The reference you write today is the one you wanted last time you hired.
Your HR team writes the same employment confirmation over and over, then answers questions about it for years afterwards. certo signs the record once, at the moment somebody leaves, and settles every request that comes after it.
Answered oncelater requests resolve against a record you already signed
From €7.25per signed certificate at volume · plans from €490 a year
Free to readany candidate’s public passport, no account needed
Two moments
One record, working twice over.
When somebody leaves
Issue the certificate at offboarding
€490 a yearfor 25 signed certificates
100 certificates
€1,290
400 certificates
€2,900
beyond your plan
€19 each
A factual record, signed, in their hands on their last day.
Dates and job title, confirmed by you and signed on issue. Nothing to draft, nothing to negotiate, no judgement written down that can be argued over a year later. Bulk or API issuance fits the offboarding run you already run.
It states what you confirmed, the dates and the title, and says on its face that it vouches for nothing else. Your name is on a narrow claim, never an open one.
When the requests come inIn development
Stop answering the same reference twice
€8per employee a year, under 500 employees
500 to 1,500
€6
1,500 and above
€4
minimum
€1,200 a year
Somebody who left four years ago applies somewhere, and the email lands on your team.
With a signed record on file, we answer that request against it instead of your team digging through an archive nobody maintains. Your team stops being a reference desk for people who left.
In writing
Three things we will not do, whoever is paying.
You never pay for, trigger or see the interview of somebody leaving you. If you could, it would be an exit review under another name, and no hiring manager would trust it.
Nothing unconfirmed is ever signed. If a referee does not reply, the profile says so. Silence is never rendered as a pass.
The candidate controls their recording and contact details, on the free plan as much as the paid one. Access to privacy is not something we sell.
Before you sign anything
Will this satisfy your legal obligation?
In most of Europe a factual certificate does not discharge your duty on its own. Here is where it does, where it sits alongside what you already produce, and where not to buy.
Market
What the law asks of a former employer
Where certo fits
Austria
§39 AngG requires a certificate of employment and forbids anything prejudicial. The required document is factual.
certo issues the document the statute describes. We have not found another vendor serving it.
Germany, Switzerland
A qualified reference is required, and it is evaluative: a written assessment of conduct and performance.
certo does not write assessments. Use it alongside the Zeugnis, for the facts rather than the judgement.
United Kingdom
No general duty at all. FCA and PRA firms carry the strictest anywhere: six years of history, a set template, four weeks is what the regulator expects, a duty to update it if something new emerges, and no opting out.
A records problem before a reference problem. A signed, timestamped certificate is the record, ready before the request.
France, Spain
The document already comes out of payroll, and France publishes a free government generator.
Do not buy issuance here. Use certo for reading candidates and for requests that come back.
Start where the record gets made.
Issuance is live. The requests it settles follow from it, but the certificate has to exist first. Tell us how many people left you last year and we will start there.