The three options
Small businesses end up in one of three places. The first is memory and a calendar: the owner or the office manager knows roughly when things expire and puts reminders in a phone. It costs nothing and fails the first time a busy month lands on a renewal. The second is a compliance or HR platform: EmployeeConnect, Deputy add-ons, SafetyCulture, Donesafe and similar, at roughly A$5 to A$20 per user per month, which is A$1,500 to A$6,000 a year for 25 staff, plus the job of getting the crew to use another app. The third is a register built in the spreadsheet tool the business already pays for, with a form for new documents and a script that emails warnings. That costs a day or two of setup and nothing after.
When a spreadsheet register is enough
A register in Google Sheets or Excel is enough when there are fewer than about 30 people, when the number of dated items per person is under 15, and when the business does not need a client-facing portal login for auditors. It stops being enough when you have multiple sites with separate managers who each need their own view, or when a head contractor requires evidence uploads in a specific platform anyway.
What the register needs
One row per item, not per person: John's forklift licence and John's first aid are two rows. Each row holds the holder, the item, the issuing body, the number, the issue date, the expiry date, a link to the document copy, and a status that is calculated from the dates rather than typed. Warning thresholds at 90, 60 and 30 days, with a named person told by email on a schedule; a colour in a cell is not a warning if nobody opens the sheet. A form the staff member fills in from a phone to add a new ticket, with a photo upload, so documents arrive without the office retyping them. A log of what was checked and when, which is what an auditor or a client actually asks for.
The common mistakes
Storing the document copies in someone's email rather than next to the row. Recording only the expiry date and not the renewal lead time, which for some licences (SafeWork NSW high risk work, some Building Commission NSW licences) is weeks. Treating first aid as one item when it is two with different cycles. Letting the register live in one person's personal account, so it goes with them when they leave.
Specific questions
First aid and CPR expiry: the two-cycle mistake small businesses make · Tracking Working With Children Check expiry across staff and contractors
How Stewart Systems does it
Stewart Systems in Wollongong builds this as the Register system: a register in the client's own Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, the intake form, the warning schedule and a one-page walkthrough for the team, typically live within one to two weeks of receiving the documents. Fixed price, agreed after a free Snapshot, and the business keeps everything if it stops.
Written by Christian Stewart, Stewart Systems, Wollongong. Published 2026-09-29. Records and flags, not legal, WHS or insurance advice.
Other guides: What a compliance register for a NSW trade business should hold · Does Xero track licences and compliance?