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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, or Third party — and the dashboard, lists, and reports follow suit.

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.

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.

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. You can change the cadence per workspace 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.

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.

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.