A complaint reveals the insurance ran out months ago
A customer complains about a firm on your approved register. As part of looking into it, your scheme manager opens the firm's file and finds the public liability insurance certificate expired some months ago. There is no newer one. The firm has been on your public register, using your scheme mark, with no current evidence of insurance in your file. The firm probably renewed. But you cannot show it.
Every accredited firm has several documents with expiry dates: insurance certificates, qualifications or cards for named operatives, sometimes vehicle or equipment certificates, and policies that must be reviewed annually. Across a register of a few hundred firms, that is a lot of dates, and they all live inside PDFs in folders.
Why lapses go unseen
- Expiry dates are inside the documents, not in a field anyone can sort or filter.
- Checking happens at annual assessment, so a lapse between visits is invisible.
- Firms renew their insurance on time but do not think to send the new certificate.
- Operatives named in the application leave the firm, and their qualifications stop counting towards it.
- Reminders, if any, are sent by the scheme team from a calendar, by hand.
What a missed lapse costs
Your scheme's value to consumers and clients rests on the register meaning something. A firm with lapsed insurance on it undermines that, and if something goes wrong, questions follow for the association. Chasing documents after a problem is also more awkward than collecting them routinely. For the scheme team, periodic sweeps through every folder take days and still miss things.
Operatives are the harder half. A firm might have been approved on the strength of two qualified installers. One leaves in the spring, the firm hires someone whose card is still being processed, and for a while the firm has less qualified cover than its approval assumed. Nobody at the firm thinks to tell the scheme, because nobody asked. Your scheme rules decide whether that matters and what should happen. The trouble is that, as things stand, your team would never know it had happened at all.
And the chase itself is thankless. An administrator emailing a list of firms for certificates, one at a time, gets replies with the wrong document, last year's document, or a photo of a certificate taken on a phone at an angle. Each reply needs opening, checking and filing before the next one.
Expiry tracking that runs between assessments
We turn every expiring document into a tracked date, and make renewal a routine the firm does without being chased by a person.
- Each accredited firm has a list of required documents per your scheme rules, each with an expiry date field.
- When a document is uploaded, an AI model or document parser reads the expiry date, insurer and policy holder, and a scheme administrator confirms before it is saved.
- Firms get reminders ahead of each expiry with a direct upload link, and a second reminder closer to the date.
- Named operatives are tracked separately, so a leaver's qualification can be marked as no longer counting and the firm asked about cover.
- On expiry with no replacement, the firm is flagged to the scheme team, who apply your rules, such as a grace period or suspension. Nothing changes on the register without a person deciding.
- The scheme dashboard shows upcoming expiries, lapses and firms at risk across the register.
| Document | What is tracked | Reminder goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Public liability insurance | Expiry date, insurer, named insured | Firm's scheme contact |
| Operative qualification | Holder, type, expiry | Firm, with the operative named |
| Annual policy review | Last review date | Firm's scheme contact |
| Equipment or vehicle certificate | Item, expiry | Firm's scheme contact |
Day to day with dates you can see
Firms upload renewals as they come in, prompted by a reminder. The scheme team spends its time on the few firms that do not respond. When a complaint arrives, the firm's file shows a current certificate and the history of every previous one. Assessments are simpler too, because the assessor is not checking dates that are already tracked.
Signs you are tracking expiries too late
- Expiry dates are only checked at annual assessment.
- Document dates are inside PDFs rather than in fields.
- You find lapsed documents after a complaint or query.
- Firms renew insurance but do not send the new certificate.
- Scheme staff do periodic sweeps of every firm's folder.