How to Transition to the 2020 Certification Program
  • 21 Feb 2024
  • 9 Minutes to read
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How to Transition to the 2020 Certification Program

  • PDF

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The formal transition period for farms and companies that participated in the UTZ, or 2017 Rainforest Alliance Certification programs ended on July 1st, 2023. In the two years prior, we introduced some innovations to improve on the foundation laid by the 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard.  

The following sections outline different information that Certificate Holders need to fully transition their information to the RACP, our consolidated Rainforest Alliance Certification Platform and traceability system, and to close down their legacy accounts. Please note that this information is relevant to all crops, except Palm oil (for more information on that topic, please refer to our Policy on Palm Oil Certification Phase Out). 

Account consolidation

We aim to support certificate holders to consolidate all their legacy accounts for traceability (in MultiTrace) and/or trademarks (in Marketplace) into single accounts managed through the account on the Rainforest Alliance Certification Platform (RACP).

If your company had a previous UTZ and/or 2017 Rainforest Alliance traceability account, you temporarily manage volumes in different MultiTrace accounts. Therefore, we kindly ask you to:

  • Ensure that you have an active license to trade in the Rainforest Alliance Certification Platform (RACP) (e.g., ID RA_000000000).  
  • Have a list of all the legacy account IDs you wish to close (e.g., ID ME01_0000).
  • Instruct your suppliers to make sales announcements to the account associated with your Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification program license (e.g., ID RA_000000000).    

Steps You Can Take Yourself To Consolidate Your Legacy Account(S) 

In the following section you will find information on how to perform the account consolidation preparation yourself or request help from RA.

I have legacy MultiTrace accounts for traceability that I want to consolidate  

If you have still stock left in your MultiTrace accounts, this stock needs to be moved manually from your MultiTrace account to your RACP account. Please follow the steps below to initiate this process:

  1. Log in to your legacy account in MultiTrace.
  2. Close all pending incoming transaction(s) in your “Trade” section.
  3. Move the volume(s) you have in your stock to your own RACP account (e.g., ID RA_000000000) by creating a “Sell” transaction from the account(s) you want to close.
    Important: In your sell transaction please indicate 31 March, 2023under “Change of responsibility date”.
  4. To know how to make a sale in the system please refer to our Traceability User Guidance Manual (section 6.A “Sell”) . 
  5. In the “Overview” section, verify that the stock is empty. All remaining volumes need to be redeemed or removed.  
  6. Download a transaction history of the account for your records. To download the file, go to your trade overview tab and click “Download Excel”.  
  7. Log in to your RACP account and confirm the sell transactions you have sent previously from your legacy MultiTrace account (see section 7.A “Confirm” of the Traceability User Guidance Manual). 
  8. Reach out to Customer Success at customersuccess@ra.org with your account list of all your account IDs (e.g., ID ME01_0000) that you want to deactivate. 
I have legacy Marketplace accounts for trademarks that I want to consolidate

With the RACP registration completed, we offer the option to consolidate one or more legacy Marketplace accounts into one account that is accessed through the RACP.  

Please note: Consolidating Marketplace accounts will merge information such as Supplier and Clients, Brands, Products, and Type of business. Users will not be merged to your RACP account. You should add any additional users yourself. 

If you want your trademarks approvals in one Marketplace account, please email our Customer Success team at customersuccess@ra.org with the ID of your RACP leading account (e.g. RA_000000000) and a list of all pre-merger Marketplace account IDs that you wish to merge (e.g., RA12345).

Activities The Rainforest Alliance Can Perform On Your Behalf To Consolidate Your Legacy Account(S)

Certificate holders will gradually receive an invitation to engage in account consolidation to finalize their transition and therefore can also make use of our Rainforest Alliance account consolidation request form. Below, we explain the different activities certificate holders can request the Rainforest Alliance to perform on their behalf. Please note that the submission of the request form is essential for the Rainforest Alliance to initiate the account closure on behalf of your organization.  

In the section below you can find an explanation of the activities listed in the Form (question 7). 

Redeem all available volumes 

With this activity, you are requesting the Rainforest Alliance to redeem all available volumes from your stock overview in MultiTrace. The activity redeem marks the end of the online traceability of certified volumes, as those are traced out of the traceability system. No volumes will be transferred to your 2020 account. More information on the redeem functionality can be found here (section 11. “Redeem”).  

Please note the redeem function may trigger royalties or legacy program fees (see Rainforest Alliance License Agreement General Terms and Conditions).   

Transfer available volumes to above indicated RACP account

This enables you to have your volumes available in your new RACP account. The Rainforest Alliance will move your volumes from your legacy account to your Rainforest Alliance Certification Platform (RACP) account. With this, you will have your stock volumes available for further processing.  

This step may trigger royalties or program fees (see Rainforest Alliance License Agreement General Terms and Conditions).  

Confirm pending incoming transactions and incoming reversal requests and redeem all available volume  

With this you allow the Rainforest Alliance to confirm all your incoming transactions and reversals requested in your “Trade & Stock overview” with the status “To be confirmed”. No volumes will be transferred to your new RACP account.

This activity may trigger royalties or program fees (see Rainforest Alliance License Agreement General Terms and Conditions).  

For more information on confirming transactions see here (section 7.A “Confirm”).  

Confirm incoming pending transactions and move volumes to new RACP account. Note, where a stock position has a reference, the Rainforest Alliance will take the reference over. Positions with no reference will be assigned one.  

The Rainforest Alliance will confirm all your incoming transactions in your “Trade & Stock overview” with the status “To be confirmed” and move all your available volumes from your legacy account to your RACP account. This will make your stock volumes available for further processing. Note that the Rainforest Alliance will take over all stock positions with a pre-existing reference. Where stock positions do not have a reference assigned to them, the Rainforest Alliance will assign them the following reference “Transfer from legacy account”. This way, you will be able to identify your transferred stock positions.  

This activity may trigger royalties or program fees (see Rainforest Alliance License Agreement General Terms and Conditions). 

Reject incoming transactions in legacy account with a note from the Rainforest Alliance “Please resubmit this transaction to the RACP account RA_xxxxxxxxxxx” 

With this activity, you enable the Rainforest Alliance to reject all your incoming transactions in your Trade overview with the comment “Please resubmit this transaction to the RACP account RA_xxxxxxxxxxx”. Your suppliers will be requested to re-issue their transactions to your new RACP traceability account.  

More information on the activity “reject” here (see section 7. D “Reject”).

Move available tea selling marks 

With this, you will allow the Rainforest Alliance to move your existing tea selling marks from your legacy account to your new traceability account. This way, you do not need to create the selling marks all over in the new traceability account. 

A selling mark is the name under which a factory sells its tea. This may or may not be the same as the garden mark (smallholders do not have garden marks; garden marks are associated with tea estates in origins where tea was introduced/managed under a British system).  

Note: Buyers often use the terms “garden mark”, or just “mark” as shorthand for selling mark. More information on tea selling marks here (see section 19. A “Selling Marks”).

Move data mapping information 

By requesting to move your data mapping information, you are allowing the Rainforest Alliance to move all your mapped information. This will enable you to continue with the Excel upload from your RACP account, without having to map your information all over again. 

To help report transactions in bulk instead of individual reporting, MultiTrace has the ‘Transaction Upload’ or Excel upload functionality which allows organizations to process the following actions:  

  • Trade (Sell, Purchase, Redeem, Remove) for Single Ingredient  
  • Trade for Multi-ingredient  
  • Mix  
  • Conversion  
  • Report Manufacturing  

Prior to proceeding with the Excel Upload feature, you need to set up the Data Mapping to ‘map’ the language of external systems to MultiTrace language. For more information on data mapping, please see here (see section 16. B “Data Mapping”).

Move products created in “Maintain Multi-ingredient” 

By allowing the Rainforest Alliance to move your created multi-ingredient products, you allow them to make them available for you in your new traceability account. This enables you to continue your maintained multi-ingredients, without having to create them all over again.  

To configure a product for use in multi-ingredient reporting, you will need to go to the Report Multi-Ingredient section and create a Multi-Ingredient product. Often companies create here their product based on e.g. stock keeping units, product or bulk level, which they utilize to report multi-ingredient transactions to their buyers. More information on “Maintain Multi-Ingredient” see here (see section 15. A “Maintain Multi-Ingredient”). 

None of the above, see specification in question 8

When choosing this option in the account consolidation form, please jump to question 8.  

Perform above actions but only for specific volumes/ transactions  

In the open field you will have the possibility to either specify your stock positions and/or transactions or by inserting “Request Overview” to request the Rainforest Alliance to provide you with an Excel file with your stock overview and pending transactions. The Excel file will include a legend with color coding you should use to indicate your preferred activities. This option allows you to individualize the MultiTrace account consolidation information to your needs.  

Allow the Rainforest Alliance to merge your Marketplace account(s) with your new RACP Labelling & Trademarks account. 

To consolidate your legacy Marketplace account(s) into one account that is accessed through the RACP, you can indicate your legacy Marketplace accounts in the online request form. Below you will find a table with information about what will be merged. 

Please reach out to customersuccess@ra.org to request further information on the Marketplace account consolidation.  

Rainforest Alliance Platforms Overview

To help our partners understand our platform consolidation, see the table below.  

All accounts related to the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program should be accessed through the Rainforest Alliance Certification Platform (RACP) by accessing the different tabs on the platform.

* From January 1st, 2023, new requests for branded packaging with the legacy Rainforest Alliance trademarks (UTZ logo and legacy Rainforest Alliance Certified seal) can no longer be submitted for approval, as we are phasing out the use of these marks. More information on the phase-out of our legacy trademarks can be found on this page. As the current trademarks approval system Marketplace 2.0 is phasing out, all organizations that wish to receive approval for the use of our trademarks need to request approval in the new Claims platform which we will introduce in December 2023. Find out more about How to prepare for the new Claims platform.

** We are currently working to implement traceability for our Nuts program (excluding hazelnuts) and these cannot be traded within our traceability platforms at the moment.

***The traceability tab is only visible once you have obtained an active license to trade.

Guidance

For further guidance, please consult the links below:



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