The proof of a shipment lives in an inbox, and expiry is a surprise

A supplier's ISO certificate, its certificate of insurance, a certificate of conformance on a delivered lot, the receiving record behind a payment: each one is proof you are asked to produce, and each one arrives as an email attachment or a file dropped in a folder. The current version, the record of who approved it, and the note of who has read it sit in different places.

So the current certificate is whichever copy turns up first. And when one expires, nothing tells you until a shipment is held at the dock or an auditor asks.

The documents become a versioned, access-controlled record

We move supplier and receiving documents into a database, each one versioned and access-controlled, attributed to who added it and when. A certificate carries its own attributes, including the supplier it belongs to and its expiry date, so the team filters and searches for the current one instead of hunting a shared drive. The version you find is the effective one.

An expiring certificate surfaces ahead of a held shipment

Because expiry is an attribute of the record, a certificate coming due is surfaced before it lapses, so the renewal gets worked ahead of a stopped shipment rather than after one.

And when an auditor asks which certificate covered a delivered lot, or who approved a supplier's onboarding document and when, the answer is a query against the record instead of a search of the inbox.

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Move the supplier certificates off the shared drive

Tell us where your supplier certificates and receiving records live today and we scope it, or email hello@mcintoshsystems.com.