SFST Report – Unofficial Tool

Review by eFreeware

The most distinctive thing about SFST Report is what it is not. It is not a government product, and the developer, Bonsaisoft, says so plainly: this is an independent tool for law enforcement officers who need to document standardized field sobriety tests and turn those notes into a DUI report. That framing matters, because it tells you the app is meant to sit alongside official procedure rather than replace any part of it.

The app is built around the paperwork side of impaired driving enforcement. It records observations, test results and driver and vehicle details, then assembles them into a report that can be exported by email. It is free to download with a trial, and the full feature set sits behind a Pro subscription at $29.99 a year or $4.99 a month.

So the audience is narrow and specific: officers who run field sobriety tests and have to write them up, plus the agencies that equip them. If your work involves traffic stops and DUI incidents, the appeal is obvious. If it does not, there is little here for you.

Documenting the stop from first observation onward

The app starts where a DUI case usually starts, with the vehicle in motion. There is a section for those observations, which is the kind of detail that tends to matter later when a report is read by someone who was not there. From there it moves to the driver and vehicle: name, license, plate, make and model, and similar identifying fields.

Rather than typing all of that in, the app can scan a driver license and capture the information automatically. It also handles California registration barcodes, pulling the VIN, plate, make, model and year. The recent update added VIN and registration scanning more broadly, along with new fields for registration and insurance details, so the vehicle side of a report is no longer just a plate number and a guess at the make.

There is also a field for preliminary breath test results, which slots into the same record as everything else. What I appreciate about this structure is that it mirrors the order of a stop rather than the order of a form, so an officer is not hunting for where a detail belongs while the incident is still unfolding.

The test notes themselves

The core of the app is the note-taking for the standard tests. It covers Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus, Walk and Turn, and One Leg Stand, which are the three most officers would recognize from NHTSA training. It also includes Lack of Convergence and Finger to Nose, which are less commonly documented but useful to have in the same place.

According to the developer, the tool follows NHTSA's publicly available SFST procedures, and officers in the United States and Canada gave direct feedback during its development. That second point is the one I would weigh most, because a tool like this lives or dies on whether it matches how officers actually work through a test, not on how complete a feature list looks.

Each of these tests gets its own notes area rather than a single free-text box. The practical effect is a report where the structure is already there and the officer fills in what happened, which is a very different job from writing a narrative from scratch at the end of a shift.

Turning notes into something you can send

Once the record is complete, the app generates a report, lets you preview it, and exports it by email. The phrase the developer uses is court-ready, which is a claim about fitness for a legal audience rather than a guarantee about any particular case. I would treat it as a description of the format and completeness of the output, not as legal advice.

One detail stands out: after export, the app deletes the data. For an officer carrying a phone that also holds personal photos and messages, that is a sensible design choice.

The workflow, then, is short: capture, review, send, clear. That is a tidy loop for someone who needs a report out the door before the next call comes in.

What you need before the first report

The download is free, and a trial lets you work with the app before committing. To reach the full feature set you upgrade to Pro, which runs $29.99 a year with a seven-day free trial, or $4.99 a month with a three-day trial. The subscription renews automatically unless it is canceled at least 24 hours before the renewal date, and any unused part of a free trial is forfeited once you buy a subscription.

Its data-entry shortcuts lean on scanning: license scanning and California registration barcode scanning both depend on being able to point a device at a document. Where a barcode is not available or a state's registration format differs, the manual fields are still there to type into.

The app does not require an account, a desktop companion or a connection to a records system.

Where the subscription and the scope sit

Two things shape whether this is worth paying for. The first is the subscription itself. This is not a one-time purchase, and for an officer who uses it every shift the annual price works out to a modest per-month figure, while the monthly option suits someone who wants to try it across a few weeks of real use. The trial periods give you a way to judge that before committing.

The second is scope. The app is a documentation tool built on NHTSA procedures. No government agency runs it or backs it. Whether that matters depends on your department: some agencies will be comfortable with an independent tool that keeps data local, and others will have their own reporting systems that this would sit beside rather than replace.

The install base is small, with more than 10,000 installs and a 4.2 average from a few dozen ratings, which is what I would expect for a professional niche app rather than a consumer one. The developer also states that updates arrive regularly, and the recent changes, which added scanning and new registration and insurance fields, back that up.

A tool for officers who write DUI reports

The fit here is clear. If your job involves field sobriety tests and the reports that follow, and you want those notes captured in a structured way on the device in your pocket, this app is designed precisely for that. The license and registration scanning, the test-by-test notes and the email export all point at the same user: someone standing at the roadside who needs the record built as the stop happens.

It also suits officers who value keeping that material local. Data stays on the device, the report leaves by email, and the app clears the record afterward.

Where it will not fit is outside that world. This is a reporting aid for impaired driving enforcement, and its value depends on you running the tests it documents. Anyone else will find a well-organized form that has nothing to do with their day.

A focused pick for roadside documentation

SFST Report does one job and does it in a way that matches how a DUI stop actually unfolds: observations first, then the driver and vehicle, then the tests, then a report you can send. The NHTSA basis and the officer feedback behind it are the right foundations for a tool like this.

The costs are straightforward. The full feature set needs a Pro subscription, the app is independent of any agency, and its scanning shortcuts depend on documents you can point a camera at. None of that is hidden, and the trials let you judge the fit before paying.

My recommendation is for working officers who document field sobriety tests and want a faster, more consistent route from stop to report. Download it, run a few reports through the trial, and decide from there whether the subscription fits your shift.

What's new in version 1.11

- Vehicle VIN and registration scanning for faster data entry - New fields to record vehicle registration and insurance information - New app logo