Certificate types

Before you can log training, SafetyBrik needs to know what kinds of certificates you care about. The catalogue lives at /safety/staff-training/cert-types.

There are two kinds of cert type.

System cert types

These ship with SafetyBrik out of the box and cover the certificates almost every UK food business needs - Level 1/2/3 food hygiene, allergen awareness, manual handling, first aid, and so on. Each one comes with a sensible default renewal period.

You cannot delete a system cert type, but you can decide whether it is mandatory for your team. Toggle the Mandatory switch on or off:

• Mandatory on - the cert type appears as a column on the Staff training matrix and counts towards your mandatory coverage percentage.
• Mandatory off - the cert type is still available to log against an employee, but it does not appear on the dashboard matrix.

tip

Most cafés will leave Level 2 food hygiene and allergen awareness mandatory and turn the rest off until they need them.

Custom cert types

You can add your own certificate types - useful for in-house training, brand-specific qualifications, or anything that is not in the standard list. For example: barista certification, knife skills, COSHH awareness, late-shift training.

To add one:

1. Go to /safety/staff-training/cert-types
2. Scroll to the Custom cert types section
3. Fill in:
   • Slug - a lowercase, underscore-separated identifier (e.g. barista_l1)
   • Name - the human-readable name shown on the dashboard
   • Renewal months - how long a cert stays valid for, in months (leave blank if it never expires)
4. Click Add cert type

Custom cert types can be deleted if you decide you no longer need them, and their mandatory flag works the same way as system types.

Setting validity periods

The Renewal months value drives every expiry date in the system. Common defaults:

Cert type	Typical validity
Level 2 food hygiene	36 months (3 years)
Allergen awareness	24 months (2 years)
First aid at work	36 months (3 years)
Manual handling	24 months (2 years)

When you log a training record, SafetyBrik takes the issued date and adds the renewal months to pre-fill the expiry date. You can override it on the form if a particular certificate has a different validity.

How expiry warnings surface

Once a cert is on file, SafetyBrik watches the expiry date and surfaces it in three places:

• The Staff training matrix colours the cell amber as it approaches expiry and red once it has lapsed.
• The Expiring in 30 days tile on the Staff training dashboard counts every cert about to lapse across your team.
• It feeds into your Prove It snapshot and Reports, so an EHO never sees an out-of-date cert without a renewal logged against it.

caution

Turning a cert type's mandatory flag off does not delete the records you already have - it just stops counting that cert towards your coverage score. Existing records stay attached to each employee.