Partners & Logistics
Certificates
Certificate types, expiry tracking, and where certificates attach across products and jobs.
What it is
"Certificate" means two related but separate things on the platform: a product certification — a compliance mark a product holds, like ISO 9001 or FSSAI, with an optional proof PDF attached — and a job compliance document, like a Certificate of Origin or a phytosanitary certificate, generated or required as part of a job's checklist. This page covers both and how they connect.
Product certifications
Certifications are drawn from a curated, shared lookup table — around ninety common EXIM certifications spanning quality management (ISO 9001), food safety (FSSAI, HACCP, BRC), regional product-safety marks (CE, BIS, SASO) and more. A product references any number of these. Typing something that isn't in the list creates a new lookup entry automatically (sanitized into an uppercase, underscore-joined code) rather than being silently dropped, so a custom certification you type in is never lost.
Certificate proof documents
A certification and its proof PDF are deliberately separate models. Assigning "ISO 9001" to a product just says the product holds it; attaching a document — the actual PDF, plus an optional certificate number, issue date and expiry date — is a second, independent step, one document per (product, certification) pair.
Removing a certification hides its document, it doesn't delete it
If you remove a certification from a product, any proof document already uploaded for it stays in the database untouched — it just stops appearing, because the read path only shows documents for certifications currently assigned. Reassign the same certification and the same document reappears.Expiry tracking
Expiry isn't a stored true/false — it's computed at read time by comparing the document's expiry date against today. That's why a certificate can silently flip from "Valid until…" to "Expired" without anyone having to run an update.
Certifications are shared labels, documents are not
Two different products — even across two different organizations — can end up pointing at the same underlying certification row (for example, two teams both typing the same custom certification text resolve to one shared lookup entry). That sharing stops at the label: each product's certificate document is scoped strictly to that one product, so one organization can never see another's uploaded certificate file through a shared certification row.
Certificates as job compliance documents
A job's checklist can require certificate-type documents of its own — a Certificate of Origin claiming preferential tariff treatment, or a phytosanitary/veterinary health certificate for plant- or animal-origin commodities. These are generated or uploaded as part of the job's document flow, driven by the commodity flags and rules described in the Export & Import Job Engine doc, not by the product's own certification records.
Related
New to attaching a certificate? Start with the Certificates guide. For where certifications fit on the product form, see Products & Catalog.