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Create your account, name your organization, and you're in. Start by adding document types (adopt ready-made templates like "General Liability COI" or "W-9" from the library, or create your own with custom fields), bundle them into a requirement set, and add your first vendors. Most teams are fully set up within an afternoon.

A named checklist of document types — for example "Electrical Subcontractor" might require a GL certificate, workers' comp, a state license, and a W-9. Assign a set to each vendor (individually or in bulk) and their status is measured against it: on file, expiring, expired, or missing, item by item.

Yes. Under Workspace settings, choose what you call the businesses you track — Vendor, Contractor, Subcontractor, Supplier, Partner, Third party, or a word of your own, with its plural if adding an "s" would be wrong. Do the same for the jobs you put them on: Project, Job, Site, Location, Contract, or your own word. Your dashboard, lists and reports follow, and your vendors' portal shows your company name.

Ready-made document types for the paperwork most businesses ask for: general liability, auto, umbrella and professional liability certificates; contractor and business licences; tax forms such as the W-9, W-8BEN and GST/HST registration; bonds, training cards, ID, a void cheque and articles of incorporation; and agreements. Forms for your own market are listed first, and you can adopt any of them. An adopted template is your own copy — rename it, change its fields or switch it off — and you can create types from scratch too.

Yes. The library includes non-disclosure, data processing, master services and business associate agreements. As with everything else, Credential Register keeps the signed copy, its dates and who on your team accepted it. It does not read the agreement or say whether it meets any law or contract.

Yes. Mark an item optional and the vendor still sees it, but it doesn't count against their "on file" total. Any item can also carry a reference note — the coverage you usually ask for, say — shown to the vendor while they upload. It is there to inform them; Credential Register never checks a document against it.

Open Documents → "Record a document," pick the vendor and type, enter the dates, and attach the file. Staff-recorded documents go straight on file, so your register reflects reality from day one.

Three ways, and most registers use all of them. Your team records what you already hold. Vendors you invite upload through their free portal. And vendors who keep their own Credential Register account can connect to you, which brings the credentials they maintain into your register and keeps them current as they renew — see "Connecting to a vendor's own account" below.

In Canada. Every record, every decision and every uploaded file in your register is stored on servers in Canada, and the nightly backups are encrypted and kept in a different Canadian city. Email we send on your behalf — invitations and reminders — passes through our email delivery provider on its way to the recipient.

Yes. When a file is stored, Credential Register records its SHA-256 fingerprint — a value that changes completely if even one byte of the file does. It is shown beside the file in your register and listed against every file in your data export, so anyone can recompute it from their copy and compare. A match proves the file is the one that was filed, unchanged since; like everything else here, it says nothing about whether the document itself is genuine. Files stored before fingerprints were kept show the date they were first fingerprinted instead.

Yes. Create a project for each job, site, location or contract, and put the vendors working on it there, with their trade if you like. A project can carry its own checklist — a hospital job asking for professional liability on top of the usual, say — and while the project is active, that checklist counts toward every vendor on it, alongside their own. Mark the project completed or archived and it stops counting, so finishing a job never leaves anyone missing paperwork for it. Each project shows where every vendor on it stands against its checklist, and you can call projects whatever your team does — jobs, sites, locations — under Workspace settings. Projects are unlimited on every plan.

Yes. Any vendor in your register can be recorded as working under another: open the subcontractor's record and choose who they work under, one level below a direct vendor on every plan. From the Growth plan a chain can go two levels deep, and under Workspace settings you can let your vendors add their own subcontractors from the portal, starting on a checklist you pick. Either way a subcontractor is a vendor in your register in its own right — it has its own checklist, uploads straight to you, and counts toward your plan's vendor allowance. The link is shown as what it is, a statement of who listed whom and when; it says nothing about whether the work is covered.

Every workspace gets its own, such as acme.credentialregister.com, taken from your company name when you sign up. Your team signs in there, and your vendors' portal lives at the same address. Owners and admins can change it under Workspace settings. The change is immediate and the old address stops working, so let your vendors know first.

Yes, from the Starter plan. Upload a logo (PNG, JPG or WebP) under Workspace settings and it replaces ours in your workspace, on your vendors' portal and on its sign-in page. Credential Register is still named in the footer of every page, beside the note on what the platform does and does not do.

A front door with your name and logo and two choices: sign in as your staff, or sign in as one of your vendors — in your word for them. If you add your website under Workspace settings, it appears there too, for anyone who was looking for your company rather than your register.

On Scale and above, yes. Under Custom domain, enter a hostname you control — compliance.yourcompany.com, for instance — and add the DNS record the page shows you. Once it points at us, we set up the certificate, and your workspace and your vendors' portal both answer there. The address we issued you keeps working alongside it. If you later move to a plan without custom domains, your domain forwards to that address, so links already in your vendors' inboxes still arrive.

Owners and admins invite colleagues by email from Team. Each person sets their own password from the link, which lasts 14 days. The Free plan includes one login; every paid plan includes as many as you need. A pending invitation holds a seat until it is accepted or expires.

Owners and admins run the workspace: settings, team, billing, reminders, your domain and Trash. Reviewers add and update vendors and documents and decide on submissions. Viewers see everything and change nothing. Only an owner can make someone an owner or take that away, and a workspace can never be left without one.

Two ways. From a vendor's row, choose "Invite to portal" — they get an email link, set a password, and land on a page showing exactly which documents you need. Or, if they already keep their own free Credential Register account, request a connection instead and their existing credentials come to you once they accept. Either way the portal is free for them, always.

Your checklist, what's missing or expiring against it, reviewer notes on anything sent back, and a guided upload flow in plain language. They never see your other vendors or your internal notes. A vendor who supplies several businesses through Credential Register sees each register separately, side by side — one login, no mixing.

When uploading, a vendor can check "I attest that this document is true, current, and mine." Their name and the date are recorded with the document. For document types where you've chosen "self-attestation sufficient," that puts the document on file without a staff review.

Yes. A vendor can list individual workers — electricians with OSHA cards, drivers with licences — and file documents against each person; those count toward the vendor's checklist. In their own account they can also mark a company-wide policy as covering their whole crew, so it's renewed once instead of copied per worker.

Yes. The portal works in a phone's browser and can be added to the home screen like an app. A vendor at a desk can choose "Upload from your phone" to show a QR code; scanning it opens the upload on their phone, after a screen confirming which account it is for. Each code works once and lapses after 15 minutes.

Yes. Invite each of them from the vendor's row, as an owner or a member. Members upload documents and keep them current. Owners can also delete drafts and make the company's decisions — adding subcontractors, where you allow it, and answering requests to see their documents.

Yes. Write a default note under Workspace settings — it can name the person sending it, your company and the vendor — and edit it before each invitation goes out. The note as actually sent is kept with the invitation.

Many of the businesses you track keep their own free Credential Register account, where they catalogue their licences and insurance once for every client they have. A connection links your vendor record to that account, so what they keep current arrives in your register without being asked for. The two records stay separate: a connection adds documents to yours, it never merges it with theirs.

Open the vendor's row and choose "Request connection." We look for an account registered to that exact email address and send the request there. There is no directory to browse and no way to find out who else is on the platform — knowing an address gets you a request, never a document.

Always, and they stay in control afterwards. Nothing is shared until someone who owns that account accepts, and when they do they pick exactly which credentials to include — not the whole drawer. They can change that selection, or disconnect, whenever they like.

Real documents, indistinguishable in use from ones your team recorded: they count toward your checklists, appear in reports and exports, get renewal reminders, and pass through your own review queue. What they carry is the vendor's own attestation and nobody else's decision — if another of their clients approved the same certificate, that has no bearing on yours. Every customer reviews for themselves.

Nothing. Their update lands in your register and returns to your review queue, because the stated facts changed and your team should see that. Edits that change nothing you were told — their own private notes, for instance — leave your decision untouched.

You keep everything you already had. Disconnecting stops future updates; the documents, the files and your team's decisions stay exactly where they are. A register is evidence of what you held and when, so nothing is ever retracted out of it after the fact — and that holds whichever side ends the connection.

Vendor submissions appear under Documents → "Awaiting review." A reviewer opens the document, sees the files and details exactly as submitted, and chooses Approve, Request more info, or Reject — each with a required note. The decision is stamped with their name and time, the vendor is notified, and the full history stays on the document.

"On file" means recorded in your register. "Submitted — awaiting review" means a human on your team hasn't decided yet. "Needs more info" and "Rejected" carry the reviewer's note. Expiring and expired are computed from the dates on file. None of these are a judgement by Credential Register itself — see our stance below.

No — and that's deliberate. Credential Register is a records-management tool: it stores what's uploaded, tracks dates, and records who decided what. Acceptance decisions belong to your team; independent verification, if you want it, comes from third-party providers whose results are shown attributed to them.

Owners, admins, and reviewers. Viewer-role teammates see everything but decide nothing.

Never. A decision belongs to the team that made it and is visible only in their register. When a vendor shares one credential with several businesses, each one reviews it in their own queue and reaches its own conclusion — what travels with the document is the vendor's attestation, not anyone else's judgement.

By default at 60, 30, and 7 days before expiry, and on the expiry day. From the Growth plan you can set your own cadence and staff escalation under Reminders. Every reminder is logged, and a vendor gets each cadence step at most once per document.

Yes — when a document crosses your escalation threshold (7 days by default) or expires, your team receives a digest of everything needing attention so nothing depends on the vendor alone.

The renewal goes through your normal flow (review or self-attest, per document type). Once on file, the checklist flips back to current and the reminder cycle restarts against the new expiry date.

Yes, about their own catalogue, on the platform's default cadence — separately from anything a client asks of them. It is the same renewal either way: when they update the credential, every client they share it with is brought current at once.

They are still reminded, at the email address on their record.

The day after its expiry date. A certificate is current through the whole of its last day, so the reminder that says "expires today" and the status in your register always agree.

Four CSVs from Reports: where every vendor stands against your checklist (including who they work under and which project asked for each item), where every vendor stands on each active project, everything expiring in the next 60 days, and the full decision history. Every file ends with the same note on what Credential Register does and does not attest to.

Yes, whenever you like. "Everything (ZIP)" on the Reports page builds one archive: every report; every uploaded file, sorted into folders by vendor, worker and document type; an index tying each file to its record and listing its fingerprint; and a README explaining the lot. Nothing in it needs Credential Register to open. Exceptionally large registers are capped at 20,000 files per archive, and the README says so if yours was.

It goes to Trash, not away. Deleting a vendor takes its documents, workers and open invitations with it, and restoring it brings them all back together. Owners and admins can restore anything in Trash, and nothing there is purged automatically. If something must be erased for good, ask us.

Your own team, according to their role, and the people at each vendor, for that vendor's own records — never another vendor's. If one of your vendors' subcontractors agrees, the company it works under can view what that subcontractor filed, until the subcontractor or you withdraw it. Files are kept on private storage, and every download is checked as it happens.

A free account at portal.credentialregister.com where you catalogue your licences, insurance certificates, bonds and clearances once, with their numbers and expiry dates. Share them with any business by link — whether or not that business uses Credential Register — and we'll remind you before anything lapses. It costs nothing, with no limit on your own credentials; the businesses that hire you pay for their register, you never do.

No. Anyone can sign up. If a client has already invited you, that invitation and your own catalogue sit behind the same login, so there is one place for everything you are asked for and everything you own.

A web address holding exactly the credentials you picked — never your whole catalogue. Whoever has the link can open it; they need no account. You can give it an expiry date, revoke it the moment you want to, and see whether it has been viewed. Revoking is permanent by design: un-revoking would quietly re-arm a link already sitting in someone's inbox, and making a fresh one is free.

Yes — add your crew under Workers and file each person's certificates against them. A company-wide policy, like your liability insurance, can be marked as covering every worker: it is tracked once and shown on each person's list, so you renew it in one place instead of keeping a copy per head.

Only the people you have given them to: clients whose connection you accepted, anyone holding a share link you made, and — if you belong to one — your management group. Files are never public; each download is authorised as it happens, and a revoked link stops serving files immediately.

The credentials you chose, with your attestation, your name and the date. They review them in their own register on their own terms. You can change what you share, or disconnect, at any time — what they already hold stays in their records, which is what a compliance file is for.

Because your client has put you on one of their jobs or sites, and that job asks for paperwork of its own on top of your usual checklist. Your portal says which job each request is for, and lists the jobs you are on with where your paperwork stands for each. Once the client marks the job completed, its extra requests stop counting. What a job asks for is your client's choice; Credential Register only shows it to you.

If your client has switched it on, yes — from Subcontractors in their portal. Each one joins your client's register in their own right and is invited to upload their paperwork straight to the client, not through you. You see where every subcontractor's checklist stands — how much is on file, what is expiring or missing — so you know who to chase. Your client can also record your subcontractors themselves.

Only if they let you. Ask from Subcontractors in the portal and they decide. If they agree, you can view and download what they have filed with that client, read-only, until they withdraw it — which they can do at any time, and so can the client. It also ends if they stop working under you. Nothing is copied to you, so nothing stays behind afterwards.

Yes. Everything works in a phone's browser, and the portal can be added to your home screen. When a client has asked you for documents, "Upload from your phone" on My Documents shows a QR code that opens the upload on your phone — one use, within 15 minutes.

If you are a client's subcontractor, the company you work under can ask to see what you have filed with that client. You decide, under Document access in the portal. If you agree, they can view and download those documents, read-only, until you withdraw it — which you can do at any time, as can the client. Nothing is copied to them, and nobody further up the chain sees anything. If you decline, they still see only where your checklist stands.

Drafts you deleted can be put back from Trash in the portal, if you are an owner of that company's record.

An account for an agency, franchisor or trade association that looks after the credentials of several member companies. You get a desk at management.credentialregister.com listing every member with what is current, expiring or lapsed, and your people do the actual document work through the same vendor portal your members use — because creating a member seats your managers on that member's account.

A certificate your group holds that applies to all of your members — an association-wide liability policy, say. Mark it "covers every member company" in your own catalogue, and your members can include it when they share credentials or connect with a client. It is referenced, never copied: one renewal at your desk brings every member's clients current at the same moment.

No. Wherever it appears it names you — "Held by [your group], stated by them to cover their member companies." Your members' own credentials stay theirs, yours stays yours, and nobody reading a share page has to guess which is which.

You create them from your desk, which sets up each member's profile and seats your managers on it. Taking on a company that already has its own independent account is not available yet — that needs their consent to be meaningful, and we would rather build the asking properly than assume the answer.

Yes. Everything on the vendor side of Credential Register is free — your group's desk, your members' accounts, and their share links. Paid plans are for the businesses keeping a register of the vendors they hire.

Remove them from your desk, and your managers lose their seats on that member's account and on the client records it is connected to; the member's own people keep theirs. Your umbrella credentials stop being shared on the member's behalf straight away — on their share links and with their clients — and the member's own credentials stay with them.