Do you need a Government Gateway account to use the waste tracking service?
You need a Government Gateway account only for the government's own service, and never for Skiplog: people sign in to Skiplog with an email address and a password. For business services on GOV.UK a Gateway user ID and password is the usual sign-in to expect, it is created and recovered on GOV.UK, and the service's own registration pages are the authority on exactly which credential it asks for.
Two different logins, and why they get confused
Most people searching for a Government Gateway waste tracking account have the GOV.UK pages open and are trying to work out which login they need before anything is due. Two separate credentials are being mixed up, and they belong to different places.
- The sign-in for the government's own service. That credential is specified by the service itself and it is created and recovered on GOV.UK. Nobody else can issue it, reset it or hold it for you, and it is the sign-in your yard uses when it uploads what it receives.
- The sign-in for the software in the yard. That is where the weighbridge writes the note, where the register sits, where the quarterly return comes from, and where the receipt rows for the government's spreadsheet are prepared. It is not a government account and it is not issued by one.
Skiplog is the second kind. People sign in to Skiplog with an email address and a password, and that is the only way in: there is no single sign-on, no two-factor step, and nothing in the product asks for, stores or uses a government credential. Each person you add to the site is invited to their own account, so the weighbridge and the office do not share one login, and every note names who wrote it.
Skiplog does not sign in to the government's service and does not upload on your yard's behalf. What it does prepare for that upload is set out on the page about what Skiplog prepares for your Defra receipt-of-waste upload. This page stays with the credentials: what the Gateway account is for, who in a yard should hold it, and what to do when nobody can find it.
Which sign-in does what
| Sign-in | Where it comes from | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| The government service's own account, normally a Government Gateway user ID for business services | Created and recovered on GOV.UK, held by your business | Signing in to the government's waste tracking service and uploading what the yard receives |
| A Skiplog account, one per person | An invite to that person's own email address, with a password they set | Writing the note at the weighbridge, keeping the register, the quarterly EA return CSV, and the receipt rows laid out for the government's spreadsheet |
Questions
Do you need a Government Gateway account to use the digital waste tracking service?
If you are going to use the government's own service directly, you sign in with whatever account that service asks for, and for business services on GOV.UK a Government Gateway user ID and password is the usual one to expect. We will not put words in the Environment Agency's mouth about the exact credential, because the service's own registration pages are the authority on it and they are what to read before you set anything up. The practical job for a yard is the same either way: one named person holds that sign-in, the office knows where it is written down, and everyone knows which organisation and permit it is registered against.
What is a Government Gateway account, in plain terms?
It is the user ID and password a business uses to sign in to GOV.UK services, the same kind of login a yard will already have met doing tax or permit work. It belongs to the organisation, not to a piece of software, and it is created on GOV.UK rather than anywhere else. If your accountant or a permit consultant set yours up years ago, the details may be sitting in their file and not yours. That is worth finding out on a quiet afternoon rather than in the week an upload is due.
Do you need a Government Gateway account to use Skiplog?
No. People sign in to Skiplog with an email address and a password, and that is the only sign-in it has: there is no single sign-on and no two-factor step, and nothing in the product asks for a government credential. The list of what Skiplog stores does not include one. Everyone you add to the site gets their own account from an invite, so the office and the weighbridge each sign in as themselves. On the weighbridge the job is just the note itself: the EA-mandated fields for waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier and destination, built to take under two minutes on a phone or tablet, plus the receipt-of-waste details each load needs, like the date and time it came in.
Who in the yard should hold the government sign-in?
In a small operation it is usually whoever already handles the permit paperwork, because that person is the one who will be asked for it. Pick one holder rather than letting it drift between a phone, a notebook and a former employee's email address, and write down which organisation name and permit it is tied to, since that is what trips people up months later. Skiplog is built the other way round on purpose: you invite each person on site to their own email and password, so no Skiplog login has to be passed around the yard. When a batch of receipt rows is confirmed as uploaded, Skiplog records the dates, the number of notes and who confirmed it, so the office can see which loads have gone in and who sent them.
What do you do if nobody can find the yard's government sign-in?
Start with whoever filed the last permit application or return, including any consultant or accountant who acted for you. If it genuinely cannot be found, recovery goes through GOV.UK's own help routes, because no supplier can reset a government credential for you. In the meantime your record keeping does not have to stop: a note saved in Skiplog is written to the device first with a visible queued, syncing or synced status, and it goes up on its own when the signal comes back. The dashboard also lists the loads you have not yet reported, grouped as overdue, due today and due tomorrow against the two working days the service allows, so the backlog is visible rather than guessed at, and registration expiry dates carry on being tracked with email alerts for anything expiring inside 30 days.
Does having the government account mean you no longer need your own records?
Your site still keeps its own register, because the transfer notes are the records the waste tracking rules require you to hold. Skiplog keeps everything while the account is open, since waste records have to span quarters and inspections, and a note you remove comes off your register and your returns but stays on file for the two years the regulations require. It also keeps the proof that a load went in: against each reported note you can store the reference the service gave it, mark a load the service rejected with the date on the notice so a fresh deadline is counted, and have any later correction to an accepted note flagged as something to report again. A lapsed trial does not lock the records away either, and Delete account in Billing removes the account, the site and every record at once, so download anything the EA may still ask you for first.
Is a Skiplog subscription a way of paying for the government service?
No. Skiplog is £129 a month, or the same product at £99 a month billed once a year as £1,188, each with a 60-day free trial, and card payments are taken through Stripe, so card details never touch Skiplog. That money pays for the digital transfer notes, the offline capture, the registration tracking with expiry reminders, the receipt rows ready for the government's spreadsheet and the quarterly return CSV. Whatever the government's own service asks of you, in account terms, fees or anything else, is set out on its pages, and nothing Skiplog charges changes it.