Guide

Fourteen steps to never letting anything lapse again.

Certly is deliberately simple: you put your cards, certificates and examinations in once, and from then on Certly watches the expiry dates for you. This guide walks through the whole product step by step. Steps 1 to 3 are enough to get going — the rest is there for when you want more: less admin, a clearer picture, and your new starters, projects, subcontractors and budget covered too.

1/14Create an account

Go to gocertly.com/registreren and fill in your company name, your name, email address and (twice) a password. Your account is live straight away: you get 14 days free, no card details are needed, and you receive a welcome email with the first steps. Your company gets its own walled-off environment — only you and the colleagues you invite can get in.

Your first login starts the interactive tour automatically. It doesn't just show you round, it has you doing things: you add your first holder and document, get a sample weekly summary in your inbox, and take in the dashboard, the annual planner, the import page and the subcontractor portal along the way — the window travels with you. The tour is the quickest way to tick off steps 2 and 3 of this guide. Want to run it again later? Click Tour — bottom left in the sidebar, just above your own name.

Your dashboard then shows a short checklist: "Getting started with Certly". Four steps — a first holder, a document with an expiry date, inviting a colleague and checking your reminder schedule — with a progress counter ("2 of 4 completed") and a button to import your spreadsheet instead. The checklist stays put until all four steps are done, then disappears by itself. Want it gone sooner? Click Don't show again; that applies to you only, your colleagues keep their own checklist.

2/14Add holders

A holder is whoever (or whatever) a document belongs to: an employee (a groundworker with a CSCS card, say), a vehicle (an HGV with an MOT) or plant (machines, tools, lifting equipment, fire extinguishers — anything examined on an interval).

Getting your bearings first. The fixed sidebar on the left comes in three blocks: the day-to-day work at the top (Dashboard, Team & plant, Projects, Annual planner), then everything around your organisation (Onboarding, Clients, Subcontractors), and Manage at the bottom (Settings, Import). Next to Dashboard sits a red dot with the number of documents needing action. If a module isn't in your plan it carries a small Pro or Add-on label — you can still click through to see what it does. On a phone or a narrow laptop that same menu tucks behind the hamburger button, top left.

You add a holder from Team & plant → New holder. There's a quicker way too: the + Add button in the top right sits on every page and takes you straight to a new Employee, Vehicle or Plant record. Pick the type and fill in the name, registration or description.

Employee email address (optional) — fill this in and Certly can remind the worker directly (see step 7). That saves you the chasing.
Department or site (optional) — type a name and the department is created for you. Handy for filtering later if you run several gangs or sites.
Reminder language (optional) — English, Dutch, Polish or Romanian. The worker then gets their reminder emails and renewal link in their own language; yours stay in English.

3/14Put documents under each holder

Open a holder and click Add document. Pick the document type from the list — CSCS, SMSTS and SSSTS, Driver CPC (DQC), MOT and HGV annual test, LOLER thorough examinations, PUWER, PAT testing, IPAF, PASMA, first aid at work, Sentinel competence and PTS medical are all built in, and you can add your own types — then fill in the expiry date and, if you like, the certificate number and issue date. Upload a scan or photo and you always have it to hand — at the gate, or when an inspector asks.

Quicker: let Certly do the typing. Once you choose a file, the button ✨ Fill in details automatically appears. Certly reads the document type, number and dates off the photo or PDF and fills the form in for you. You check the fields and click save — nothing is ever stored without your say-so.

Driver CPC? Track the hours as well. On a Driver CPC (DQC) document the holder page grows an hours counter. The obligation isn't really a date but 35 hours of periodic training every 5 years, so you add each course with its date, name, hours and whether it was practical training, and get a progress bar: "21 of 35 hours". Only courses inside the current cycle count; older ones stay visible as history. Renew the DQC and the five-year window shifts along by itself. More on this in Driver CPC and DQC expiry.

Tachograph downloads are watched too. The legal download intervals are short — the driver card every 28 days, the vehicle unit every 90 days — so those get their own short reminder thresholds instead of the usual 90/60/30. Once you've downloaded, click ✓ Download done and Certly works out the next deadline. The intervals are set out in tachograph calibration and download intervals.

The same applies to anything examined on an interval: LOLER thorough examinations run to six or twelve months depending on the equipment, and Certly keeps both cycles for you.

4/14Fill it faster: spreadsheet or email-in

Been keeping expiry dates in a spreadsheet? Go to Import and upload the file. Certly recognises the columns of our own training matrix template automatically — Employee, Vehicle registration or Asset, the certificate or document type, the issue date and the expiry date — and shows you exactly what it found before anything is imported. Holders that don't exist yet are created for you. The extra columns Email, Department and Job role come across as well — that last one links your workers straight to the matching role profile (step 5).

Or just email the certificates in. Under Settings → Send in certificates by email you create your own Certly inbox address. Anything you (or a colleague, or the training provider) send or forward there is read by the AI and appears on your dashboard as a suggestion. You check it, pick the holder and document type, and process it — only then does a document appear or change. Ideal for the stream of cards that currently lands in your inbox.

5/14Record what each role must hold

Up to here Certly watches what you have put in. But at an audit the question is usually a different one: does everyone actually hold everything? A document that never existed never expires — so it shows up in no expiry calendar at all.

So go to Settings → Job profiles and create a profile: a name (HGV driver or scaffolder, say), the holder type, and then tick which document types are required. After that, link your workers to a profile — from the holder form, from the Job role column on import, or as you go.

From that moment you see two extra things:

On the holder page a checklist: each required document marked present or missing, with a button to add the missing one right away (the document type is already selected).
On the dashboard a Missing documents section across your whole organisation — so you don't have to click through worker by worker.

Creating a new worker now hands you a shopping list. What belongs with which trade is set out in the knowledge base: how long a CSCS card stays valid, when SMSTS and SSSTS need renewing, and the rules on forklift refresher training.

6/14Read the dashboard

The dashboard is your expiry calendar. Every document has a colour, worked out from the expiry date:

Expired — the date has passed: act now.
Action needed — expires within 30 days: book the renewal now.
Due soon — expires within 90 days: keep an eye on it.
Valid — more than 90 days to run: nothing to do.

Those four colours sit at the top as status cards: the number of documents per status, with what to do about it underneath ("Sort out now", "Plan the renewal", "View year planner"). The cards aren't counters to look at but buttons: click one and the rest of the dashboard filters with it. Click again to clear the filter.

Below the cards you get, in this order:

Next expiry dates — what's coming first, at a glance; exactly the list you start Monday with.
File overview — a ring showing how your documents split across the four statuses, with the number of holders and documents.
Expiry dates per month — a bar chart over the next six months, with a line pointing out your busiest month ("November is your busiest month: 9 documents"). Useful for spreading training out.
All documents — the full list, searchable and filterable by status, holder type, document type and department. If a repeat is already booked you'll see a blue Scheduled marker — so everyone knows it's in hand.

Tip: press ⌘K (Windows: Ctrl+K), or click the search button top right. Wherever you are in Certly, you jump straight to an employee, registration or page — including your projects, clients and open onboardings. Quicker than clicking.

7/14Let the reminders come to you

There's nothing to set up here — this is exactly what Certly is for. For every document you automatically get an email at 90, 60 and 30 days before the expiry date, and on the day itself. Renew a document and update the expiry date, and the cycle starts again by itself. You never get duplicate emails.

Around that sits a full safety net:

Workers get their own email — if a holder has an email address, they receive their own reminder ("Your CSCS card expires in 30 days") with a renewal link: one click and they supply the new date, with the new card uploaded — no login needed. What happens to that submission is step 8.
Escalation — if no new date has come in 14 and 7 days before expiry, a more urgent email follows, to the owners by default.
Weekly summary — one email every Monday morning with the state of play: expired, action needed, due soon, and what's already booked.
Repeat already booked? Put the planned date on the document (or through the renewal link) and the interim reminders pause — only the alert on the expiry date itself always comes.
Inspection done? For interval examinations (LOLER, PUWER, PAT, ladders…) you click ✓ Inspection done: Certly works out the next date and the cycle runs on.

8/14Approve the renewals that come in

The renewal link from step 7 does more than pass on a date. Your worker can send in the new card with it: they photograph it on their phone, and the same AI reading as in step 3 pulls out the expiry date and the certificate number. Still without logging in.

That submission does not go straight through. It lands on your dashboard in the Renewals to review queue, and you get an email about it. You see the evidence sent in and the date read off it, and choose:

Approve — the new expiry date takes effect, the evidence replaces the document file and the reminder cycle starts again.
Reject — nothing about the document changes; useful if the photo is unreadable or the wrong certificate came in.

So control stays with you while the typing sits with the worker. For an administrator a renewal comes down to one click.

9/14Onboard new starters before day one

Part of Certly Pro. A new starter turning up at the gate on day one without valid tickets costs you a day's work on the spot. So go to Onboarding and set them up in advance: name, email address, job profile and the first working day. The job profile (step 5) decides automatically which documents have to be in.

Going straight onto a project? Pick that job as well. From then on the requirements list isn't only the job profile but also what the client and the project itself require (step 10) — each extra document says where it came from ("via project Eastgate Phase 2"). That way you ask for everything they need in one go, rather than chasing the site induction a fortnight later.

Someone who has worked for you before? Type a name or email address that looks like an existing holder and Certly warns you straight away, so you can link the onboarding to that holder instead of creating a duplicate. Their old document history stays where it is. If an onboarding for that person is still running, Certly points you there rather than starting a second one alongside it.

The worker gets one personal link — no account, no password. There they upload their certificates with the same AI pre-filling as in step 3, in their own language (English, Dutch, Polish or Romanian). You approve or reject each item, just as with the renewals in step 8. Reject something and they get an email straight away in their own language with the document type, your reason and the same link to send it in again — no phone call needed to explain the photo was blurred.

Reminders towards the start date — the worker is emailed at 14, 7 and 3 days before their first day for as long as anything is missing.
Escalation to you — if it starts getting tight you get a nudge and can ring them before it becomes a problem.
One clear status — the heading on every onboarding just says it: ready for the first day, or not. Once everything is in, the worker is waiting as a holder with a complete file.

10/14Check who's cleared for the gate tomorrow

Part of Certly Pro. Watching what expires is half of it; the other half is the planning question: can Dave actually go to that job tomorrow? Under Clients you record what each customer requires as standard (CSCS, site induction, SSSTS…), and under Projects you create the job: client, end date and any extra requirements for that project.

Then link the people, vehicles and machines you want on the job, and Certly gives one answer per holder: green (cleared), amber (expires before the project ends) or red (missing or expired) — always with the reason. So you see not just whether it stacks up today, but whether it stays valid to the end of the job.

Exceptions with an end date — if the client allows a dispensation, you record it with the reason, who granted it and when it runs out. Visible in every check, and never quietly valid forever.
Project file for the client — per project you produce a share link or evidence pack PDF with the paperwork for everyone on that job. Always current, without an afternoon at the scanner.

More on how the check works on the features page, and CSCS Smart Check at the gate covers what a main contractor typically asks to see.

11/14Work with subcontractors

Part of the subcontractors add-on. If you bring in subcontractors or sole traders, you're responsible for their paperwork on your own project too — but you don't want to be maintaining it. Go to Subcontractors and create a party with a contact and email address. Certly makes a portal link you can copy or email straight over.

They see their own people and documents, and keep them current — with the same upload, AI reading and approval as in step 8.
You see only the status per party, on your dashboard and in the holder list.
The reminders at 90, 60 and 30 days go to the subcontractor as well. Filling in their email address is the opt-in.
Work finished? Revoke the link and access stops immediately — the emails too.

Existing holders are linked to a subcontractor from the holder form.

The company file, too. Alongside the cards their people hold, you build up the company file on each subcontractor's detail page: Companies House registration, employers' liability insurance, public liability insurance, their SSIP accreditation (CHAS, SafeContractor, Constructionline) and CIS registration. The subcontractor sends them in through their portal, you approve them, and missing items are requested with one button. The compliance score per party shows how complete the file is, and the log records when something was asked for and when it arrived — a real audit trail rather than a scramble the week before. A complete file reduces your risk; it never removes it.

12/14Look twelve months ahead — and budget for it

The dashboard answers the planner's question: what needs doing now. The Annual planner page answers the director's: what's coming at us next year, and what will it cost?

You see everything expiring in the next twelve months, grouped by month, with a separate section for what has already lapsed. Add a rate per document type — what an MOT costs at your garage, what you pay for a CSCS course — and Certly works out the total: number of renewals, estimated cost and a budget for the year.

That calculation does two things on purpose:

Missing rates don't count as zero. They're reported separately, because a budget that's too good to be true is worse than no budget.
Outstanding Driver CPC hours count. If a driver's cycle ends within the year, the periodic training hours still to be booked appear in the plan — including the course days you have yet to buy.

What an expired certificate costs when it goes wrong is set out in what does an expired certificate cost.

Request the renewal from your usual provider there and then. At the bottom of the Annual planner you record your regular training provider or examiner once — with a different contact per document type and your region if you want. After that, every document expiring within 90 days carries a Request renewal button: Certly sends a tidy request email with the holder, document type and deadline, and the provider's reply comes straight back to you. From signal to booked course in one click.

13/14Share it and prove it

Keeping certificates up to date is one thing — being able to show them is another. Certly has five ways:

Evidence pack (PDF) — from the dashboard (whole organisation) or a holder page (one worker or vehicle): one PDF with a cover sheet, status overview and every uploaded certificate attached. Ready for an audit or a main contractor.
Certificate pass — every holder gets their own public pass page with a QR code and the live status of all their documents. Email the pass to the worker and they show it on their phone at the gate or in a check; rescanning proves the details are current and not an old screenshot. You can revoke it at any time — generating a new link kills the old pass immediately.
Share link with QR code — through Settings → Sharing you create a read-only link for a main contractor or inspector. They see the live status — without document numbers or files, and without an account. Valid 90 days by default; revoke whenever you like.
Monthly report — through Settings → Monthly report you set the recipients (your client, the HSE coordinator) and on the 1st of each month a compliance overview with a status PDF goes out automatically. No more "can you send over the current list?".
Calendar feed — through Settings → Calendar feed you put every expiry date in your own calendar (Outlook, Google or Apple). They move along by themselves when something changes.

14/14Set it up your way

Under Settings you decide how Certly behaves:

Reminder moments — change the standard 90/60/30 days (any number of days works), and choose whether you also want an email on the expiry date itself.
Worker emails — switch on whether workers with an email address get their own reminder.
Escalation — pick the escalation days and who gets that urgent email.
Weekly summary — the Monday morning email on or off.
Extra recipients — have reminders sent to your planner or the office as well.
Team — invite colleagues with their own role: owner, manager or view-only.
Job profiles — record which documents each role must hold (see step 5).
Document types — alongside the standard UK list, add your own types here, each with its own validity period and examination interval.
Send in certificates by email — create your own Certly inbox address or revoke it (see step 4).
Language / Taal — set the app and the system emails for your whole organisation to English or Dutch. Document types follow your company's country and don't change with it. This is separate from the per-worker language in step 2, which only affects what the worker receives.
Monthly report — manage the recipients and send yourself a test report (see step 13).
Sharing & calendar feed — manage your share links and calendar connection (see step 13).
Subscription — after the trial you pick your tier and optionally the subcontractors add-on; see below.

After the trial: a price that grows with you

For the first 14 days you try everything free — Certly Pro and the subcontractors add-on included, with no holder limit and no card details. That way you find out for yourself which parts you actually use. After that you choose your tier under Settings → Subscription:

Certly (from £21.95 a month) — the complete monitoring: expiry dates, automatic reminders, AI reading, renewal links, the annual planner and reporting.
Certly Pro (from £38.95 a month) — everything in Certly, plus the planning side: projects and clients with requirements per job (step 10), gate clearance checked in advance, and compliance onboarding for new starters (step 9).
Subcontractors add-on (+ £12.95 a month) — the portal and the company file per subcontractor from step 11, available on either tier.

The bundle follows automatically from your number of holders — employees, vehicles and plant together: up to 25, up to 100 or unlimited. Documents are always unlimited. Outgrow your bundle and you see it as soon as you add a holder, then upgrade in one click; the difference is settled on your next invoice. Monthly plans can be cancelled monthly, and a yearly plan gives you more than two months free (£219 a year instead of 12 × £21.95, for example). Prices are per company and exclude VAT; billing is in pounds. All prices and frequently asked questions are on the pricing page.

Stuck?

We're happy to help you get going — including moving your existing records across. If you're already logged in, just click the chat button in the bottom right of the app; we can see who you are, so there's nothing to explain. Prefer email? Send a message through the contact page and you'll have a reply within one working day.

Try it yourself — free