RAINFOREST ALLIANCE CERTIFICATION PLATFORM

USER MANUAL
FOR

FARMS

Learn how to use the Rainforest Alliance Certification Platform (RACP) to

create and maintain your RACP Account, manage your Licenses and
efficiently report your crop related activities within the Rainforest Alliance
2020 Certification Program.

Important note: The RACP account described in this manual is for the New Rainforest Alliance
2020 Certification Program and does not replace your pre merger/current account. This
means that you still need to maintain the current traceability and certification system(s) with
your current credentials.

Version 02 June 2022

Contents
Editors note ............................................................................................................................................. 2
About this User Manual .......................................................................................................................... 3
Glossary ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Getting started with the RACP ................................................................................................................ 5
Process overview ................................................................................................................................ 5
Submit your registration request........................................................................................................ 5
Creating your certification profile....................................................................................................... 8
Update farm information .............................................................................................................. 12
Add site information ..................................................................................................................... 14
Add a subcontractor ..................................................................................................................... 18
Confirm certification scope ............................................................................................................... 19
Audit preparations ................................................................................................................................ 20
Find an authorized Certification Body .............................................................................................. 20
Complete and upload a self-assessment .......................................................................................... 22
Group Member Registry and Risk Map ............................................................................................. 23
Update your organization ..................................................................................................................... 24
Add a new user ................................................................................................................................. 24
Delete a user ..................................................................................................................................... 25
Add a new contact ............................................................................................................................ 26
Working for multiple Certificate Holders.............................................................................................. 27
Annex – Useful links .............................................................................................................................. 28

EDITORS NOTE

This User Manual is being created in parallel with the RACP system development, therefore
screens and forms may slightly differ from the live version of RACP due to ongoing
development and improvements.

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ABOUT THIS USER MANUAL
This handbook is a concise guide for farms to learn how to effectively use
RACP to create and maintain their RACP account, licenses and report crop
related activities within the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program.

Glossary
Below table lists the most frequently used terms and abbreviations and their significance for
working with RACP. Understanding these terms is necessary to accurately complete your
registration.

See also our online glossary, designed to provide an easily accessible tool to explain some of
the terminology you will find within the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program's
documents and tools.

Term Definition
Certificate A set of activities, processes, actors, and products covered under the
Scope certification of a certificate holder.
Certification The page in RACP where a Certificate Holder can submit the
Profile information on their 'certificate scope'.
Certified The reference of the term “certified” in the requirements refers to
crop/volume produced and traded by certificate holders, verified
against the 2020 Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard.
Farm All land and facilities used for agricultural production and processing
activities under the geographical scope of the farm/group
management. A farm may be composed of several neighbouring or
geographically separate farm units within one country provided that
they are under a common management body. All farms and farm
units falling within this geographical scope must comply with the
Rainforest Alliance standard, even when a different crop from the
certified one is cultivated (e.g. farm/farm unit with a plantation of rice
belonging to a producer part of a certified group for coffee that falls
within the same geographical scope).
A farm may be composed of several neighbouring or geographically
separate units of land within one country if they are under a common
management body.
Group An association of organized producers that have a shared Internal
Management System (IMS) and are certified together under the
Rainforest Alliance standard Certification Protocol. The group of
organized producers can be organized in an association or
cooperative or managed by a supply chain actor (such as an
exporter) or another entity.
Group The entity that signs the certification agreement with the Rainforest
Management Alliance accredited certification body and takes responsibility for the
development and implementation of the group’s internal
management system and all member farms’ management systems.
The group management is responsible for assuring member farms’
compliance with the Standard.
Group Member A producer who is certified as part of a group. It is the person who is
the actual operator of the farm (e.g. a sharecropper) and does not
need to be the landowner.
Identity A traceability option in which it is possible to identify the Rainforest
Preserved Alliance Certified ingredient or product back to a single farm
certificate holder. There is no mixing of certified ingredient or product
with non-certified ingredient or product.
Intermediary Any actor that trades (buys and sells) Rainforest alliance certified
product before it reaches first buyer level. Intermediaries can also

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 physically handle and based on their activities, intermediaries shall be
compliant with the applicable requirements of the Farm Standard.
Internal A documented system of quality management with the purpose to
Management facilitate an efficient organization and management of the group and
System (IMS) of ensuring that the group and group members comply with the
applicable requirements of the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable
Agricultural Standard.
Management A detailed overview, set up by the management, of the goals that are
Plan set to be compliant with the requirements (for both management,
workers, and/or group members) and the respective services
necessary to meet these goals. The services can include training,
technical assistance, access to inputs (e.g. seedling), and awareness-
raising activities. The Management Plan indicates details on the
services such as the timeline, the responsible person for the provision of
the services, and the beneficiaries.
Mandated user Authorization is given to a supply chain certificate holder to make
rights transactions in the traceability platform RACP on behalf of a farm
certificate holder.
Mass Balance Administrative traceability that allows a supply chain actors to claim
product as Rainforest Alliance CertifiedTM when the equivalent quantity
was sourced as Rainforest Alliance CertifiedTM.
Multi-site A supply chain actor that does not have farming in the scope of its
Rainforest Alliance certification and has an identified central location
under which two or more sites are operating.
Producer A person (either male or female) who owns and/or operates an
agricultural enterprise, either commercially or to sustain him or herself
or his/her family.
Segregation A traceability process in which the certified product is kept separate
from the noncertified product, both physically and on documentation.
This segregation occurs during all receipt, processing, packaging,
storage, and transportation stages of the supply chain. There is no
mixing of non-certified product with certified product.
Site A geographically separate entity belonging to a certificate holder
(farm or supply chain actor) where a specific number and type of
operations are conducted.
Small farm Small farms primarily rely on family or household labour or workforce
exchange with other members of the community. They might hire
temporary workers for seasonal tasks or even hire (few) permanent
workers. Small farmers are usually organized in a group to be certified
and rely on the Group Management for record development and
record keeping.
Subcontractor An organization or individual contracted to carry out one or more
specific operations on the certified products, for example, processing,
storing, packaging, and/or labelling products.
Supply chain Any organization that relates to the certified product from its
actor production up to its final sale.
Verification level The verification level is the result of the Supply Chain Risk Assessment
(SCRA) and defines the type, intensity and frequency of verification
that is required.

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Getting started with the RACP
All producers, farmers or farmer groups, and supply chain actors/companies
that want to sell their products as Rainforest Alliance Certified need to become
a member of the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program.

To join this program, you need to register in RACP. Only after you are registered and
have obtained a valid license, you are allowed to buy and sell Rainforest Alliance
Certified products.

PROCESS OVERVIEW
Registration is easy and is entirely effectuated in RACP with only four process steps. After
submitting your registration in this program, you receive a confirmation e-mail with a link by
which you can start providing relevant information about your organization.

The four steps in the registration process

SUBMIT YOUR REGISTRATION REQUEST

Submitting your registration request comprises a number of steps as briefly illustrated below.

The first thing you can do is

select your preferred language

Follow the link ‘Create an

account here’

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 Select Farm Organization to
create your account

Please read this information

about the certification options

More information about the

Rainforest Alliance certification
program, before you can start
entering your data

On the first page, you will fill in

your organization’s name, select
crop and your crop related
activities.

Please note! If you already have

a current UTZ or Rainforest
Alliance account ID, do not
forget to provide that here as
well!

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 On the next page, fill in your
organization’s address.

Please note! If the continue

option is still locked, review if you
are including all the necessary
information

To let us know who you are,

provide your name and your
contact information

When you have filled in the required information, you shall carefully read the Terms &
Conditions / Legal Agreement and accept these by clicking the corresponding tick-box *)
and submit your registration request.

The final step to register is

accepting the Terms &
Conditions / Legal Agreement

*) This tick-box function for the

License Agreement is only
currently applicable to Farm
certificate holders and will
change in the future.

Upon receipt of your request,

you will get the following
message:

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Your request will be reviewed and when approved, you will receive an account activation e-
mail to provide you with access to RACP. To avoid duplication of accounts please wait for
the confirmation e-mail.

Please note: This account is for the new Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program and
does not replace your pre merger account. This means that you still need to maintain the
current traceability and certification system(s) with your current credentials.

CREATING YOUR CERTIFICATION PROFILE

Using the credentials in the activation mail, you login to the RACP to arrive at the dashboard.
Your e-mail address is your username.

The RACP dashboard. Your first task is clearly indicated

You will first be asked some questions about what you want to certify. During the entire
process, you are guided through the steps, with clear instructions what to fill in or what to
select.

Should your organization expand in the future, you can easily add relevant information.

Please note:
You only need to provide information as is applicable in your situation.
• Farm organizations will need to provide information on their farm(s), sites and if
applicable, farm group and subcontractors.
• For every RACP account, you need to add at least one site, otherwise you will not be
able to confirm your certification scope. This can be the address you registered with.

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Creating your certification profile starts with a number of questions, as illustrated by the
following screen shots.

You want to certify one or more farms, so click Yes and then Continue

If this location is where central management takes place, click Yes and Continue

Indicate here how many small and/or large farms you want to certify

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This example shows the registration process for two large, and two small farms.

Please answer Yes only if you purchase from a certificate holder that is not included in your scope

In this example, all farms are owned by one company

Next, you are asked about additional sites that you may want to add to your certification
profile. As before, a few questions.

The answer to this question is either Yes or No

How many sites do you want to add? In this example, two sites will be added

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The final question, provide the name of these sites

You have now provided all basic information for your certification profile. You can still make
some edits and when you are ready, click on the green button to submit your profile data.

This screen summarizes your input so far. When all is correct, click the Submit button

The following screen shows the overview of you certification profile, from where you will start
adding more details of your organization.

This page show the result of your entries: three sites, two farms and two farm group members
Note that the third site in the list is the central management location that you registered
when creating your account.
For each entity you see a notification about adding more information, using the link ‘Edit’.

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Before entering more details, you can open the dashboard, to see that it is updated with
your entries so far. It shows the entities that are part of your certification.

From the dashboard you can continue to provide all required information

From the dashboard you can start providing all required information by following the path
‘Check your certification profile’ or ‘Complete your profile and confirm scope’, which will
open the page with the overview of your certification profile.

Update farm information

You will need to add more information for every farm that you are certifying. The following
screenshots illustrate the forms that you need to complete. Starting with a farm, you click on
the link ‘Edit’. You will be presented four subsequent forms:

• General information
• Employees
• Crops
• Ownership and operators

Providing information about your farm comprises four forms, the first one with general information

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The second page is about the type and number of employees

Your crop was already entered earlier while registering the account. You may include more crops

The last page is about ownership and operators. Click on Update to complete the farm information

Repeat these steps for the other large farms in your certification profile.

Although you are not requested to provide more information about the farm group, you still
can change some information using the link ‘Edit’ in the certification profile page.

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You can change the number of small farms in this group and add other crops

Updating farm information completed!

Add site information

To add information about your sites, use the edit function for every site. Only if you need to
add a site, you shall use the green button ‘Add new site‘

Using the edit function, you will be able to provide detailed information on each site

Clicking on the edit link will open the first of eight forms that need to be completed with
information about the selected site. The following screens illustrate their contents.

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The first page about your site involves some general details, like name and address

If applicable for this site, you can add more crops using the drop-down list

The selected activities on this site will be available for certification

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Select your input products for this site

Select the output product for this site

On Farm level, the traceability level is always Identity Preserved

The next page contains important questions. More questions will appear when you answer
with a Yes on a number of questions.
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This page includes important questions about certification

Please answer the questions carefully as they will be used to determine the applicability of
your requirements and/or your verification level.

Once you have answered all questions, this page provides a summary for this site. You can
go back if you need to make any corrections. Otherwise, click the button ‘Submit’.

The page summarizes the information that you have provided for this site

Using the Submit button will show a message confirming that you have successfully updated
the site information. When you continue, you will see the result on the overview page.

The overview page is now updated with the activities on these sites

Updating other sites that you have within your organization follows the same steps.
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Add a subcontractor
If you are working with one or more subcontractors you are certifying under your scope, you
add them in the same way as other entities. On the overview page of your certification
scope, click the green button ‘Add site information’ and complete all presented forms in the
same manner as with other sites.

After entering the name, select Yes at the question whether this is a subcontractor.

When you have completed all forms, you see the result in your certification scope overview
and you can now confirm your certification scope, visible by the dark green button.

With all required information provided, you can confirm your certification scope

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CONFIRM CERTIFICATION SCOPE
Clicking the button ‘Confirm scope and view requirements’ will start a process of generating
the requirements, which are the result of the answers and selections that you have made in
the previous steps. You will be directed to the requirements page once it’s done.
This process can take a few minutes.

A set of filters helps you to navigate through the list of requirements

You can now review and/or download the requirements valid for your organization.

You have completed the registration process! Your license is now in preparation and your
Certification Body will be able to contract you in the system.

When you return to the dashboard, you will see the next task visible: Provide your
audit/endorsement preparation.

Your certification scope is updated and a new task is visible

At the dashboard, follow the link ‘Provide your audit/endorsement preparation to open the
page where you will start these preparations.

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AUDIT PREPARATIONS
Once you have implemented all requirements that are applicable to your organization and
you are confident you are ready for your verification, please provide all the information and
upload all the documents that will help the verification process. This information will be used
by the Certification Body (CB) to prepare for the audit.

You will need to sign a certification agreement with the selected CB. Please note that this is a
manual activity outside RACP. Therefore, please fill in the Certification Application Form
(CAF) to request a quote from your selected Certification Body.

Only when this agreement has been signed by both you and the CB, it is confirmed in RACP.
This will give the CB access to your full profile, where progress can be monitored and the
necessary information for the audit preparation will be shared. In most cases, the
Certification Body will approach you with an invitation.

Summarizing, the following steps are:

• Find and select an authorized Certification Body
• Request a quote using the CAF
• Sign the certification agreement (offline)
• Confirm that this contract has been signed
• Complete and upload any required document or information.

FIND AN AUTHORIZED CERTIFICATION BODY

If you already have received an invitation from a Certification Body, that will be visible on this
page. In this example however, you initiate the process to find a CB and sign a contract.

The first thing to do now is to contact an authorized Certification Body. To find a Certification
Body, click the link ‘Open’. When available, one or more authorized Certification Bodies will
be displayed.

Click on the link ‘open’ to find a Certification Body in your region

If you’re not sure about the next steps, just click on the green button to see some useful
information.

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In this example, you can choose which Certification Body you would like to receive a quote

Download the CAF file using the green button and fill in all requested information and use this
to request a quote from your selected Certification Body. If you agree with the quote, you
can sign the certification agreement with the Certification Body. Note that this is an offline
activity, outside RACP. After this, you are ready to confirm the contract in RACP.

Before confirming the contract, a form will open where you have to confirm that you indeed
have signed the certification agreement with this authorized Certification Body.

Only when you have signed the contract with the CB, you can confirm the contract

Upon confirming this contract, you must wait for a confirmation from the Certification Body.
Once both you and your CB have confirmed you have signed a contract, your CB will
receive access to all information you provide in the platform.

You will have to wait until the CB has also confirmed the contract

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COMPLETE AND UPLOAD A SELF-ASSESSMENT
The self-assessment is an evaluation of the compliance against the applicable requirements
of the Sustainable Agriculture Standard and must be conducted by you as the certificate
holder. At the tab ‘License preparation’ within your license, you find the link to the self-
assessment tool.

Follow the link ‘open’ to arrive at the page where you can download the self-assessment tool

To get the self-assessment document that you need to fill in, use the button ‘Download’ and
open the file.

The self-assessment tool is available for download, using the green button

Note: Carefully read the introduction and guidance information on this page, in order to be
able to accurately respond to the requirements listed in this spreadsheet. It includes valuable
information on how to fill out the self-assessment.

For all requirements, fill in the columns as applicable in your situation

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If you need support in understanding the requirements, please check our General Guide for
the Implementation of the Sustainable Agricultural Standard (for link, see the Annex).

Once you are confident you comply with the applicable requirements and have addressed
or closed any non-conformities you identified, upload the self-assessment.

You will notice that the file name already includes your organization’s name.

At the same page, you can now upload your completed self-assessment file

You will get a confirmation that your self-assessment file is successfully uploaded

If necessary you can replace the file, for example when you made any mistakes or omissions.

Please note that you shall not make changes to your self-assessment once your certification
scope has been frozen by the CB, or after an audit has been concluded.

GROUP MEMBER REGISTRY AND RISK MAP

The Group Member Registry (GMR) is a binding template that allows Farm certificate holders,
especially those under group certification, to upload relevant data from their internal
inspections around their group members to the RACP in preparation for their audit. The GMR
can be downloaded from the Rainforest Alliance website and once completed, uploaded
to MultiTrace.

After the Rainforest Alliance has processed the information, you will get a notification that
the resulting Risk map is available in your RACP account. This work instruction shows the four
steps to upload the GMR and view the resulting Risk map.

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UPDATE YOUR ORGANIZATION
Once you have added the most relevant information to your RACP account, you may add
other contact persons of your organization and new RACP users, with their respective roles.

ADD A NEW USER

In the menu Organization, you can access the function to view, edit or add RACP users.

RACP users and contact persons can be accessed with the menu Organization

By default, as the person who has registered the account, you get all three roles (Finance,
Administrator, User) assigned to you with the corresponding access rights.

As the only RACP user, you can perform the activities belonging to these three roles

Below tables shows the difference between these three available roles.
Roles Available functions in RACP
Administrator Add users, change user roles, change information, contact CBs or
Members, and upload or fill in required information
Finance Change financial information
User Read information only, but not modify anything

To add a new user, use the button ‘Add New User’, enter the new RACP username and
complete the form, including the designated role(s). By default, a new user will have the
basic role ‘User’.

Note: Please use the new user’s e-mail address as their username, as this is unique and easy
to remember.

In this example, the new user gets the role ‘Finance’ and ‘Administrator’

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You can edit the user’s data, including their role, at any time by clicking on the name and
update the information.

Multiple users can have the role ‘Finance’ and ‘Administrator’.

If applicable, as Administrator, you can now remove your Finance role by clicking on your
name and de-activate the corresponding tick-box.

Please note: There must always be one user with the Administrator role. If you remove your
own role ‘Administrator’, you cannot make any changes yourself anymore! Only a newly
assigned Administrator can do so.

DELETE A USER
To delete a user from RACP, click on the name and in the following form, use the button
‘Delete’ and confirm your decision.

You can easily edit a user’s information and role(s), or delete a user

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ADD A NEW CONTACT
An employee registered as User has a specific role in working with this platform, e.g.
Administrator or Finance. Any User is automatically also listed as a Contact.

However, when you add an employee as Contact, they have no role with respect to working
with the RACP, but another job responsibility that may be relevant for the Rainforest Alliance
or a Certification Body.

To add a new contact, use the menu Organization and choose Add new contact. Fill in the
form with basic details and save the new contact.

Adding a new contact requires a form to be filled in with general information

To add a contact person’s responsibilities, click on the name which opens the form, now with
also a tab ‘Contact type’. Here you can select their contact type for your entire
organization, including subcontractors that you have registered in the RACP.

A contact person can have multiple responsibilities, including for sites and subcontractors

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WORKING FOR MULTIPLE CERTIFICATE HOLDERS
It is possible to create multiple accounts if your responsibilities involve more than one
Certificate Holder. This can include Farms and Supply Chain Actors and you can have
different roles per Certificate Holder. Just use the same e-mail address when going through
the registration process for all Certificate Holders for which you will work in RACP.

The following screenshots illustrate the choices you can make.

When accessing RACP, you can select for which organization you want to login

At the dashboard, you see the link to change to another Certificate Holder

The list of available Certificate Holders indicates for which CH you are now logged in

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ANNEX – USEFUL LINKS

Links to different portals:

This is the link to the registration page RACP:
https://portal.ra.org/CertificateHolder_Registration/
This is the login page for RACP: https://portal.ra.org/RA_Certification_Theme/Login

The glossary of the terms used in the documents of the Rainforest Alliance
Certification Program.
https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/resource-item/annex-1-glossary/

The glossary is available in multiple languages.

General Guide for the Implementation of the Sustainable Agricultural Standard.

https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/resource-item/general-guide-for-the-implementation-of-
the-sustainable-agricultural-standard/

This General Guide aims to assist Certificate Holders with the implementation of the Rainforest
Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard by providing clarifications to interpret the
requirements and the evidence required for compliance.

Certification Application Form

https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/resource-item/certification-application-form-caf/

The Certification Application Form (CAF) is a mandatory document to be filled out by

Certificate Holders and Certification Bodies along the Certification Process of the Sustainable
Agriculture Standard 2020.

2020 Certification and Auditing Rules

https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/resource-item/2020-certification-and-auditing-rules/

In line with the Rainforest Alliance’s long-term vision of ‘reimagining certification’, the
Assurance System of the 2020 Certification Program introduces numerous innovations to
ensure that certification is more context-specific, data-driven, and risk-based.

Find An Authorized Certification Body

https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/business/certification/find-a-rainforest-alliance-
authorized-certification-bodies/

This is a PDF document that lists the Certification Bodies that are authorized to carry out
audits. The Certification Bodies are listed first. Then follows a list of countries and the
Certification Bodies that operate in those countries.

<end>

You will be informed of any future updates of this manual.

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