How long setup takes with 50 suppliers in a spreadsheet
If you arrive with 50 suppliers in a spreadsheet, setup is typing: there is no import yet, so each supplier goes in through a form, one at a time. The questions below are the ones QA managers ask about that, how long the entry takes, what has to be ready before you start, and what can safely wait until after your first full view of the board.
What setup actually consists of
Setup is three separate piles of work, and only the first one blocks the others.
- The supplier list. Each supplier is added with its company name, contact details, and the certificate types you require from it: allergen declaration, CoA, audit certificate. That is the one pass you cannot skip, because nothing else has anything to hang on.
- The documents you already hold. Certificates the QA team already has on file are uploaded against a supplier and a certificate type, as PDF, PNG or JPEG, with the issue and expiry dates typed in. You can do this supplier by supplier, or leave the slots empty and let the board show them as missing.
- The settings. The alert thresholds, which start at 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry and can be edited per certificate type or as a plant-wide default.
Fifty suppliers with three required types each is 150 certificate slots, and almost nobody has 150 current documents in a folder on day one. So the realistic end of setup is not a full green board. It is a complete supplier list, the documents you do hold uploaded, and a short, accurate list of what is missing or expired.
Questions
How long does it take to set up tracking for 50 suppliers?
There is no single number, because the typing is yours and the waiting is your suppliers'. Adding one supplier is four decisions: company name, contact name, contact email, and which of the three certificate types you require from that supplier. Fifty suppliers is fifty passes through that form, which is usually one sitting or two with your spreadsheet open beside you. The part that stretches is not entry at all, it is the rows where you do not yet know which person at the supplier sends the certificate.
Can I import my spreadsheet instead of typing it?
Not yet. There is no supplier list import, so the only route in is the add-a-supplier form, one supplier at a time. We would rather say that plainly before you start than let you discover it at supplier three. The sibling page on moving a spreadsheet in by hand sets out the column order that makes the typing least painful.
What should I have ready before I start?
One email address per supplier that reaches a person who actually sends documents, not a general sales inbox, because that address is what every reminder goes to. A decision, per supplier, on which certificate types you require, since an extra ticked type becomes a permanently missing row on your board. And the certificates you already hold, as PDF, PNG or JPEG files, with their issue and expiry dates to hand.
Does the dashboard only become useful once everything is uploaded?
No, and waiting for a complete set is the slowest way to do it. The status view shows four states per supplier and certificate type: current, expiring soon, expired and missing. The moment your supplier list is in, the missing rows are a work list: each one names a supplier and the certificate type you require from it where no document exists at all, which is the same list an auditor would build walking your files.
Do suppliers do any of the setup themselves?
That is the design intent: Certly is built so a supplier can upload a certificate without an account, through a single-use email link that expires. For you, that turns a slot from a document you have to find, open, rename and file into a row that resolves itself when the supplier responds. It does not remove the first pass of entry, because a link can only be sent once the supplier and its required types exist in the database. Treat supplier uploads as the way the remaining 100-odd slots fill in, not as a way to shorten the first afternoon.
Do I need to configure the alert thresholds during setup?
No. Thresholds arrive at 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry, which suits most annual certificates, so you can leave them alone and come back later. If a particular certificate type needs a longer runway, for example one where the supplier's own audit has to be scheduled first, you can set a different threshold for that type or change the plant-wide default. This is a five-minute settings job, not a prerequisite.
Can I finish setup inside the 14-day free trial?
The Starter plan is declared with a 14-day free trial and covers a single plant tracking up to 50 suppliers, at $3,228 a year billed annually, which works out at 269 dollars a month, 10 percent off the 299 dollar monthly rate for paying up front. Fourteen days is comfortable for the work that is in your hands, which is the supplier list, the documents you already hold, and the thresholds. What fourteen days will not do is get every outstanding certificate back from every supplier, since that depends on them. Certly is not open yet, so the honest way to plan is to assume entry takes a sitting and supplier responses take weeks.
What takes the longest, and what can wait?
The longest part is finding the right contact email for the suppliers where your spreadsheet has a sales address or nothing at all, and that is research, not data entry. Next longest is typing issue and expiry dates off scanned certificates, which is worth doing carefully because every status on the board and in the PDF export is computed from that date. What can wait: uploading historic or superseded documents, per-type threshold tuning, and exporting the PDF, which you only need when an auditor asks. Get the list and the contacts right first, and everything after that is maintenance.