a confirmed account.
The browser is the best place to start. The Android app is on Google Play, the iPhone app is in TestFlight, the Windows app is in the Microsoft Store, and all of them sign in to the same account when you get to them.
2. Type your address
The welcome screen asks for it, and searches as you type. In New Zealand the boundary of your section arrives from LINZ and is drawn on an aerial photo of the place, so the first thing on the map is your land and there is nothing to trace. Anywhere else the map opens at your address, on a drawn map of the world, and you tap the boundary round the place yourself. Where that line comes from, if you are curious, and what it is and is not good for.
3. Add your car and look up the plate
Press Asset on the home screen. Set the type to Vehicle, type the number plate, and press Look up. The lookup reads New Zealand's register, so on a property anywhere else the button is not there and the two dates are yours to type.
What comes back: the make, model, year and VIN, the date it was first registered in New Zealand, and the current WOF and rego expiry dates. The name fills itself in, "2019 Toyota Hilux" or whatever it is, the two reminders are set to those dates, and the WOF reminder already knows how often your car needs one, including the change of interval in November 2026. The line under the plate says what it found: Found WOF to 14 Mar 2027, rego to 2 Dec 2026.
A lookup costs us money, so there are two on the free plan and ten a year on Plus. If the plate cannot be found, which happens with some trailers and the odd recent import, or the car is anywhere but New Zealand, the two dates are on the windscreen label and the registration papers, and typing them in takes as long as reading them.
4. Save
Both reminders are under Coming up, and on the home screen when they are close. Each one will tell you when it is due, and ticking it off moves it to the next date rather than ending it. If you would rather see them beside everything else in your life, the calendar can be subscribed to from your phone's own calendar app; it is under Settings.
Then the thing you would hate to lose the details of
The heat pump: photograph the nameplate and it is on the record with its model and serial. The water main: stand at the valve, drop a pin, and type the sentence you would say out loud about it, which is the whole idea in one story. The insurance renewal and the rates, against the property itself.
Nothing is required and nothing has to go on the map. A half-filled record is worth more than a perfect one you never made, so the forms suggest and never insist.
Two things worth knowing on day one
It works with no signal on the apps, and syncs when you are back in coverage. Photos are the exception: they wait on the phone until there is a connection. The browser version needs a connection throughout.
Your data comes back out as a spreadsheet or GeoJSON on every plan, so nothing you type today is a commitment to anything.
When something isn't obvious
The help page is the whole app explained, grouped by the part of it you are in: the basics, the map, money, sharing, and the things worth knowing. Nine of its sections carry a clip of the app doing exactly what the words say, each under twenty seconds, with the buttons named in the order they are pressed. Look for the play mark. The same page is inside the app, under Help, with a link to each clip.
If the answer isn't there, say so, and a person replies.
