Best ways to track certifications with training management software

Keeping up with renewals, third-party credentials, and company-wide standards is no small task. But with the right systems in place, it doesn’t have to feel like you’re always one step behind, crossing your fingers during an audit. When certification tracking is built into your workflows, it becomes less about catching mistakes and more about staying ahead.

That shift matters. Because the more certifications you manage, the more moving parts you’re responsible for, from tracking different validity periods to making sure managers have the insights needed to follow up with their teams. And when even one piece falls through the cracks, it can disrupt more than just the actual training. It can slow down operations, create audit stress, or put your safety and compliance at risk.

The good news? There’s a better way. In this guide, we’ll show you how to simplify certification tracking with smarter tools, clearer oversight, and built-in automation so you can act early instead of reacting late.

Why is improved certification tracking (especially third-party) so urgent?

When certifications are current and clearly tracked, especially third-party ones, everything runs more smoothly. You reduce friction, build trust, and avoid those “Wait, this is due tomorrow?” surprises.

More specifically, here’s what better tracking helps you avoid:

• Compliance fines: If regulators discover expired certifications, you could face fines or penalties.

• Legal liability: If an incident occurs and someone involved didn’t have a valid certification, the legal implications could be severe.

• Operational disruption: Expired credentials can halt production lines, delay projects, or trigger failed audits.

• Reputational damage: Clients, suppliers, partners, and customers trust that you’re following best practices. A public compliance failure can hurt your brand.  

The public history of damage speaks volumes. A notable 76% of companies failed a compliance audit due to incomplete training records, according to Gartner. The average cost of a data breach has climbed to $5.09 million, while the median SEC whistleblower penalty per case now stands at $14.8 million. Meanwhile, 60% of consumers say their trust in a brand erodes following reputational damage from compliance violations.

These scenarios are preventable when you treat certification tracking as a strategic priority. With more regulatory and audit scrutiny, especially on certifications like ISO relying on employee training records, proactive tracking is essential.

Why certification tracking matters more in 2025

Gartner reports that the top three concerns for compliance leaders this year are:

1. Third-party risk  

2. Regulatory complexity

3. Operational resilience

All three are directly tied to a well-run certification tracking process:

• Third-party risk: External certifications (like SafeSport or Red Cross CPR) are harder to control but just as critical to track.

• Regulatory complexity: Industries like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing are seeing tighter oversight and stricter training documentation requirements.

• Operational resilience: If expired certifications interrupt service delivery, your organization doesn’t just lose time. You’re risking revenue, trust, and employee safety.

This means regulators and stakeholders expect more visibility and fewer gaps. And manual tracking has its limits. A reliable system shows your auditors and partners that your compliance strategy is built into the way you work.

Types of certification tracking: Challenges and solutions

The types of certifications you’re managing will shape how you track them. Different levels require different workflows, visibility, and renewal rules. Let’s break them down.

Individual certifications 

These are certifications tied to specific employees. This includes OSHA, HIPAA, forklift operation, and first aid. In many industries, these are legally required, and failing to track them properly can expose your organization to fines or legal liability.  

The challenges:

• Each employee may have a different renewal timeline

• Certification may vary by role, location, or department

• Personal accountability is key, but hard to manage at scale

What to do: For tracking large groups of employees, two strategies are essential: automation and manager involvement. Automation helps handle renewal reminders, while managers know when to follow up with employees at risk of lapsing.

Team-level certifications 

These apply to groups performing specialized functions. For example, an emergency response team might need annual crisis management training. And a scrum team? They may need to maintain agile or SAFe certifications.  

The challenges:

• All team members must be certified for the group to function

• A single lapse can delay projects or invalidate compliance

• Training may be recurring and role-specific

What to do: Because one expired certification can impact the whole team, group-based tracking and manager dashboards can save the day (and your next audit). Add automated reminders to keep everyone on schedule and use leaderboards to encourage friendly competition and highlight teams with full compliance.

Company-level certifications 

Think ISO 9001, SOC 2, or HIPAA. These represent a company-wide commitment to standards, but maintaining them requires participation from individuals across the organization.  

The challenges:

• Certification is at the organizational level, but compliance is executed by individuals

• Requires cross-functional coordination and ongoing documentation

• Auditors expect training records that prove adherence

What to do: Systematize a learning culture around protocol. Even if the certification is issued to the company, it’s your people who bring it to life. Keep training records up to date, track compliance at both the individual and organizational level, and embed training into workflows.

Third-party certifications

Third-party certifications are credentials earned outside your organization but are essential for your people to do their jobs. Think: SafeSport for coaches, CPR from the Red Cross, or PMP from PMI. Even though you don’t issue these certifications, your organization is still accountable for tracking them, especially when audits, safety, or public trust are on the line.

The challenges:

• Employees may not proactively report when a third-party certification expires or needs updating

• Certifications stored as PDFs outside your systems can be lost or forgotten to renew

• Compliance and legal teams often track visibility, which creates gaps during audits or investigations

What to do: Track third-party credentials with the same rules and urgency as internal training. Set up automated reminders for employees to renew through the issuing body, and give managers and compliance leads access to dashboards that show certification status. This keeps everyone aligned and your organization protected.

Certification types that require renewal tracking

These categories cut across individual, team, and third-party certifications and are especially important to their expiry cycles:

1. Regulatory and compliance certifications

These certifications are legally required and often have strict renewal cycles. Examples include OSHA, HIPAA, WHMIS, GDPR, and others. Missing your employees’ expired certifications can lead to hefty fines or legal action.

Tracking needs: Expiry alerts, audit logs, renewal documentation

2. Safety and emergency certifications

Workplace or public safety certifications must be current to respond to emergencies or meet insurance requirements. This includes CPR, first aid, fire safety, HAZMAT, and more.

Tracking needs: Renewal reminders, PDF uploads, compliance dashboards

3. Professional licenses and accreditations

Issued by external bodies, these certifications are required to practice in certain fields. Any lapses can result in loss of professional standing or job eligibility. Examples include PMP (Project Management), RN (Registered Nurse), and CPA (Accounting).

Tracking needs: License numbers, expiry dates, renewal status

4. Equipment or role-specific certifications

You’ll track any certifications tied to operating machinery or performing specialized tasks. Here, expired certifications for forklift operators, electrical safety, and others can halt operations or violate safety protocols.

Tracking needs: Group-based tracking, manager oversight, renewal workflows

How to upgrade manual certificate management to strategic oversight 

If your current process involves Slack messages like “Just checking in to see if this got done,” this section is for you. A modern LMS or certification tracking system should give you proactive visibility into what’s expiring, when it needs action, and how to keep things moving. Here’s what certificate management looks like with a better system:

Custom expiry rules by certification type 

Different certifications have different validity periods. OSHA might require renewal every year. HIPAA might be every two. And some certifications are one-time only, while others require periodic recertification or continuous education. This means you need flexibility in your system to match each rule type.  

It’s also important to track mandatory training that supports company recertifications. Your employees might not be individually certified in ISO standards, but their training still contributes to the company’s eligibility. That needs to be tracked too.

Custom expiration rules track data like:

• Different validity periods (e.g., OSHA during one year, HIPAA over two years) 

• Support for recurring vs. one-time certifications 

• Mandatory training that supports a company's certification renewal cycle—even if employees aren’t individually certified 

Flexibility for certification rules was especially important for TMA Systems, a company with multiple departments operating under different compliance timelines. They needed tailored renewal rules that aligned with real-world operations. With the right LMS configuration, they were able to adapt certification tracking by team, timeline, and training type without manual oversight.  

Real-time certification status dashboards 

You shouldn’t have to dig through spreadsheets to know who’s certified and who isn’t.  

Dashboards can surface key metrics like:

• Certifications that are valid, expired, or expiring soon

• Filters by location, team, job title, or certification type

• Completion status for training linked to company-wide certifications like ISO

Take Toro, for instance. They were named a Fortune Most Admired Company in 2024, and for good reason. They rolled out a flexible, scalable certification program that gave them real-time visibility into their global distributor network. With certification status dashboards, they could spot gaps early and even improve turnaround times. The result was happier customers, more engaged employees, and a noticeable boost in operational efficiency and profit growth.

Automated expiry and renewal notifications 

The best systems don’t just track dates, they also act on them. Automated reminders can be sent to learners, managers, and admins, and customized to match your renewal cycles. Some companies prefer 30-day reminders. Others want them at 60 or 90 days. The flexibility to fit your workflow is key.

That’s exactly what Life Time did. After centralizing their training content, Life Time Academy saw higher completion rates and faster certification timelines. One simple shift, email reminders that linked directly to recertification training, helped learners stay on track and lightened the lift for administrators. 

Streamlining the renewal process 

Tracking expiration is only half the job. The real value comes from what your system does next: handling renewals once they’re due. Here’s what a streamlined renewal process looks like in practice:

Automated recertification and training assignment

When a certification is nearing expiry, your LMS should auto-enroll employees in the required training. It should also link them to any updated policies or compliance materials they need to review. 

So, what should your system automate? Start with the basics: automatically enroll learners in required refresher courses before their certifications expire. Also, link them to updated policy reviews or compliance content needed to maintain company certifications. Simple steps like these go a long way in keeping your renewals on track. 

Email reminders learners actually read

Realistically, some employees don’t live in the LMS. They check their inbox more than they check their learning portal. That’s why renewal reminders need to show up where your people are.

Email reminders, especially those that include direct links to the recertification training, make it easier to take action right away. The result? Higher completions and fewer delays.

Manager oversight on team training

It’s not just on the learner. Managers need visibility, too. Without it, they’re flying blind when it comes to team readiness, compliance risks, and upcoming certification deadlines.  

That’s where role-based dashboards come in. This helps managers spot at-risk team members before it’s too late, track completion rates across locations, teams, and departments, and step in early to coach. And from an admin perspective, Absorb is “really informative and simple to set up…user-friendly and flexible depending on what the course requires.” It’s a system that supports everyone, from learners to leaders.

Reporting and audit readiness 

Being audit-ready isn’t your ability to quickly dig up old training records. It means knowing your data is clean, current, and easy to share. At a minimum, your system should cover the basics for reporting and tracking:

Renewal-focused compliance reports 

Need to show which certifications are expiring in the next 60 days? Or who’s overdue on mandatory compliance training? When auditors or internal stakeholders need clean data from you quickly, you need reports that show exactly who is certified, when they earned it, when it expires, and whether they’ve completed the training to renew.

These reports track:

• Certifications that are valid, expiring soon, or overdue

• Date of certification, expiration, and status of any linked training

• Completion rates by team, location, or certification type

You should also be able to quickly create role or audit-specific reports for ISO, OSHA, HIPAA, an internal quarterly review, or any certificate information you need.

Tracking renewal cycles over time

You can also use real-time reporting to spot trends and patterns in your data. Are certain departments consistently missing recertification deadlines? Are there seasonal dips in training completion?  

To track renewals over time, your system should:

• Monitor late completions or missed renewals by team or location

• Find seasonal spikes or training overload periods

• Identify where reminders or manager oversight are falling short

With renewal reporting, you have the chance to address renewal trends before they affect compliance metrics.

Integration for legal and compliance alignment 

You’ve got reports. You’ve got trends. Now you need to make sure your certification data doesn’t live in a silo. Legal, HR, and compliance teams all rely on up-to-date records, so it needs to connect to the rest of your business. Here’s how.

Sync expiry and renewal data with HR or legal systems 

Let’s say someone’s certification expires. Your system should automatically flag it and act on it.  That might mean restricting someone’s access to certain systems or tasks, notifying your HR or legal teams, or updating personnel files

This keeps your compliance process airtight. If a regulator asks for documentation, your legal team has it instantly.  

Aligning certification data with HR and legal workflows helps everyone stay informed, reduces the risk of gaps, and reinforces the shared responsibility for compliance across the business.  

Recap: What your LMS should include to simplify renewal tracking 

If you’re evaluating LMS tools or certification tracking software, look for these must-haves:

• Custom expiry rules by certification type

• Automated reminders sent to learners and managers

• Real-time dashboards showing certification status

• Bulk reporting and certificate download options

• Integration with HR and legal systems

These features don’t just save time. They reduce risk and help ensure nothing falls through the cracks.  

Certification tracker or LMS?

You might be thinking an LMS is too feature-rich for your needs. Use this table to scope out what your goals are and how you want to manage and grow your team.

• table
  
  • row
    
    • Feature
    • Certification Tracker
    • LMS (e.g., Absorb LMS)
  • row
    
    • Core purpose
    • Track certification/renewal status, expirations, and compliance alerts
    • Deliver, manage, and track all learning activities including certifications
  • row
    
    • Training delivery
    • Typically none; tracks external training completions
    • Built-in delivery: eLearning, ILT, blended, video, microlearning
  • row
    
    • Learner experience
    • Minimal; often admin-facing dashboards
    • Modern, branded learner portals; mobile app; gamification
  • row
    
    • Automation
    • Renewal reminders and expiry alerts
    • Auto-enrollments, learning paths, recertification workflows
  • row
    • Reporting
    • Compliance status and expiry reports
    • Comprehensive analytics: course completion, engagement, assessments, certifications
  • row
    • Audience support
    • Usually internal staff only
    • Internal, external (partners, suppliers, customers)
  • row
    • Integration
    • HRIS, SSO; may require custom API for learning data
    • HRIS, CRM, content libraries, SSO, video conferencing, e-commerce
  • row
    • Cost-efficiency
    • Lower cost if you only need tracking
    • Higher initial cost, but unified delivery and tracking reduces duplication

Certification tracker vs LMS: Which one fits the job?

If you just need a place to log expiry dates and download certificates, a basic certification tracker might work. But if you’re responsible for assigning training, monitoring completions, or supporting audits, especially when certifications tie to safety, compliance, or performance, an LMS with certification tracking is a stronger option.

Overall, choosing the right system depends on your level of risk, team size, and how complex certification is in your organization.

Consider these questions with your team:

• Do we only need to monitor expirations, or do we also assign and track required training?

• Are our certifications linked to legal, safety, or regulatory consequences?

• Do managers, HR, or compliance teams need live access to certification data?

• Will we need to report on completion trends, overdue certifications, or training effectiveness?

• How many third-party certifications do we manage, and can we track them alongside internal ones?

If your answers lean toward complexity, accountability, or cross-functional visibility, you’re not just looking for a tracker. Instead, consider a system that helps you stay ahead of risk. An LMS with built-in certification management allows you to work better across teams.

Best practices by industry

Let’s bring all this guidance together and get you started with what certifications you need to track in your specific industry.

Healthcare

Patient care depends on qualified staff, and that means staying on top of every license, certification, and continuing ed deadline.

Tips:

• Sync certification data with your HR system to automatically limit clinical access if licenses expire

• Automate continuing education tracking to ease admin work and reduce missed deadlines

• Customize renewal timelines based on roles, jurisdictions, or union requirements

Manufacturing

With so many moving parts (quite literally), every certification plays a role in keeping teams safe and operations steady.

Tips:

• Set location-specific rules to match varying equipment, roles, and safety protocols across sites

• Give EHS leaders access to real-time dashboards showing which certifications are valid or at-risk

• Trigger training refreshers based on incident trends to proactively address high-risk areas

Finance and insurance

Your team can’t protect clients and meet regulations without the right certifications and training in place.

Tips:

• Maintain clean, timestamped training records that are easy to export for auditors or regulators

• Automate policy acknowledgments and compliance reviews to reduce manual follow-up

• Limit access to sensitive systems unless certification status is up to date

Government and public safety

From essential services to public safety outcomes, up-to-date certifications are what help government teams act fast and do it correctly.

Tips:

• Stagger renewals to avoid everyone in a department expiring at once

• Deliver email reminders and mobile access to training for first responders or inspectors in the field

• Let supervisors view certification readiness across their teams and take quick action when needed

Technology

Keeping up with renewals in tech shows your team and the public you’re doing compliance well, which is key for maintaining trust and keeping deals moving.

Tips:

• Connect employee training progress to company-level certifications to support compliance at scale

• Use integrations to sync data with legal, HR, and GRC systems for accurate status reporting

• Set up auto-reminders and reassignment flows to ensure no one gets stuck in a bottleneck

Education

Certification for coaches and educators shows parents and the public that you’re trained, capable, and ready to lead.

Tips:

• Auto-enroll staff in seasonal certifications like first aid or SafeSport ahead of school or program starts

• Give administrators and directors dashboards that highlight who is certified and who needs attention

• Track both mandatory and supplemental certifications so you’re always audit-ready

Don’t just track what’s left, track strategically

With the swish of a wand (actually more like weeks of setup and implementation), you can avoid chasing down expirations or worrying about what’s expiring. And it’s not wishful thinking; it’s about building a strategic system.  

Whether you’re managing internal training or third-party credentials, the goal is the same: complete visibility, zero surprises, and full confidence that your team is covered. The more automated and integrated your system, the more confident you can be that your team is always audit-ready.

Is your current certification process built for scale, visibility, and resilience?  

If not, now’s the time to shift from patched together systems to a strategic learning system (SLS) for certification tracking. Check out our webinar on strategic learning to find out more.