Compliance & Certification Cost Tracker Spreadsheet | True Cost of Accreditation Excel Google Sheets Template | Audit and Renewal Log

📋 COMPLIANCE & CERTIFICATION COST TRACKER — EXCEL & GOOGLE SHEETS

Everybody in the building knows what the certificates cost, because the
renewal invoices arrive every year and somebody signs them off.

Almost nobody knows what holding them actually costs, because three of the
four things that make up the number never appear on an invoice at all.

This file writes all four down, and then asks the only question that matters
about each one.

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NINE LINKED TABS

· Start Here — what each tab expects and where to type.
· Setup — seven numbers, and two short lists you name yourself.
· The Work — one row per thing you did. Six things typed, the rest worked out.
· The Whole Bill — the four costs, added up, against what they bought.
· By Certificate — what each one costs all in, and what work it gated.
· Where Time Goes — which part of compliance eats the days.
· Renewal Year — month by month, so the lumps are not a surprise twice.
· What It Must Win — the tab this file exists for.
· Overview — the whole year on one screen.

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FROM THE WORKED YEAR INSIDE THE FILE

Twelve certificates. 170 entries. One year.

The renewal fees $40,090
Everything else you paid $49,485
Your own hours (1,160 of them) $45,249
The days the work stopped (14.5) $34,075
THE WHOLE BILL $168,899
Which is this many times the fees 4.21x
And this much of your turnover 2.5%

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$40,090. AND $168,899.

The first number is what the renewal notices said. The second is what holding
the certificates actually cost, once the rest of it was written down.

In most businesses the multiple lands somewhere between three and five. Until
you have put the hours and the stopped days in, you are quoting a quarter of
the number.

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THE THREE COSTS THAT ARRIVE WITHOUT AN INVOICE

Getting ready costs more than the fee. Weeks of somebody pulling records
together, updating procedures and chasing signatures, every single year. In
the worked year that was 452 hours on its own.

The audit day stops the work. Somebody senior walks an auditor round instead
of running the job. Six audit days across the year came to 14.5 days of
stopped work and $34,075 — more than the six cheapest certificates on the
list cost put together.

And then there is what they found. Corrective actions, re-inspections, a
consultant, a course for four people. $49,485, all of it belonging to the
certificate that caused it, and none of it in anybody's compliance budget.

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THE TAB THIS FILE EXISTS FOR

The question is never whether a certificate is useful. It is how much of the
work you would still be offered without it.

What It Must Win takes one certificate — the one you argue about most — and
works out the answer: the share of the gated work you would have to keep
before holding it stopped being worth the money.

In the worked year that number is 83.1%. Almost nobody guesses anywhere near
that high, and that is the useful part. A certificate does not have to be
indispensable to be worth holding. It only has to be worth more than it costs.

And it does all of that before you have typed a single row, because it runs
on the seven numbers in Setup.

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$323 ON ONE. $18 ON ANOTHER.

Underneath, the same arithmetic runs across everything you hold. Each
certificate gets what it gated for every dollar it costs you all in.

The best one on the worked ledger is 4.2% of the bill and gates $2.3m of
work. The dearest one is 21.4% of the bill and gates less than half of that.
Nobody in that business knew, because nobody had ever put the two columns
next to each other.

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THE ONES NOBODY HAS EVER ASKED TO SEE

Two of the twelve gated nothing anybody asked for in the whole year. $9,130.

Several of those you must hold whatever anybody asks, and the file says so
plainly rather than pretending it is a fault. But it is a number worth
putting a name to before the renewal notice arrives.

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APRIL COST $33,798

Renewal Year lays the whole thing out month by month: things due, fees
due, all the money, the hours and the days the work stopped.

Two renewals sharing a month is not a coincidence worth living with. Most
schemes will move a renewal date if you ask before the anniversary, and this
is the tab that tells you which month to ask about.

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WHAT YOU ACTUALLY TYPE

Six things per entry: the date, which certificate it was for, what kind of
thing it was, what you paid, how many of your own hours it took, and how many
days the work stopped.

Every rate comes from Setup, so changing one reprices the whole year. Every
row works out what the hours cost, what the stopped days cost and the all-in
total — on the row, where you can see it.

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WHAT YOU GET

Two workbooks and a guide. One workbook has the year above already filled in,
so you can see what every column expects before you touch anything. The second
is the same file completely blank — same nine tabs, same formulas — ready for
your own certificates from the first row. The guide is a plain-English PDF.

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EXCEL AND GOOGLE SHEETS

Built as .xlsx. Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, and Google Sheets
through File → Import → Upload. LibreOffice too. No macros, no add-ons, no
account to create, nothing to install, no subscription. You download a file
and it is yours.

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QUESTIONS PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK

We do not record the hours anywhere.
Nobody does. An honest half-hour estimate per entry, put in as you go, beats
a precise number that does not exist. It only has to be consistent between
certificates to do its job.

We only hold two certificates, not twelve.
Then it takes ten minutes to fill in and the answer is still worth having.
There are fourteen slots; you are not obliged to use them.

How do we work out what a certificate gated?
Ask whoever fills the prequalification forms in. They will know which jobs
asked to see what, and a defensible estimate is all the last two tabs need.

Some of ours are legally required.
Those belong in the file, so the cost is counted, but not on the last tab.
What It Must Win is for the ones that are a commercial choice, and the file
says so.

Is this only for construction?
No. It works anywhere a business holds standards, schemes, licences,
registers or mandatory training — a manufacturer, a food producer, a haulier,
a care provider, a laboratory, an agency on a public buyer framework.

Does it hold personal data?
No. Certificates, activities and amounts. There are no names of individuals
anywhere in it.

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WHAT THIS IS NOT

Not a compliance management system, an audit tool or a document control
package. Not connected to anything — nothing syncs, nothing logs in. It does
not know your standards, your scheme rules, your evidence or your auditor.
Not legal, safety or regulatory advice.

It will not tell you whether you are compliant. It will tell you what being
compliant has cost, and what it has won.

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Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and
the buyer protection are all handled by Etsy. I never ask for access to
anything — no password, no accounts login, no bank feed. You download a file;
that is the whole transaction.

The example business, its certificates and its figures are invented. The
arithmetic behind every number is not.