Knowledge/Accreditation and audits
Accreditation, paperwork, and what auditors check
Whether you need accreditation, what the paperwork has to contain, and what happens when the regulator comes looking.
Everything in this section
- Accredited person, scheme participant, or neitherThe VEU has three legal roles, and yours decides who ends up in court. Most HVAC install businesses are scheme participants, not accredited persons.
- How to become a VEU accredited personEvery step, fee and deadline. $3,000 to apply, $1,000 a year to renew, a decision in 20 business days, and it only covers activities you're approved for.
- The real cost of accreditation isn't the feeYou pay for your own audit every two years, keep records for six years, do yearly CPD from 30 March, and answer for everyone working under you.
- Self-accredit, or work under an aggregator?Nobody has published a break-even point, so here's what self-accrediting costs, who wears the loss when a job fails, and what we'd want to know first.
- What your accredited person pays you, and why nobody publishes itNothing in the scheme's rules sets what an accredited person pays an installer, and we found no published rate cards. Here's what to ask for instead.
- The training evidence your accredited person needs before you startThe rule change on 9 September 2026 (section 14FA). What you have to prove, who you prove it to, and which activities don't list VEU-specific training units.
- The assignment of rights that makes the job validYour customer hands their right to create certificates to the accredited person. What makes that valid, and why a pre-July 2025 template may not comply.
- On a rental job, the landlord signs the assignmentThe tenant holds the energy account, but section 16(2) treats the landlord as the consumer so they can sign. Likely to come up far more often from 2027.
- No certificate without these two declarationsRegulation 17 needs a declaration from your customer and one from the accredited person. Plus the rule against bringing in an old unit just to rip it out.
- What counts as decommissioned, and the disposal proof to keepThe old unit has to be made unusable, the refrigerant handled under Commonwealth law and the waste taken off site. Plus the proof worth keeping on file.
- Six years of records, and the other clocks people mix upWhat you have to keep if you're accredited, and for how long. Why every certificate carries your number, and the deadlines that catch people out.
- The fact sheet and sizing advice you owe before they signThree things you must do before the customer agrees, or no certificate can be created. Plus the state's published sizing bands by floor area.
- The register timing trap that kills finished jobsA certificate fails if the product isn't on the register when the certificate is created, not when you installed it. And the calculator isn't the check.
- What actually triggers an audit, and who pays for itThree different things get called an audit. One is routine and scheduled, one needs reasonable grounds, and one happens to every certificate you create.
- Everything the regulator can do to you, from a warning upFrom a warning up to an order to hand back certificates at 600 penalty units. Every step, its section number, and what it comes to in dollars.
- The two March 2026 cases, and what actually got them$4.2 million in certificates refused and one five-year ban. Exactly what the two businesses did, straight from the regulator's own media release.
- If your accredited person loses accreditation, the offence is yoursKeep doing scheme jobs for an accredited person who's lost accreditation and you're the one committing the offence. And suspension can be immediate.
- Victorian Energy Upgrades marketing rules, and the two bansCold-call telemarketing banned since May 2024, doorknocking since August 2024. Plus the rule that stops you buying leads from someone else's cold call.
Rather just ask someone?
Kevin has been in this industry for 30 years. If the answer isn't here, or you want it applied to a job you're quoting, have a chat.