Use Sidecar for Simple Document Expiration Tracking

Sidecar is designed around customer-required document work, but you do not need a complicated customer workflow to use it effectively.

This is one of Sidecar’s Common Setup Patterns. It uses the normal customer and document model, so the setup can grow later without moving records into a different product mode.

If your immediate goal is simply to track licenses, certificates, training records, permits, insurance policies, registrations, inspections, or other dated records, you can begin with one customer record representing your own organization.

In this setup, the customer is the operational container for your internal documents. It does not mean your company is literally its own customer.

This gives Sidecar a consistent place to connect documents, expiration attention, reports, and activity history without requiring you to use requests, Waiting On, contacts, or tasks before you need them.

When this setup makes sense

A one-customer setup works well when most of the records belong to your own organization and you mainly need to answer questions such as:

• What expires in the next 30, 60, or 90 days?
• Which records are already expired?
• Which employee, subcontractor, crew, or company does a record belong to?
• Has a replacement been received and entered?
• Which renewals need attention first?

Typical records include business licenses, employee certifications, training cards, insurance policies, equipment inspections, annual permits, portal registrations, and other documents with expiration or review dates.

This setup is less useful when each customer has a different package of required items. In that case, use Sidecar’s normal customer workflow so each customer’s requirements, documents, requests, and status remain separate.

1. Create one internal tracking customer

Open Customers, select Add customer, and create a record your team will immediately recognize.

A simple name is usually best:

• Your Company Name
• Your Company Name — Internal Documents
• Internal Licenses and Certifications

Add a short note explaining the purpose of the record, such as:

Used to track company licenses, employee certifications, insurance policies, permits, and other internal expiration dates.

You do not need to add a platform or customer contact unless one is genuinely part of the workflow.

2. Add or import the documents

You can add records manually from Documents, or use More > Import when you already have a spreadsheet.

For each document, record the information that helps your team recognize and review it:

• Document title
• Category
• Status
• Effective date, when useful
• Expiration date, when applicable
• The internal tracking customer
• A tracked party, when the record belongs to a specific person, subcontractor, crew, or company

Link each record to the internal tracking customer. That relationship allows Customer Detail, Today, All Work, and Reports to describe the same expiration work consistently.

Do not invent expiration dates for records that do not expire. Leave the expiration date blank. A W-9, permanent policy document, or other non-expiring record should not become a fake emergency every year merely because a spreadsheet used to demand a date.

For a spreadsheet setup, use one consistent customer name on the document rows. Sidecar can then group the imported records under the same internal customer during the reviewed import process. See Importing Data for the full preview and approval workflow.

3. Use tracked parties only when they add clarity

The customer groups the records into one internal expiration program. A tracked party identifies who or what a specific document belongs to.

For example:

Document	Internal customer	Tracked party
General liability policy	Your Company Name	Workspace / primary company
First Aid / CPR card	Your Company Name	Jordan Lee — Employee
Crane inspection record	Your Company Name	North Yard Crane Crew — Other
Subcontractor COI	Your Company Name	Apex Trenching LLC — Subcontractor

Owners and admins can manage tracked parties from Settings. Staff can use existing tracked parties when adding or updating documents.

Tracked parties are optional. Do not create them merely to make the setup look elaborate. Use them when someone reviewing an expiration needs to know whose record it is.

4. Set the expiration attention window

Open Settings and review the Expiration attention window.

This setting controls how many days before expiration a document begins appearing as expiring. The default is 45 days. Choose a window that gives your team enough time to renew, replace, schedule, review, or submit the record before the date arrives.

The setting applies across the workspace. Sidecar does not currently assign a different warning window to every document category, so choose a practical general window and use Reports for the fixed 30, 60, and 90-day review buckets.

The attention window is an operational reminder. It does not determine whether a document is acceptable, compliant, approved, or legally sufficient.

5. Use the views that matter for a simple setup

You can ignore most of Sidecar’s workflow features at first. For simple expiration tracking, four views do most of the work.

Documents

Use Documents to review the complete record list, filter by category or status, and update dates when a replacement arrives.

Reports

Use Reports for the clearest scheduled expiration review. The expiration section groups tracked documents into the next 30 days, 31–60 days, and 61–90 days. Reports can also be exported to Excel or CSV.

Today

Use Today when an expiring or expired record needs operational attention. Because all documents are linked to one internal customer, that customer becomes the summary point for the most important current issue.

Customer Detail

Open the internal customer when you need the full story in one place: documents, current attention, related activity, and any optional tasks or waiting work you add later.

6. Add workflow features only when the process grows

You do not have to use every Sidecar feature to be using Sidecar correctly.

Begin with document titles, categories, statuses, and dates. Add the other workflow tools only when they solve a real problem:

• Add a task when someone on your team must complete renewal work.
• Use Waiting On when a replacement depends on an employee, broker, vendor, platform, or internal team.
• Send a request when Sidecar should record that the replacement was asked for and establish a follow-up date.
• Add a contact when the same person is likely to receive future requests or follow-ups.
• Use Activity History to confirm what changed and when.

The simple setup can remain simple. The extra workflow is available when a date turns into a handoff, a request, or a follow-up problem.

Renewing a document

When a new version or replacement arrives, update the tracked record so the current status and expiration date reflect what your team now knows.

If the replacement is still being reviewed, use the status that accurately describes the current stage rather than marking it accepted merely to clear the warning. Sidecar organizes the tracked workflow; it does not decide whether the document meets a legal, insurance, safety, regulatory, or customer requirement.

After the update, confirm that the document no longer appears in the wrong expiration bucket and that Today and Customer Detail tell the same current story.

When to expand beyond one customer

The one-customer pattern is a useful starting point, not a rule you must defend forever.

Create separate customer records when you begin tracking genuinely customer-specific packages, portal obligations, requested items, wording requirements, contacts, submissions, or follow-up history. Keeping those relationships separate will make Today, Customer Detail, Waiting On, and Reports much more useful than placing unrelated customer work under the internal tracking record.

You can continue using the internal customer for company-wide licenses, employee credentials, insurance policies, and other records that are not tied to one outside customer.

Next steps

Return to Common Setup Patterns to compare smaller workflows. Use Getting Started when you are ready to understand the broader customer workflow. Use Importing Data to bring in an existing expiration spreadsheet, and Daily Workflow when requests, waiting states, follow-ups, and internal tasks become part of the process.