Safety training certificates without the manual work: how I turned 30–60 minutes a day into 2
A health and safety training company filled in certificates and attendance lists by hand. Here is how I automated it, from 30–60 minutes a day to about 2 minutes.
After every course, someone at a health and safety (BHP) training company sat down at the computer and filled in certificates. One after another, one for each participant. Then they opened a spreadsheet and updated the attendance list by hand. It took 30 to 60 minutes, every day.
Today the same work takes about two minutes. I'm Mateusz Reglinski, I run nefling.dev and I build automations for small businesses. In this post I show how this project went, step by step, without the marketing gloss.
The problem: the same clicks after every course
The company runs health and safety training for other businesses. After every course it has to prepare two things: a named certificate of completion for each participant and an up-to-date attendance list.
Before the automation, the process looked like this:
- The trainer finished the course and wrote down the list of participants.
- Someone opened the certificate template and typed in the name, the date and the course title.
- They saved each certificate as a separate PDF.
- They copied the same details into a separate attendance spreadsheet.
- They repeated it for every participant, on every course.
With ten people, that's ten certificates, ten files and ten rows in the spreadsheet. All by hand, with the risk of a typo in someone's name ending up on an official document.
The person doing it wasn't slow. The process was simply that tedious, and there was no way around it.
The solution: a form, a template and a spreadsheet that do the work
I built the automation in Google Apps Script, inside the Google Workspace tools the company already used. Now it works like this:
- The trainer fills in a simple form: the course details and the list of participants.
- The automation reads the list and creates a named PDF certificate for each person from the existing template.
- At the same time, it updates the attendance list in the spreadsheet.
- The whole thing takes a few seconds.
What used to take 30–60 minutes now takes as long as filling in the form. About two minutes.
The certificates look exactly as they did before: the same layout, the same logo, the same formatting. There is one difference: nobody has to make them by hand any more.
A next step could be emailing each participant their certificate straight after the course. No printing and no sending by hand.
How much time it really saves
30–60 minutes a day sounds modest. But look at it over a year, with about 230 working days:
| Saved per day | Working days a year | Hours a year |
|---|---|---|
| 30 minutes | 230 | about 115 hours |
| 45 minutes | 230 | about 172 hours |
| 60 minutes | 230 | about 230 hours |
That's three to almost six full working weeks a year, won back from a single task. On top of that come the things the table doesn't show: fewer mistakes in names, faster certificates for participants and a calmer head for the person who used to have to remember all this.
To work it out for your own business, multiply the time the task takes by the number of times it happens and by the hourly cost of the person doing it. The homepage has a calculator that does it for you.
What else can be automated the same way
Certificates are one example. The same pattern works anywhere a document is made with the same fields and different data:
- Documents: contracts, quotes, reports, certificates, client summaries.
- Copying data: a form submission goes straight into a spreadsheet, CRM or booking system, with no copy and paste.
- Reminders: about payments, deadlines, appointments and renewals, sent on their own. I did this for a landlord with 40 rental flats.
- Reports: a weekly summary that lands in the inbox by itself on Monday morning.
The rule is always the same: if a task can be written down as steps that always run in the same order, with the same kind of data going in and coming out, it can almost certainly be automated. I write more about choosing your first task in the guide to automation in a small business.
When automation isn't worth it
Not every task is worth automating. This project made sense because:
- the task came up every day,
- the steps never changed,
- the cost of building it paid back in a reasonable time.
One-off tasks, ones that need human judgement, or ones done once a quarter are usually better left to a person. I'll tell you honestly if that's the case for you.
Frequently asked questions
Do automated safety training certificates look the same as hand-made ones?
Yes. The automation uses the same template the company used before, so the layout, logo and formatting don't change. The only thing that changes is who types in the data: a script instead of a person.
Do I need special software for an automation like this?
Not always. This one runs in Google Workspace (Forms, Docs, Sheets, Drive) using Google Apps Script. If your business works in Microsoft 365 or another system, the same thing can be built with the tools you already have, for example in n8n.
How long does it take to set up?
A simple document automation is usually a few days of work, testing included. My starting offer is your first working automation in 21 days, from the first conversation to handover, along with a short video showing how to use it.
What if something stops working?
After handover, I fix bugs free of charge during the guarantee period. After that you can choose ongoing care, where I keep an eye on the automation and make small changes.
Got a similar task?
The training company now runs its courses knowing the certificates and the attendance list will take care of themselves. It isn't a big revolution. It's a tiring daily chore that quietly disappears.
If you have something similar, book a free call. I'll tell you honestly whether it's worth automating and roughly what it would cost.
