Reduce the time you spend chasing supplier certificates

If your week fills up with emailing suppliers for a CoA, an allergen declaration or a renewed audit certificate, this page is about exactly that problem. Certly is built to take the chasing off your desk: it tracks every expiry date, emails the supplier contact for you, and gives that contact a one-click upload link that needs no login.

The job you are actually doing all week

If you are the person who sends the reminder emails, the shape of it is familiar. An allergen declaration expires this month, somebody has to notice, find the right quality contact, write the note, wait, write it again, and file the PDF when it finally lands. None of it is difficult. All of it is work that cannot be put down, because a missed one turns up later as an expired certificate on file, in front of an auditor, in the week you have least time.

The tools you have for it are a diary reminder you set in March, a spreadsheet column that is only true if somebody updated it, and three suppliers who said they were sending it over. What you want is narrow. The noticing should happen without you. The first reminder and the second should go out whether or not you are on shift. The supplier should be able to hand the document over without being asked to create an account. And afterwards you should be able to see that the email actually arrived.

The chasing workflow Certly is built to run

Record the supplier and the documents you require from them
Each supplier gets contact details and the certificate types you need on file: allergen declaration, CoA, audit certificate. That list is what Certly measures against, so a document you require but have never received shows as missing rather than as nothing at all.
Put the certificates you already hold against the right slot
Your team uploads the current documents, each one tied to a supplier and a certificate type, with the issue date and the expiry date from the face of the document. This is the one-off part of the work, and after it the dates belong to the system rather than to your memory.
Give the documents with no printed expiry a renewal period
Allergen declarations and vendor forms often carry a date of issue and nothing else. Certly is built to hold a renewal period per certificate type for your plant, so an upload with an issue date and no printed expiry gets a due date derived from that period rather than sitting undated. The sibling page on renewal periods goes through how to choose one.
Set when the first nudge should go out
Alert thresholds sit at 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry and are configurable per certificate type, so a certificate that takes a supplier three months to reissue can be chased earlier than one that comes back the same afternoon.
Connect your own mailbox so the chase arrives from a name they know
Chase and upload-link emails are delivered through Amazon SES for a site that has not connected a sending account, so the chasing itself does not wait on anything. What connecting your own account changes is the from line: a from address, mail server, sign-in name and a mailbox password or API key, encrypted before it is stored, so the reminder reaches the supplier from your plant rather than a default sender. That recognition is what keeps it out of a spam folder, which is why it is worth doing in the first week rather than the first quarter.
Let the chase sequence send the emails you would have written
As a certificate approaches expiry, or once it has lapsed, Certly emails the supplier contact for you, in sequence, with a one-click upload link in the message. Every send is logged against that supplier, so the chasing is on the record and not in your sent items.
The supplier uploads without being given an account
The link in the chase email is single-use and expires. Your contact opens it, uploads the PDF, JPEG or PNG, and the file lands against the right supplier and certificate type. No portal invitation, no password, no support call from the other end. A link that has already been used, or one that has aged out, shows a plain message saying so rather than a broken page.
Check the wording before it goes out in your name
The chase settings carry a read-only preview of the exact email that will be sent, subject line and body, so you can confirm it reads as a plain transactional note from your plant rather than something a supplier will treat as marketing.
Use chase now for the one that cannot wait
A chase now button on each dashboard row and on the supplier's own page sends an immediate one-off chase using the same template, logged as a manual send. It is there for the morning an auditor confirms a date and one document is still outstanding.
Read the chase log rather than wondering
Each entry carries its own status: sent, opened, or failed. A failure gets a distinct badge and a resend now action beside it, so a bounced address is something you see and fix rather than silence you mistake for progress.
Check one screen before the audit, not twelve folders
The status view shows current, expiring soon, expired and missing per supplier on a single screen, and exports to a PDF you can hand to an auditor for review. The chasing and the evidence come out of the same place.

What changes for the person doing the chasing

Your attention goes back to the work only you can do

The hours that went into drafting the same three emails and keeping a tracker honest are hours that belong to sampling, specifications and closing out findings instead.

Your supplier contact stops being the slow part

Nothing to learn, nothing to register for, nobody at the other company asking you how to get in. The shortest path between their desk and your records is a link and a file field.

Follow-up becomes evidence rather than recollection

When an auditor asks when a supplier was last chased, the answer is a record you can read out rather than a reconstruction from your mailbox.

Silence stops reading as progress

A failed send carries its own badge and a resend now action, so a wrong address costs you a correction rather than a month spent assuming a supplier is ignoring you.

The email going out in your name is one you have read

Because the template preview shows the exact subject and body, and the message leaves from the sending account you connect, the note a supplier receives is one you have already approved, from an address they recognise.

A renewal does not erase the document it replaced

Uploads are kept with their issue and expiry dates, including the versions a renewal supersedes, so an auditor asking which allergen declaration was valid last March is a lookup rather than another email to the supplier.

Audit week stops being a separate project

Preparing evidence is no longer bolted onto the end of the quarter; it is the same screen you were already working from.

What Certly does not take off your hands

Worth being plain about this, because the gap matters to a coordinator more than to anyone else in the plant.

Reading the document is still your job. Certly tracks dates, chases contacts and shows status. It does not verify that a certificate is authentic, that the scope is right for the material you buy, or that the scheme and the issue body are the ones your standard expects.
The contact list is only as good as you make it. Chases go to the email address recorded against the supplier, so a contact who has changed jobs is a failed send rather than a delivered one. That is exactly why delivery status is shown per send rather than assumed, with a resend action beside the failure, and why one named quality contact per supplier is the input worth keeping current.
A default sender is not the same as your own. Chase and upload-link emails are delivered through Amazon SES for a site that has not connected a sending account, so the sequence runs either way. What a default sender cannot give you is recognition, and a contact who does not know the name in the from line is the one who lets a reminder sit. Connecting your own mailbox is a short piece of setup that lives alongside the alert settings, and it is what keeps a chase out of a supplier's spam folder.
Getting your existing list in is its own piece of work. A plant arriving with fifty or two hundred suppliers has to get them on the board before any of the chasing starts. The sibling page on moving a supplier list in says where that stands today and how to stage it across a week rather than an afternoon.
Certly is not open for general sign-up yet. The product is pre-launch and the waitlist is how you get in when it opens. Nothing on this page is a customer result; it is what the product is built to do.

What to do with your list before Certly opens

The decision in front of you is not really which tool to buy this week. It is whether the noticing stays a human job. If it stays with you, the honest options are a diary, a spreadsheet with conditional formatting, or a shared calendar, and the sibling guide comparing four methods sets out where each one breaks.

If you want it to stop being yours, five pieces of preparation make the first day shorter, and none of them need software.

Name the certificate types you actually require per supplier, rather than ticking everything for everyone, because a type you require but do not hold is what shows as missing on the board and on the exported PDF.
Clean the contact column. One named quality contact with a current address per supplier is the single input the chasing depends on, and it is the thing most likely to be two years out of date.
Decide your thresholds per certificate type. Certificates that take a supplier months to reissue want an earlier first nudge than ones that come back the same day, and thresholds are set per type rather than once for everything.
Decide a renewal period for the documents with no printed expiry. If your plant treats an allergen declaration as good for three years from the date on the form, write that down now, because it is the rule the due date is derived from rather than a judgement call made per upload.
Separate the suppliers you have stopped buying from. Dormant accounts generate reminders nobody needs and inflate the counts an auditor reads, so knowing which ones are live is worth doing before you load anything; the sibling page on removing a supplier from tracking says where that stands today.

Starter and Professional both include a 14-day free trial when sign-up opens, so that preparation is what turns a trial into a working board rather than an empty one.

Questions

Does the supplier need an account to send me a certificate?

No. The chase email carries a single-use link that expires, and the supplier uploads the document straight through it with no login. That is deliberate: the slowest part of chasing is usually asking a busy contact at another company to register for something.

Can I chase a supplier immediately, outside the sequence?

Yes. There is a chase now button on each supplier row on the dashboard and on the supplier's own page. It sends a one-off chase using the same template and is logged as a manual send, so the history still shows who was contacted and when.

How do I know a chase email actually reached the contact?

Every send is logged with its own status: sent, opened, or failed. A failure carries a distinct badge and a resend now action next to it. There is a sibling page on the chase log that goes through what each status means, and another on email delivery itself.

Which address do chase emails come from?

By default they are delivered through Amazon SES, which carries chase and upload-link emails for a site that has not connected its own sending account. Connect your own, a from address, mail server, sign-in name and the mailbox password or API key, encrypted before it is stored, and the reminder arrives from your plant rather than a default sender. That is the version a supplier recognises, and recognition is what keeps it out of their spam folder.

Can I see the exact wording of the chase email before it goes out?

Yes. The chase settings include a read-only preview of the template, subject line and body, so you can check that it reads as a plain transactional message from your plant before any of it leaves in your name.

When does the first reminder go out?

Alert thresholds sit at 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry and are configurable per certificate type, so you can pull the first chase earlier for certificates that take a supplier months to reissue. Where a document carries no printed expiry, Certly is built to derive the due date from the issue date plus a renewal period you set for that certificate type; the sibling page on renewal periods covers how that works.

What does Certly store about my supplier contacts, and can it be removed?

Supplier company names, contact names and contact email addresses are stored so the right person can be chased, along with a log of every chase email including recipient, time sent, delivery result and opens. A supplier contact's name and email can be erased on their own from that supplier's page, behind a confirmation that spells out what goes (the contact name and email) and what stays (the certificate records themselves), which is how an erasure request is answered without losing your audit trail.

What will it cost?

Starter is $3,228 a year for one site tracking up to 50 suppliers, Professional is $5,388 a year for one site with up to 200, and Multi-site is $10,788 a year for groups running up to 5 sites under one agreement. All three are billed annually, which is ten percent below the equivalent monthly rate, and Starter and Professional each include a 14-day free trial.