Licence and insurance vault

Most tradies have their licences and insurance certificates scattered across email attachments, a folder in their accountant's Dropbox, and the glovebox of the ute. Karven's vault gives you one place to store them, automatic expiry warnings, and the ability to attach the current cert to any quote in one click.

What lives in the vault

• Trade licences: builder, plumber, electrician, gas, refrigeration, asbestos removal, etc.
• Insurance policies: public liability, workers compensation, professional indemnity, motor.
• High-risk work licences: forklift, rigging, scaffolding, EWP.
• Qualifications: Cert III/IV, white card, working at heights, confined space.
• Subcontractor certificates: what your subbies have on file with you.

Each item has a file (the cert PDF), key data (number, issuer, expiry), and an audit trail of when it was added or updated.

Adding an item

Settings → Compliance → Vault → Add.

Pick a category, drag in the PDF, and Karven OCRs the document to pre-fill expiry, issue, and number fields. You confirm or correct, hit save.

OCR isn't perfect, it gets the expiry right ~85% of the time on a clean scan, less on a photo of a crumpled paper cert. Always sanity-check what it extracted.

Expiry warnings

Karven warns you:

• 60 days out. Email reminder: "Your public liability policy expires in 60 days. Time to renew."
• 30 days out. Email + in-app banner.
• 7 days out. Email + SMS + in-app banner.
• Day of expiry. SMS.
• Expired. In-app banner stays up, and any quote you try to send shows a warning that your insurance is expired.

You can mute warnings on items you're deliberately not renewing (e.g. a licence you've moved off), or shift the warning windows globally.

Stamping quotes with current status

Every quote PDF includes a footer with your current licence and insurance stamp ("Licensed builder QBCC #XXX, Public liability $20m"). The stamp is generated at PDF render time, so it always reflects the current vault state, not a snapshot from when you set things up.

If your insurance is expired and you try to send a quote, Karven warns you. You can override, sometimes you're in the middle of renewal and the quote can't wait, but Karven logs the override and shows it in your audit trail.

Sharing with a principal contractor

Principal contractors typically demand to see your licence and insurance before they let you on site. Karven gives you a share link, /vault/share/<token>, that shows your current certs to whoever has the link. The link is read-only, expires in 30 days, and you can revoke it.

Sharing is way better than emailing PDFs because:

• The principal contractor always sees the current version, even if you renew between when you sent the link and when they look.
• You can revoke if you stop working with them.
• There's an audit trail of every view.

Subcontractor side

For your subbies' certificates: Subbies → [Name] → Compliance.

Karven holds copies of each subbie's licence and insurance. The expiry warnings flow to you, "Mark's PL expires in 30 days", and if it lapses without being renewed, Karven pauses RCTI and quote-sending for jobs that include that subbie.

You can also send the subbie a link to upload their own renewals directly. They use the same /vault/share/<token> mechanism in reverse.

State-level licence verification

If you're on Pro, Karven calls the relevant state register weekly to verify your licence is current and unmodified. If anything changes, a condition added, a suspension applied, you get an email within 24 hours.

This catches the situation where a tradie's licence has been suspended without them realising (e.g. an unpaid renewal fee). It happens more than you'd think, and it's a serious problem if you find out by being denied access to a site.

What Karven doesn't do

• Karven doesn't issue licences. You renew through your state register.
• Karven doesn't quote insurance. Your broker does.
• Karven doesn't tell you what insurance you need. That's a conversation with your broker and your specific risk profile.

A common mistake

Storing only the cover page of an insurance policy. The full policy schedule is what shows the limits, exclusions, and named insured. Karven accepts multi-page PDFs and that's what you should be uploading, the full schedule, not just the certificate of currency.

Year-end snapshot

At the end of each financial year, Karven generates a compliance snapshot, every licence, insurance, and qualification that was current during the year, with dates of currency. Useful at tax time, and sometimes asked for by your insurer at renewal.