Every complaint, with the part that gets asked about later
A list of complaints is easy. A file for one of them - what was said, when it arrived, what changed since, and who decided what - is the part that is hard, and the part somebody eventually asks for.
What gets recorded
Intake keeps three things a spreadsheet row loses.
The reporter’s own words
Stored unedited. A summary is an interpretation, and the original wording is the evidence. If a reviewer later disagrees with how it was read, the source is still there.
When it reached you
Separately from when someone noticed. The gap between those two dates is where lateness hides, so both are recorded and any clock counts from the first.
Where it came from
Which channel, which account. A complaint arriving somewhere nobody monitors is a different operational problem from one arriving in the support inbox, and the record should show which happened.
Complaint, adverse event, or both
“The capsule was cracked” and “I felt unwell after taking it” are different reports with different obligations. One message can be both, so a case carries both components rather than forcing a choice at intake.
Why this matters operationally. Collapsing the two loses the reporting clock. A brand that treats everything as “a complaint” has no moment at which a deadline starts.
Nothing is overwritten
Change a field and the previous value stays, with who changed it, when, and why. The audit trail is append-only and hash-chained, and deletion is refused at the database level rather than discouraged by convention.
That is what makes it possible to answer the two questions a spreadsheet cannot: what did this say before, and can you show nothing was altered afterwards.
What it will not do
It does not decide whether a report is a complaint, and it does not decide whether an event is serious. It does not watch social media or any channel automatically - intake is a form, forwarded email, or manual entry. And it is not a quality management system: no CAPA, no document control, no manufacturing deviations. If you manufacture your own product, you need one of those instead.
See it on a real case
Ten steps, about four minutes, no signup. All data fictional.