Short answer
A COI tracking spreadsheet works well below roughly 25 vendors with one requirement tier and one maintainer who opens it weekly. It stops working when requirements vary by trade or property, when more than one person edits it, or when you need history rather than current state — because a cell that changed from red to green keeps no record of when or why.
What a spreadsheet is
Almost everyone starts here, and for a lot of firms it is genuinely the right answer. A spreadsheet costs nothing, needs no procurement, and can be reshaped in thirty seconds when your requirements change. The failure mode is not the file — it is that the work the file implies quietly stops happening.
What a spreadsheet does better
- Free, immediate, and needs no approval from anyone.
- Infinitely flexible — a new column takes seconds, not a product roadmap.
- Everyone can already use it, with no training.
- Perfectly adequate below about 25 vendors with a single requirement set.
Side by side
| Dimension | a spreadsheet | CertShield |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free, plus roughly an hour a week of someone's time | From $99 per month |
| Reading the certificate | A person, manually — roughly 40 comparisons per certificate | AI extraction, with a person verifying every verdict |
| Endorsement verification | Only if someone opens the endorsement pages every time | Checked on every document, including claimed-but-not-attached |
| Renewal reminders | Depend on someone opening the file | Sent automatically to the producer, EN and ES, on a cadence |
| History | None — a cell overwrites its own past | Append-only audit trail of every document, verdict and message |
| Multiple requirement tiers | Possible, but each tier multiplies the manual comparison | Stored once, applied to every incoming document |
| Answering "what did we know, and when" | Reconstruct from email and file dates, if you can | One export |
Choose a spreadsheet when
- Under about 25 vendors.
- One requirement tier, applied uniformly.
- One person maintaining the file, with a weekly calendar block they actually keep.
- No audit, owner-reporting or lender obligation that needs history.
Choose CertShield when
- Requirements differ by trade, property or owner.
- More than one person edits the tracker and nobody is sure whose version is current.
- Renewals are being missed, or discovered after the expiry date.
- Someone has asked for evidence of what you checked and when — and it took more than an afternoon to answer.
Frequently asked
- Is a spreadsheet enough for COI tracking?
- Below roughly 25 vendors with a single requirement tier and a maintainer who opens it weekly, yes. It is a legitimate system and you do not need to buy anything. The problems start when any of those three conditions stops being true.
- What is the biggest risk with spreadsheet COI tracking?
- That the spreadsheet is accurate and nobody looks at it. Every failed program we have seen failed at the reminder step, not the data step — the expiration dates were sitting right there in the file.
- Can I get expiry alerts out of a spreadsheet?
- You can build a days-to-expiry formula and conditional formatting, which gives you the view. The alert still requires someone to open the file, unless you script it — at which point you are maintaining software without the support.
- What actually changes when you move to software?
- Three things: certificates get read in full including endorsement pages every time rather than when someone has an hour, reminders go out without anyone remembering, and you gain a history you can hand to an owner, auditor or lawyer.
Other comparisons
The fastest way to compare is on your own certificates
Send the same three difficult certificates to every vendor on your shortlist — a scan, a rotated page, and one with endorsement pages attached — and compare the output. Ours is free and needs no call.
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