What goes on a certificate of destruction

For most of your clients, the certificate of destruction (COD) is the product. It's the piece of paper they file to show that confidential records were destroyed, and it's the first thing they reach for when someone asks. A clear, consistent certificate saves you phone calls and makes audits easier.

The fields most certificates include

• Your company's name, logo, address and phone, plus your certification statement and number if you're certified
• A unique certificate number that never repeats, for example COD-2026-00412
• The customer's name, and the site name and address where the work was done
• The service date and time. For off-site work, the pickup date and time and the destruction date and time
• The method: on-site shredding at the client's location, or off-site shredding at your plant
• What was destroyed and how much: containers by type, boxes, pounds or drives
• Who did the work: the driver and helper, and the plant operator for off-site jobs
• The client's printed name and signature, or the reason there isn't one
• A statement of destruction and a chain-of-custody statement
• The name, title and signature of the person authorized to sign for your company

Habits that keep certificates trustworthy

1. 1Number certificates in sequence and never reuse a number.
2. 2Never edit an issued certificate. If something is wrong, issue a corrected version that points back to the original and says why it changed. Keep both.
3. 3Store certificates where you can find them by customer, site and date. Clients will ask for last year's copies.
4. 4Keep records for as long as your clients and your certification require. Many companies keep at least seven years.
5. 5Send the certificate quickly. A certificate that arrives the same day builds trust; one that arrives weeks later invites questions.

How Trakro handles it

Trakro builds each certificate from the driver's service record, numbers it automatically, and emails it to the site's certificate contacts. Issued certificates are locked; fixes create a new, numbered version and both are kept in the history.