Do electricians have to use software for certificates?

No. There is no legal or regulatory requirement to use software. BS 7671 requires that the prescribed information is recorded and the declarations signed by the right people; it gives model forms and expressly contemplates both paper and electronic certification. The pads still work. The competent person schemes accept electronic certificates, most now run or endorse digital platforms of their own, and the market has largely moved. But "largely moved" is not "mandatory", and anyone telling you the paper pad is no longer allowed is selling something.

What the rules actually require

Whatever the medium, a certificate or report must carry the required particulars: the installation details, the schedules of inspections and of circuit details and test results where applicable, the extent and limitations, the observations with their classification codes on a condition report, and the signed declarations of the people taking responsibility. Electronic signatures are fine. What matters is that the document is complete, attributable, and cannot be quietly altered after issue; a PDF that can be re-edited at will is weaker evidence than carbon paper, which is why issued certificates in any serious system lock permanently.

Notification under Building Regulations, where the work is notifiable, runs through your scheme regardless; that part has been digital for years.

The honest case for the pad

Paper has real virtues: it never runs out of battery, it works in a basement with no signal, the marginal cost is pennies, and thirty years of habit is its own efficiency. A sole trader doing occasional minor works and the odd board change can run a perfectly compliant business off pads, a scanner and a filing cabinet. Software earns its place on volume and on the jobs with big schedules. If that is not your work, it earns it more slowly.

What software actually changes

The gains are specific rather than magical:

• The write-up disappears into the job. Readings typed at the board as the instrument gives them, instead of a test sheet transcribed at the kitchen table. On an EICR with a 32-column schedule per circuit, transcription is where the evening goes, and where the errors creep in.
• The lookups are done for you. Device data from real BS and BS EN ranges, maximum permitted Zs computed rather than thumbed through tables, observation wording and regulation references suggested instead of composed from memory at 6pm.
• The record keeps itself. Every certificate on the client's record, findable in seconds years later, with its number from a gapless sequence. No "which van is the yellow copy in?"
• Issue is genuinely final. A locked PDF with the client's copy emailed from the system is a cleaner evidential position than an editable file on a laptop.
• The dates work for you. The next-inspection date on every report becomes a reminder that brings the work back to you instead of whoever the client rings first.

The costs are equally real: a subscription, a learning curve, and dependence on a device on site. Weigh them like a business decision, not an identity.

If you do go digital, what to demand

Judge any certification product, ours included, on five questions. Does it capture every field of the model forms, unabridged? Does it lock certificates permanently at issue? Does it work on a phone at the board, saving as you go? Does each engineer sign under their own name and credentials? And can you get your records out if you ever leave? Anything that fails those questions is a pretty interface on a liability. Pascal was built to pass them: certificates to BS 7671:2018+A4:2026 with the full schedules, permanent lock on issue, gapless numbering, signatures captured on site, and the quote, diary and invoice around them, which is the part the pad never did.