Reminders and expiry

Expiry reminders that arrive
before the date, not after it.

Every certificate, insurance policy, calibration and service date sits in a register checked overnight. Subcontractors whose insurance has lapsed drop out of approved status automatically.

See the reminders engine in a demo → Ask for a quote

Twelve expiry registers checked overnight in Unibuild

In plain terms

Compliance tracking software watches every expiry date a trade firm carries: insurance, certificates, calibration, training and vehicle dates. It acts before one passes. Unibuild’s reminders engine does that for UK trades and specialist contractors of 5 to 300 people. Unlimited users, one monthly figure, a 14-day trial and no card.

Why this exists

It is not ignorance.
It is capacity.

Every business knows this is a risk. There is simply no hour in the week that belongs to checking eighteen registers by hand.

The auditor asks

For a subcontractor's public liability certificate. It expired four months ago and they have been on site throughout.

Your insurance position

A full week

An engineer works on gas appliances with a scheme registration that lapsed on the first of the month.

Certificates in doubt

February to August

An instrument's calibration ran out and it carried on being used. Six months of results are unsupportable.

Retesting

Monday morning

A van goes out with an expired MOT. The driver did not know. The office did not know.

The insurer takes a view

The spreadsheet

Formulas colour cells red. Nobody opens the file unless they are already looking for something.

Watched by nobody

Onboarding, once

Supplier certificates collected at the start and never refreshed. Presentable on day one, worthless in two years.

Stale evidence

The distinction that matters A certificate proves compliance on the day it was issued Only monitoring proves it today

Subcontractor insuranceSubcontractor certificatesSupplier documentsStaff certificatesTraining matrixE-learningHealth assessmentsHAVSDSECalibrationVehicle MOTRoad taxVehicle insuranceVehicle serviceAccreditationsCompany insurancesWater testingFilter changesMaintenance due Subcontractor insuranceSubcontractor certificatesSupplier documentsStaff certificatesTraining matrixE-learningHealth assessmentsHAVSDSECalibrationVehicle MOTRoad taxVehicle insuranceVehicle serviceAccreditationsCompany insurancesWater testingFilter changesMaintenance due

See what the engine found overnight in the demo, then ask for a figure.

Book a 30-minute demo → Ask for a quote

What the engine does

Six things, and the first one is the reason this page exists.

Automatic
demotion

Two overnight jobs read every subcontractor certificate and insurance expiry date and drop any company holding an expired document out of approved status, with the reason written onto the record.

They then disappear from the subcontract order form
From the small works order form
And from the weekly labour planner
This is enforcement, not a notification to ignore

62 of 164 companies affectedLive

Twelve registers,
one page

One dashboard collapses every expiry register in the business into a single view of what falls due in the next thirty days and what has already lapsed.

Each section with its own count badge
Day counts printed on each card
An explicit all clear panel where nothing is due
Which reads as reassurance rather than an empty page

One page, not elevenLive

The same three
band rule

Every register uses one visual language, so nobody has to learn a second one.

Grey beyond thirty days
Amber inside thirty days
Red with a day count once expired
A bell icon only where action is needed

Consistent across the platformLive

Chasing in
two minutes

Press the reminder control on any row and the email is already written: the right recipients, the document name, the expiry date and the days remaining.

Recipients held per record, not one central mailbox
So a renewal notice does not die with one person's inbox
The send is stamped back onto the row
So nobody chases twice and the file shows it happened

One sentence and sendLive

It runs
without you

The scheduled jobs need no login and no user session. They ran last night and they will run during the week your compliance manager is on annual leave.

A process that depends on somebody opening a file
Stops working the week that person is away
34 subcontractor records written on the most recent run
Every email logged in full with its send result

Not a habit somebody has to formLive

Nothing falls
between registers

Staff certificates, training matrix dates and e-learning completions merge into one deduplicated list, most overdue first, and new date columns are discovered automatically.

So a course added next year appears without a code change
Filterable by person, by source or by status
Each row linking back to where it is managed
Leavers suppressed so the view stays about live staff

Built because things did fallLive

The number, stated precisely

Sixty-two, stated exactly.

This is the best evidence on the whole website that compliance
automation is doing real work rather than sitting dormant,
so it is worth stating it exactly rather than roundly.

What is true: 62 subcontractor records out of 164 carry an automatic demotion stamp written by the nightly jobs: 28 for an expired certificate and 34 for expired insurance. Each one records the reason on the company record.
Where they stand now: Of those 62, 43 are still held out of approved status and 18 have since been re-approved by a person after the firm produced a replacement document.
Why the 18 matter more than the 43: Because they demonstrate the full loop working rather than just the enforcement half: automatic demotion, human chase, replacement document, human re-approval. A system that only demotes produces a register full of blocked firms and a workaround. This one produces a cycle.
What the engine actually finds: Across the registers as at the read date: 47 expired supplier documents, 63 expired staff health assessments, 47 expired subcontractor insurance records, 37 expired subcontractor certificates, 11 expired accreditation certificates and one expired calibration certificate. All visible and counted rather than unknown. It also showed 29 instrument calibrations falling due inside thirty days, which is a month of work seen before any of it becomes a problem.
And the clean ones: Zero expired vehicle MOTs and zero expired e-learning records, on a fleet and a training population that are both actively monitored. Those two zeroes are the outcome the mechanism exists to produce, and they are worth quoting alongside the failures rather than instead of them.

Why the precision Every figure here counted, not rounded Counted in the construction deployment, July 2026

The design detail worth noticing

Automation that quietly undoes
a commercial decision is
worse than no automation.

Blacklisted firms are left alone: The expiry jobs explicitly refuse to touch a blacklisted subcontractor. If your business has deliberately decided not to work with somebody, an overnight process is not going to reverse that decision by moving them into a queue where they look like a normal renewal.
Nobody is prompted to chase a firm you have dropped: The register pages hide blacklisted and archived companies, so a chase list never contains somebody your directors have already ruled out. That sounds small until the first time an administrator emails a renewal request to a firm the business fell out with.
The demotion is recorded, not silent: The reason is written onto the company record and stays in the history even after re-approval, which is useful evidence that the check was being made continuously rather than once at onboarding. Under CDM 2015 that continuity is the point.
The throttle: The general reminders job emails the assigned staff for anything due within seven days or already overdue, and throttles itself to one email per reminder per day, so a chased item does not become noise that people learn to filter.

Blacklisted subcontractors excluded from expiry automation in Unibuild

Client testimonial

SME Building Services,
in their own words.

Niki Scarth, office administrator at SME Building Services, standing in the firm’s Croydon office with the SME Building Services mark on the wall behind her — **Niki Scarth**Office administrator, SME Building Services LtdCroydon · on Unibuild since 2023
Read the SME case study

It has always been a pleasure to work with Darshan and his team to create our completely bespoke system, which I can only describe as brilliant.

The system is constantly growing and improving. Whenever we need something added or changed, whether it's a new form that would work better for us or a new idea to improve the way we work, Darshan works his magic and makes it happen!

It has genuinely changed the way we work for the better, improving our record-keeping, automating processes and standardising practices across the company, saving us both time and money.

It's also improved the service we provide to our clients, who love being able to view their job and asset information live, at the click of a button.

Thank you, Unibuild!

Questions

Asked by whoever owns
compliance in your business.

Is this compliance tracking software?

Yes. Unibuild’s reminders engine is compliance tracking software for trade firms. Twelve expiry registers (insurance, certificates, calibration, training, health assessments and vehicle dates) are checked overnight. A lapsed subcontractor is taken off the approved list before the office opens. It is part of the Unibuild platform rather than a separate tracker, so the dates it watches are the ones the rest of the system already holds.

How is it priced?

The reminders engine is part of Unibuild’s one monthly figure for the firm, quoted in writing and fixed for three years, which covers every module with unlimited users and no per-user charge. How pricing works, or ask for your firm’s quote.

Is there a free trial?

Yes, 14 days of the full platform, no card. Load one register, your subcontractor insurances say, and the first overnight run shows you what has already lapsed.

What happens to the certificate dates we already hold in a spreadsheet?

They are loaded into the registers as part of implementation, with the document files attached where you have them, and most firms go live in about two weeks, in phases. Each register holds a name, a holder, an expiry date and a recipient list, so the import is usually straightforward from whatever shape your spreadsheet is in. Reconciling the spreadsheet against what you actually hold is worth doing once, at migration.

Does it actually do anything, or just send emails nobody reads?

Both, and the difference matters. Most registers notify: amber at thirty days, red once expired, with the email to the holder written from the record. The subcontractor certificate and insurance registers go further. Any subcontractor whose latest certificate or insurance has expired is moved out of approved status overnight, with the reason written onto their record. That removes them from every form you would use to instruct them. In the live deployment, 62 of 164 subcontractor records carry that automatic stamp.

Will it escalate if somebody ignores a reminder?

Yes. Overdue items keep appearing on the dashboard and keep being counted, and escalation routes them to the person above once a date has passed. General reminders keep emailing once a day until they are marked complete. Copying a manager in after a set number of days is set up to suit your firm.

If a subcontractor is demoted automatically, how do we put it right?

Update the expiry date on the register once they send the new certificate, and re-approve them on their record. It is a two minute job. The demotion stamp stays in the history, which shows the check was being made continuously rather than once at onboarding.

Does it keep running when our compliance manager is on leave?

Yes. The overnight jobs need no login and nobody to open a file. They ran last night and they run during the week your compliance manager is on annual leave, booked on the holiday planner like everyone else’s. Every email they send is logged in full with its send result.

Can we set our own warning periods? We want ninety days on insurance.

Yes. The warning period is set to suit the register and the client, so ninety days on insurance sits alongside a shorter band on something that renews quickly. The defaults are a thirty day band on the registers and seven days on general reminders. Your own lead times per register are set up during implementation, inside the monthly fee.

Which channels do the reminders go out on?

Email, and push notification in your own app, which is one of the most used features on the platform. Telephone numbers are stored and shown against the register rows. If your people live on text or WhatsApp, that is the channel we build your reminders onto. Which events chase whom, on what channel and how many days out, is set to your firm.

We already use a pre-qualification scheme. Does this duplicate it?

No, it tracks it. The scheme membership itself is one of the certificate types held per subcontractor, with its expiry date, and the overnight job acts on that date. What the scheme cannot do is tell you that a subcontractor’s employers’ liability expired last Thursday, and stop your team raising them an order on Friday. That is what this does.

Last reviewed November 2026

By trade

Who leans on this hardest?

Trades carrying so many dates that no one person can hold them: a statutory clock on the order, an examination on the machine, and a card in somebody pocket.