Electrician COC software in South Africa: what to look for

By the EZ COC team. Published 1 October 2026. 7 min read.

Electrician COC software falls into two jobs: issuing and registering certificates, and storing, finding and packaging them. The ECB and ECA(SA) electronic platforms cover the first. EZ COC covers the second. It does not issue or register certificates, so most firms will use both kinds of tool.

What an electrician needs beyond issuing

Issuing a certificate is one task in a longer chain. After the job you still need to keep the certificate, keep the test report, keep the photos, and find all of it again when somebody calls. Then you need to send it in a form the recipient can use.

Only a registered person may inspect, test and issue a COC. The rules sit under the Electrical Installation Regulations 2009 made under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993. Software cannot change who is allowed to issue one. What it can change is how much admin you carry around the certificate.

What ECB e-CoC and the ECA(SA) platform do

Both industry bodies run electronic certificate options, and both are worth using on their own terms.

• ECB: the ECB register offers traceable CoC registration. You upload the CoC plus the test report, it accepts CoCs from all organisations, and it keeps a CoC history for each property.
• ECA(SA): the ECA(SA) electronic certificate of compliance platform is a member service for producing electronic certificates.

We have not tested either platform, and we are describing only what their own pages say. If you are a member, or are considering registering certificates with the ECB, read their pages and ask them what each service covers. Those are the tools for the certificate itself.

The storage and search gap

Here is the gap that remains for many small firms. A registration platform keeps a record of the certificate in its own system. It is not designed around your day-to-day question: "which job was that, at the house on the corner, two years back, and what did the board look like?"

Answering that needs your own searchable file, by customer, address or COC number, holding the certificate, the test report and your photos together. Without it, you are back to paper, WhatsApp and phone galleries, which we looked at in how to store electrical COCs.

Photo handling

Photos are the part that most tools treat as an afterthought. The ECB recommends before and after photos and marking the DB with the CoC number. We could not verify whether the ECB or ECA(SA) tools store photos in an annexure, so we make no claim either way. If photos matter to you, check what any platform does with them before you rely on it.

For more on doing photos well, see COC photos as a photographic record.

What EZ COC does and does not do

What it does. You file each COC as the certificate PDF or image. You add site photos, each with a section and a description, and the address. You can find any COC in seconds by customer, address or COC number. It generates one page-numbered PDF, with the certificate first and a photographic-record annexure grouped by installation section.

What it does not do. EZ COC is not an issuing body. It does not issue or register certificates and it does not replace the ECB or ECA(SA). It does not integrate with their systems: you upload the certificate PDF or image they produced. Think of it as the filing and packaging layer that sits beside the issuing platform you already use.

It also has no public lookup of other people's COC numbers. We found no public COC-number lookup database anywhere, and one consumer guide notes the same. EZ COC is for your own records.

Questions to ask any vendor

Ask where your data is stored and who can see it. Ask what happens to your records if you stop paying, and whether you can export them. Ask which parts of the product are live today rather than planned. A plain answer to each is worth more than a long feature list.

A checklist before you pick

• Does it issue certificates, or only store them? Know which job you are buying.
• Can you find a job by customer, address and COC number?
• Does it keep the test report and photos with the certificate?
• Can you produce one numbered file for an agent or conveyancer?
• Can you export your records if you leave?
• Can you try it before you commit, with no account?

Write down which of these matter on your busiest week, and pick against that. For the packaging step in detail, read how to combine a COC and test report into one PDF.

General information, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with the regulations and your registered electrician.