Certifications Overview

Certifications are usually used for Properties which have to be externally validated, or certified. Examples are Organic, Halal and Kosher. An item can have multiple Certificates for the same property, e.g. the Organic status can be stored for more than one supplier of the same item and they can have different results.

Existing Certifications for items can be found using ‘Manage Certifications’ and can also be seen in the Certificate tab of the screens for Raw Materials and Formulations.

Each Certificate property is actually a standard Yes/No property, but with the addition of an expiry date. The expiry date option is the critical thing which differentiates certification properties from other Yes/No properties. The property e.g. Organic, can be used in standard ways such as: display the property value in the CDT when adding formulations or search for items with the property using Find Matching Items. For more about properties see the Properties Overview.

Using Certifications
The Certification process can manage the request for Certification, be used to log details about the certificate including when it runs out, and to manage maintaining the Certification status.
In a simple situation, to record that you have a Certificate, you can use the ‘New Certification’ function in Manage Certifications and just enter the details of the certificate including supplier and date etc.
If you have several people or departments involved in requesting, obtaining and recording Certification details, these processes can be managed more incrementally with:

Manage Requests for Certifications: This option is focused on obtaining Certifications from a supplier, or other party, for one or more raw materials. This option is useful if the request and the response are separated by time, or different people are involved. Another example when this option can be useful is to request and record details for e.g. annual supplier questionnaires about items you buy.

Manage Required Certifications: This option is focused on obtaining a Certification for a raw material when it is not clear who may be able to fulfil the need. Therefore it is focused on one raw material but can be sent to more than one supplier, or party. This option is useful if the request and the response are separated by time, or different people are involved as one person can start the request and someone else can pursue the request and add information later.

Print Certified Sources for Composition of an Item: The option ‘Print Certified Sources for Composition of an Item’ can be used to see which ingredients have a Certification, the valid dates and supplier(s). The status for each supplier with a certificate is shown.