A&P Side Work, Done Right: Work Orders, Sign-offs, and Getting Paid
Plenty of A&Ps do side work: an annual for a hangar neighbor, a squawk list for a flying club, condition inspections on weekends. The work is professional. The paperwork usually is not: a carbon-copy work order pad, a text-message quote, an invoice typed in Word, and a logbook entry signed over a coffee-stained checklist.
That gap matters for two reasons: liability and money.
The liability side: your signature is your certificate
When you sign a return to service, the record behind that signature is what protects you. A proper record with the discrepancy, corrective action, parts used, date, aircraft time, and your certificate number is your defense years later. A paper pad in a toolbox drawer is not a retention system, and the burden lands on the individual mechanic, not a repair station's manual.
Electronic records also raise the bar: an e-signature that meets AC 120-78B (attributable, deliberate, tamper-evident) produces a record that holds up in ways a photocopied form never will.
The money side: chasing checks is unpaid labor
Independent mechanics routinely eat two costs: hours never written down, and invoices paid late or never. A workflow where the work order becomes the invoice, and the invoice carries a payment link, closes both holes. Send the link, customer pays by card, money lands. No more "the check is in the hangar."
What to look for in A&P work order software
- Work orders with discrepancy tracking and print-ready layouts you would hand an IA
- FAA-compliant e-signatures with your cert number embedded
- Aircraft profiles with tail number, make/model/serial, and engine info, tied to job history
- Customer records so you know who owns what and what you did last year
- Invoicing with card payment built in, not bolted on
- Pricing an individual can justify, including a free tier to start
Built for exactly this: Joker Solo
Joker Solo is Joker Aviation's platform for independent A&Ps. It runs the same FAA-compliant signature engine as our Orion repair station software, sized for one mechanic. The free tier covers one customer, one aircraft, and five work orders a month with tamper-evident sign-offs, forever. Starter ($19.99/mo) removes caps and adds invoicing with a Stripe customer-pay page. Pro adds parts inventory, quotes, the AI squawk-sheet parser, and up to three A&Ps.