How do you register for the digital waste tracking service?
Registration for the digital waste tracking service happens with the government, through the sign-up route DEFRA publishes on GOV.UK for permitted sites, carriers and brokers. No software vendor, Skiplog included, can enrol your yard on your behalf, so this page covers what you can get ready, what to check on GOV.UK, and what the day to day reporting looks like once you are in.
Registering is a job for you and the government, not for your software
There are two separate things people mean when they say they need to "get on the waste tracking service". One is enrolment: telling the government that this legal entity, holding this permit, operating from this yard, is now in the system. The other is the work that follows every day afterwards: a record for every load, the receipt of each load reported to the government service, and a return when the quarter closes.
Only the first one is registration, and only you can do it. It is done with the government service directly, using the sign-up route DEFRA publishes on GOV.UK, in the name of the entity on the environmental permit. Signing up to Skiplog, or to any other tool, does not enrol your site. Skiplog is an account of its own, signed into with an email address and a password, and the enrolment itself stays on GOV.UK where it belongs.
We are deliberately not printing the exact screens, sign-in method or dates here. The commencement date has moved before and the service's own guidance is the only version worth trusting on the day you sit down to do it. Check GOV.UK for the live process, then come back to the practical part: what you need in front of you, and how the records get kept and reported once you are in.
- Registration is a one-off administrative act with the government.
- Reporting and record keeping is the thing that runs every working day afterwards.
- The second one is where a small yard without a compliance clerk usually comes unstuck.
What to have on the desk before you start
- Decide who holds the account
Pick the person who will own the government account and put the credentials somewhere the business can reach them, not in one driver's personal inbox. Yards change staff. A compliance account tied to someone who has left is a slow problem. That is the government's account, held once; inside Skiplog it works the other way round, with each person you add to the site invited by email and signing in as themselves, so the weighbridge and the office do not share one login and every note names who wrote it.
- Your permit or exemption reference
Find the environmental permit number for the site, or the exemption registration if that is what you hold, exactly as it is written on the paperwork. Transcribing it wrong at enrolment is the sort of small error that takes weeks to unpick. The same number goes on your site details in Skiplog, where it heads every note and every return the yard exports.
- The receiver's details asked for on every load
The receiving site's own particulars are needed on each load you take in, so get them written down once: receiver site name, the environmental permit or authorisation number, a contact email and phone, and any position statement you hold. Skiplog keeps these on the site screen and puts them on every receipt row it produces, so nobody is retyping the yard's own details load after load.
- Your waste carrier, broker or dealer registration
Have the registration number and the tier to hand, along with the expiry date. If you are not certain when it runs out, that is worth resolving before you register anything, because expiry dates are the quietest way a compliant yard becomes a non-compliant one. Once it is in Skiplog it sits on a dashboard of expiry dates with the days remaining, it is built to email the account when a registration falls inside 30 days, and the dates can be carried in a calendar you subscribe to.
- The site details as the register holds them
Trading name, registered company name, site address and postcode, and the weighbridge or yard address if they differ. Use the versions that match your permit rather than the version on your invoices.
- The waste types you actually take
Write down the streams that come through the gate in a normal month and the List of Waste codes you use for them, including any hazardous entries. Doing this once, honestly, saves an argument later when a return is built from the codes on your notes. Hazardous loads still move on a consignment note, which is a separate question and has its own page here.
- How your area office wants the return laid out
Area offices do not all ask for the quarterly return in the same column order. If you have a layout from a previous return or a note from your officer, keep it with the rest of this paperwork. Skiplog holds the column layout against your site, so you set it once and the quarterly CSV comes out in that order instead of being reshuffled by hand every quarter.
What the reporting looks like once your yard is in
Receipt rows in Defra's own column order
A receipts screen sits next to the quarterly return. Pick a date range and the loads you took in come out as rows laid out in the order Defra's receipt of waste template expects, for your yard to upload. The fields those rows need, including the date and time the load was received, are captured on the transfer note at the weighbridge rather than typed a second time later.
Rows checked before the upload, not after
Every receipt row is checked against Defra's upload rules on the screen. The export sends only the rows that pass, tells you how many it held back, and links each failing row to the field that needs fixing, so a bounced spreadsheet does not eat the clock while you work out which line is wrong.
The same check at the weighbridge
Those rules also run on the note form when the note is saved, including a note saved with no signal. A field that would fail the upload is flagged while the load, the driver and the ticket are still in front of you.
The two working day clock on the dashboard
GOV.UK sets a short deadline for getting a received load into the service, so the dashboard carries a card listing the notes not yet reported, grouped as overdue, due today and due tomorrow. It is built so a yard does not have to keep a second list beside the register.
Marked off once it is actually in
After a receipts download Skiplog asks whether you uploaded them, and on confirm it stamps each note in that batch as reported. You can record the waste tracking reference a load went in under, with the date it was recorded, so you can show later that Defra accepted it.
Rejections and corrections keep their own dates
If a notice comes back saying a load was rejected, mark that receipt rejected with the date on the notice and Skiplog sets the correction deadline from it. Correcting or removing a note that already carries a reference is flagged as a correction to report, so the change goes back into Defra's service rather than sitting quietly in your own records.
Questions
How do I register for the digital waste tracking service?
You register with the government service itself, using the route DEFRA publishes on GOV.UK for waste operators, carriers and brokers. Register in the name of the legal entity that holds the environmental permit, not a trading name that differs from it. Have the permit reference, the receiver details for the site and your carrier, broker or dealer registration in front of you before you begin. Check the live guidance on GOV.UK on the day, because the process and the dates have been revised before.
Do I need a Government Gateway account?
The sign-in method for the government service is set by DEFRA, and the sign-up page on GOV.UK will tell you which account type it expects. The part that belongs on this page is the decision: which person in the business holds those credentials, and whether the business can still get into the account if that person leaves. There is a dedicated page here on the Government Gateway question if you want the longer answer.
Do I have to report every load once I am registered?
GOV.UK publishes guidance on reporting receipt of waste, and a separate checker for working out whether your site has to report the waste it receives, so start there rather than with a vendor's summary. The duty sits with the receiving site, which for a skip yard or transfer station means the loads coming through your gate rather than only the ones going out. Skiplog is built for that shape of work: the note you write at the weighbridge carries the receipt fields, and the receipts screen turns a date range into rows ready for the government spreadsheet for your yard to upload.
Can my software submit to the service on my behalf?
No. Skiplog does not submit for you. It produces the receipt of waste rows in Defra's template column order, and the quarterly Environment Agency return as a one-click CSV in the column layout you have set for your site, and you, or whoever holds the government account, do the uploading. It then records what you uploaded, when, and the reference each load came back with. There is a separate page here on what software can and cannot do for you.
Do I register once for the company, or once per site?
That follows the structure of your permits and registrations rather than anything a software vendor decides, so check how the service asks the question on GOV.UK before you create anything. As a rule of thumb the thing being registered is the permitted operation, so an operator with one permitted yard is doing this once. Skiplog is built around a single site, one per account, with one dashboard showing the notes logged, tonnage by waste type and a compliance status overview. If you run one yard with a handful of staff, that is the shape it is designed for.
What if there is no signal where the notes get written?
Registration needs a connection, because it happens in a browser with the government service, so do it in the office rather than at the weighbridge. Day to day capture is different, and this is the part that trips up yards in cuttings, behind sheds and under bridges. Skiplog saves each waste transfer note to the device first, shows a visible queued, syncing or synced status, and syncs automatically when connectivity returns. The screens you have already opened are kept on that device as well, and signing out gives up that device's queue and clears those saved screens from it.
What if a load I have already reported turns out to be wrong?
Weights get typed off a weighbridge ticket and a code gets picked in a hurry, so a record product has to have a way out. Correct the note, and because Skiplog knows it already carries a waste tracking reference, it flags the note as a correction to report so the change goes back into the government service under the reference the load was accepted on. A note that should not be on the register can be taken off it: it comes off your register and your returns but stays on file for the two years the regulations require. If a rejection notice arrives, record its date and the reason and the correction deadline is counted from it.
What will it cost, and can I try it before the deadline?
The Annual plan is £1,188 a year, which is the same product at £99 a month billed once a year, and the Monthly plan is £129 a month. Both carry a 60-day free trial, and both include unlimited transfer notes and unlimited registrations tracked on one site, the receipt of waste rows, the quarterly EA CSV and the tonnage dashboard. Billing runs through Stripe, which handles the card details, and the service is hosted on Amazon Web Services. If a trial lapses your records are not locked away: they stay readable and exportable. Skiplog is not open yet, so the only thing to do now is join the waitlist.