April 2025: expiry dates, so a certificate never runs out unnoticed
Insurance, an MOT, a competence certificate: the paperwork that runs out is the paperwork that costs most when you miss it. April 2025 added expiry dates to the library.
Part 22 of 39 of Building TradeYoke, the story of how the platform was built, from January 2024 to today. Previous: April 2025: searching inside your documents, not just their names. Next: May 2025: site surveys, because some jobs need looking at before you can price them. See every part on the build timeline.
Quick answer
Quick answer: In TradeYoke any library document can carry an expiry date, and a dashboard tile shows documents that have expired or are about to. Certificates a trade produces are filed with their expiry date automatically, against the job and the customer, so renewals are visible rather than remembered.
Key takeaways
- Any document can have an expiry date.
- A dashboard tile lists what has expired and what is about to.
- Certificates created in the trade modules are filed with their expiry for you.
- The same applies to company and vehicle documents, such as insurance and an MOT.
The cost of the one you forgot
Most paperwork just sits there. A few documents have a clock on them: public liability insurance, a vehicle's MOT and insurance, a qualification or competence card, a safety certificate you issued to a customer. Miss the date on one of these and the consequence is not a tidy filing problem. It is an uninsured week, a vehicle off the road, or a customer asking why their annual record has lapsed.
Putting the date on the document
In April 2025 we added an expiry date to the library. You set it on the document, and it stays with the document. Nothing else changes about how you use the library.
The tile that tells you
The date is only useful if something looks at it. A dashboard tile lists documents that have already expired and those that are about to, so the first thing you see when you open TradeYoke on a Monday is what needs renewing. You do not have to remember to go and look.
Certificates file themselves
For the trades in pilot with certificate records, such as electrical certificates, landlord gas safety records and solar commissioning documents, the certificate you produce is drawn as a document, filed against the job and the customer in the library, and given its expiry date as it goes. A landlord's annual gas safety record, for instance, appears on the customer's record with the date it runs out. Nobody types it twice.
Across the business
Because the same expiry works for every kind of document, it works for the van and the company as well as the job. An MOT filed on a vehicle's documents and an insurance schedule filed in the company library appear in the same tile as a customer's certificate.
A practical routine
- File every dated document when you get it, with its date.
- Check the tile at the start of the week.
- Renew a month ahead where you can, because renewals rarely happen on the day you ask.
Next
May: surveys, because bigger jobs need a look before you can quote.
Questions people ask
Can TradeYoke remind me when a certificate or insurance document expires?
Documents can carry an expiry date, and a dashboard tile shows those that have expired or are about to, so you see renewals when you open the app.
Are certificates filed with an expiry date automatically?
For the trades with certificate records, yes: the certificate is filed against the job and the customer with its expiry date as it is produced.
Try it on your own week
30 days of Essentials free, no card. Bring your customers and see it against a real week.
