Set up a document type

Define a new Certifiable Document — what it represents, which entity types it applies to, who approves it, which email templates drive its lifecycle, and how renewal works.

When to use this

Whenever your business needs to track a new compliance document — a new insurance type, a new accreditation, a regulatory licence, an industry-specific safety check. Each Certifiable Document type is set up once and then attached to as many vendors, customers or employees as need it.

Prerequisites

  • Certified Documents installed and the post-deploy steps confirmed (see Install & configure)
  • A list of internal approvers (one or more NetSuite Employee records) for documents of this type
  • (Optional) Bespoke email templates if you want different wording than the defaults

Walkthrough

Walkthrough coming

A step-by-step Scribe walkthrough for this task is being recorded. Track its status in the Scribe register (internal).

Step 1: Create the Certifiable Document

  1. Navigate to FullClarity → Certified Documents → Certifiable Documents → New.

  2. Fill in the main fields:

    • Name — what the document is, in the customer's own language (e.g. Public Liability Insurance, White Card, Working with Children Check).
    • Document Description — the long-form description shown to the external party on the upload page. Be specific — "Current certificate of currency for $20m public liability" reads more clearly than "PL insurance".
    • Include Start Date — tick if the system should ask the recipient for a start date when they upload.
    • Include End Date — tick if the document expires. This drives the renewal countdown and the automatic mark-as-expired behaviour.

  3. Set which entity types can have this document required:

    • Required From Customer
    • Required From Vendor
    • Required from Employee

    Tick whichever apply. Most compliance documents apply to one type; a few (e.g. ABN evidence) apply to multiple.

  4. Set the Document Type — Customer / Vendor / Employee. This drives the decline-reason filter on the external upload page.

Step 2: Choose the operating workflow

The Operating Workflow field determines whether requests fire automatically or wait for human action:

  • FC CD Docs Submitted (Auto Send) — emails fire as soon as a Required Doc is created. Use this for documents that always need to be requested immediately (the common case).
  • FC CD Docs Submitted (Manual) — emails stage but wait for an internal user to action them. Use this when you want to confirm contact details or timing before triggering the first chase.

This is set per certifiable document, so you can mix Manual and Auto Send across your library.

Step 3: Choose email templates

Four template slots map to the four lifecycle events:

  • Request Email Template — the initial request email
  • Reminder Email Template — sent on the 7-day reminder cadence
  • Renewal Email Template — sent N days before expiry
  • Rejection Email Template — sent when an internal reviewer rejects a received document

Leave the defaults in place to use the bundled templates. Override individual slots if you want bespoke wording for this document type.

Step 4: Set the renewal window

  • Renewal Days — defaults to 30. Number of days before the document's end date that the system should automatically request renewal. Set to 0 to disable automatic renewal for this document type (manual-only renewals).

Step 5: Set up the approval chain

  1. Save the Certifiable Document.
  2. Open it in view mode — an Approvers subtab appears.
  3. Click New on the Approvers subtab to add an approver:
    • Employee — the NetSuite Employee who approves at this level
    • Order — a number indicating where this approver sits in the chain. Lower numbers approve first.
  4. Repeat for each level of the chain. Leave the Order field blank for a single-approver chain.

When a Docs Submitted record is created for this document type, the system copies the entire approval chain onto the submission as a per-instance sublist. As each approver actions the document, their row on the submission is stamped with a date.

Step 6: (Optional) Tweak Decline Reasons

The Decline Reasons list is shared across the SuiteApp but is filtered by entity type on the external upload page. If you want to add a reason specific to a new document type, navigate to FullClarity → Certified Documents → Decline Reasons → New and add it to the correct entity-type list.

What success looks like

  • The new Certifiable Document appears in the library at FullClarity → Certified Documents → Certifiable Documents.
  • Its Approvers subtab lists the right approvers in the right order.
  • Opening a vendor, customer or employee record (depending on which entity types you ticked) and adding a Required Doc shows your new document type in the dropdown.

Gotchas

  • Operating Workflow is mandatory. Without it, no automation runs — the document type exists but Docs Submitted records won't progress. If you leave it blank, the post-deploy MR script will eventually default it to Manual mode.
  • Approval order is per-document-type. The chain is copied to the submission at creation time; subsequent edits to the chain on the Certifiable Document don't retrospectively update in-flight submissions.
  • Including end date drives renewal. Without end date enabled, renewal never fires regardless of the Renewal Days value. Confirm the document genuinely expires before enabling renewal.
  • Description text is customer-facing. It appears on the external upload page. Avoid internal jargon — write for the recipient.
  • Renewal Days = 0 disables renewal. It does not mean "renew on the day of expiry". To handle that, set Renewal Days to 1 (or whatever short interval makes sense).
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