MintEncoder User Manual

How to install, activate, and use MintEncoder day to day — plus what MintEncoder means for your compliance obligations.

MintEncoder in Plain English

Imagine you have developed a software application called Architect Planner v1.0 and want to make it available to your customers.
Rather than selling the software outright, you decide to licence its use.

For example, customers may subscribe for a month, purchase a year’s access, use a limited trial version, or be granted access under other commercial terms that you define.

MintEncoder is the system that creates and manages those licences.

When you mint a licence using MintEncoder, a licence key is created and digitally signed using a private signing key that only you control. Architect Planner v1.0 can then verify that signature and determine what the customer is entitled to access, how long they may use the software, and any other restrictions that may apply.

In simple terms:

MintEncoder creates and manages licence keys.
Architect Planner v1.0 checks and enforces the licence conditions.
Your customer purchases the right to use Architect Planner v1.0 in accordance with the licence you have issued.

When a licence expires, the customer will be required to renew their subscription by obtaining a new licence before continuing to use the software.
If someone attempts to modify a licence key or generate their own, the digital signature will no longer be valid and Architect Planner v1.0 will automatically reject the counterfeit licence.

MintEncoder also maintains a complete audit trail of licensing activity, including key pair generation, licence minting, backups, restores, and configuration changes.

Because MintEncoder operates entirely offline, your private signing keys remain under your control and are never transmitted to external services.

End User Manual

Written for whoever operates MintEncoder day to day: minting licences, managing products, and issuing keys to customers.

What MintEncoder Is

MintEncoder is a Windows desktop application that enables software publishers to create, sign, and manage licence keys for their own software products.

Operating entirely offline, MintEncoder generates cryptographically signed licences using private signing keys that remain under your control at all times. No internet connection is required to generate key pairs, mint licences, or manage your licensing environment.

MintEncoder provides product management, licence minting, key pair generation, auditing, backup, and recovery capabilities through a single application. It maintains a complete history of licensing activity and securely stores the information required to manage the licences you issue to your customers.

Installing and Activating MintEncoder

When MintEncoder is started for the first time, the Activation screen is displayed.
Enter the MintEncoder licence key that was supplied with your purchase and click Activate.

If the licence is valid, MintEncoder will display a confirmation message and automatically restart. Once restarted, all features of the application will be available.

MintEncoder validates its own licence in exactly the same way that your software validates the licences that MintEncoder creates. This ensures that only genuine, unmodified licences can be used.

If your MintEncoder subscription expires, the application will continue to open normally and all previously created data will remain accessible. Products, keys, licences, audit history, and backups can still be viewed and managed.

However, the following functions will be unavailable until your subscription is renewed:

Creating new products
Generating new key pairs
Minting new licences

To restore full functionality, obtain a new MintEncoder licence and activate it using the Activation screen.

Products — Setting Up What You Sell

Before licences can be minted, a product must first be created.

In this context, a product represents the software, service, or application that your customers are purchasing the right to use. Throughout this manual, we use Architect Planner v1.0 as an example product, but a product can represent anything from a desktop application to a web platform or subscription-based service.

When creating a product, you define the licensing model that will be used for that product. MintEncoder currently supports both Seat-Based and Domain-Based licensing.

Once a product has been created, it becomes available for licence minting immediately. No code changes, recompilation, or modifications to the licensing infrastructure are required.

Products can be edited as your business evolves, allowing names, descriptions, and licensing settings to be maintained directly within MintEncoder.

A single MintEncoder installation can manage an unlimited number of products, all using the same signing infrastructure, audit trail, backup strategy, and recovery processes.

By separating products from licences, MintEncoder allows multiple software offerings to be managed from a single environment while maintaining a complete history of licensing activity across every product you publish.

Managing Product Versions

Each product keeps its own version history, separate from MintEncoder’s own version. From Product Manager, select a product and click Release History to open its list of registered versions — each with a version number, a release date, and notes describing what changed.

Add a new version any time you release an update to that product. There is nothing to keep in sync manually: the product’s “current version” is always whichever one you registered most recently.

This history feeds directly into Mint Licence — when you select a product there, the Product Version field is pre-filled with its latest registered version automatically. You can still pick an older version from the list, or type a version that hasn’t been formally registered yet, if you need to.

Minting a Licence

To create a new licence:

Select the product from your list of active products.
Enter the customer’s name and email address.
Choose either a seat count or a domain restriction (or tick Any Domain).
Choose whether the licence is a Trial or Subscription licence.
Set the licence expiry date.
Enter an order reference and any notes you wish to associate with the customer.
Click Mint Licence.

MintEncoder will generate a unique licence key using the information provided and add it to the Licence Log.

A PDF licence certificate can be generated immediately or at any time in the future from the Licence Log.

The Licence Log

The Licence Log contains a complete history of every licence you have ever minted.

Immediately after minting a licence, you can open its details directly from the Licence Minted confirmation screen. Alternatively, any previously issued licence can be accessed from the Licence Log.

Double-click any licence entry to view its full details, copy the licence key, generate a PDF certificate, or update the licence notes.

PDF certificates are not stored permanently. Instead, they are generated on demand using the information currently recorded in the Licence Log.

The Licence Log is the authoritative source of licence information. This ensures that every PDF certificate reflects the latest recorded data and avoids the risk of outdated or duplicate certificate files being distributed.
Each generated PDF includes the date and time it was created, providing a clear record of when the certificate snapshot was produced.

Key Management and the Recovery Key

Every product has its own signing key.
Key Management allows you to:

Generate a new signing key pair.
Activate the signing key currently used for licence minting.
Archive older signing keys.

Archived signing keys remain valid for licences that have already been issued. They are simply no longer used when minting new licences.

The Recovery Key is a password-protected backup of your signing keys.
These signing keys are used to prove that licences issued by MintEncoder are genuine. If they are lost and no Recovery Key exists, they cannot be recreated or recovered.

Without a Recovery Key, you may permanently lose the ability to verify, restore, or reissue licences that were signed using those keys.

Whenever a new signing key pair is generated, MintEncoder immediately directs you to create and export a new Recovery Key. This is because the Recovery Key must always contain the latest version of every signing key currently known to the system.

The Recovery Key should be stored securely and separately from the computer running MintEncoder. A copy should also be kept separately from your normal backup locations whenever possible.

Settings — Storage and Backups

MintEncoder stores its data in a database. By default, the database is created in a Data folder alongside the application, but the database location can be customised via the Settings screen if required.

Changing the database location does not automatically move the database file. If you choose a new database location, the existing database must be moved manually before restarting MintEncoder. Otherwise, a new empty database will be created in the selected location.

MintEncoder supports four separate storage locations:

• Database Folder – Stores the MintEncoder database.
• Backup Folder – Used for manual backups created on demand.
• Auto Backup Folders – Up to two locations can be configured for automatic scheduled backups.
• Recovery Key Folder – Stores exported Recovery Keys.

The Recovery Key Folder must always be different from the Backup Folder and any Auto Backup Folder.

If a backup is compromised and the Recovery Key is stored in the same location, your Recovery Key password becomes the last line of defence protecting your signing keys.

Regular backups protect your products, licences, audit history, and application settings. Recovery Keys protect your signing keys.

For complete disaster recovery, both backups and Recovery Keys should be maintained and stored securely and separately. Neither should be considered a replacement for the other.

Automatic backups written to both Auto Backup folders are checked against each other, not just assumed to have succeeded. MintEncoder compares the file size of each pair of backups (within a configurable byte tolerance, to allow for normal variation) and the backup timestamp recorded inside each one (within a configurable time tolerance). If either check falls outside its tolerance, a Resync Backups option appears so the two locations can be brought back into agreement. This is designed to catch a backup destination that is failing silently — for example, an unavailable network drive — rather than only discovering the gap when a restore is actually needed.

For a deeper look at how MintEncoder’s security design works and how we recommend deploying it across a team, see How MintEncoder Works.

Trial Licences

Trial licences work in exactly the same way as Subscription licences, but are typically issued with a shorter expiry period to allow customers to evaluate your software before committing to a subscription.

When minting a Trial licence, MintEncoder checks whether a trial licence has previously been issued for the same product and customer. If a matching trial is found, a warning is displayed to help prevent accidental duplicate trials.

The warning does not prevent a new Trial licence from being issued. If there is a legitimate reason to provide a further trial period, you may choose to continue and mint the licence as normal.

If Your MintEncoder Licence Expires

If your MintEncoder licence expires, the application will continue to open normally and all previously created data will remain accessible.

The Licence Log, Key Management, Products, Audit History, Backups, and Recovery Keys remain fully available.

However, until your MintEncoder subscription is reactivated, you will not be able to:

Mint new licences.
Generate new signing key pairs.
Create new products.

Nothing you have already created is lost or deleted. Reactivating your subscription simply restores the ability to create and manage new licensing assets.

Administrator Lock & Recovery

System Configuration in Settings holds the sensitive controls — backups, Recovery, Branding, System, and Key Manager’s signing-key actions — behind an administrator password, separately from everyday licence minting, which stays open to your whole team regardless.

If you forget the administrator password and your Recovery Email is confirmed, this is fully self-service: click Forgot password? on the unlock prompt and a code arrives in that inbox to reset it. No need to contact support.

If Recovery Email isn’t set up yet, or you need System Configuration unlocked directly, tick System Configuration on the System tab. A one-off challenge code appears — contact MintEncoder support and read it to us. We look your subscription up in our own records and email an unlock code to the address on file; paste it in when it arrives to reveal Disable Administrator Lock. The code is never read aloud or relayed over the phone.

If that mailbox genuinely no longer exists, we have a manual fallback — it requires extra identity verification on the call and takes longer than the usual automatic email, so keeping your Recovery Email current is the quickest path back in.

For specific error messages and step-by-step fixes, see the Help page.

Compliance Considerations

MintEncoder includes several security-focused features that may assist organisations in meeting their own compliance, governance, and audit requirements.
These features include:

Offline licence signing.
Local-only data storage.
Cryptographically signed licences.
Comprehensive audit logging.
Individual user accountability through Windows authentication.
Controlled backup and recovery processes.

Together, these features help provide evidence of licensing activity, key management, user accountability, and administrative actions performed within MintEncoder.

MintEncoder is designed to operate on a dedicated workstation or virtual machine. Where multiple authorised users require access, each user should authenticate using their own Windows credentials rather than shared accounts. Administrative actions recorded in the Audit Log include the Windows account responsible for the action, helping support accountability and audit requirements.

However, MintEncoder is not itself a compliance certification, standard, or regulatory framework. Compliance requirements vary between organisations, industries, and jurisdictions.

MintEncoder should therefore be considered one component within a wider compliance, governance, and security programme. Organisations should consult appropriately qualified legal, security, compliance, or audit professionals when assessing their specific requirements.

GDPR

What supports it: Customer data remains on your own infrastructure unless you deliberately export it. There is no third-party cloud processor involved, and MintEncoder operates entirely offline.

Every action performed against a licence, key, or product is recorded in the Audit Log, helping demonstrate accountability and traceability.

PDF licence certificates are generated on demand rather than being stored permanently. Generated PDFs are written to a temporary location and are automatically removed when MintEncoder closes. This helps reduce the risk of customer information being left behind in forgotten files and supports data minimisation principles.

Where multiple authorised users access MintEncoder, activities are recorded against the authenticated Windows account responsible for the action, helping support accountability requirements.

What it doesn’t do: MintEncoder does not manage lawful basis, privacy notices, data subject access requests, right-to-erasure workflows, consent management, or data retention policies.

The customer data stored within MintEncoder (such as names, email addresses, company details, domain names, and order references) is personal data like any other. You remain responsible for protecting the database, securing exported files and backups, controlling user access, and implementing the wider organisational policies and procedures required by GDPR.

ISO/IEC 27001

What supports it: MintEncoder includes several features that may support organisations working towards ISO/IEC 27001 objectives, including offline licence signing, machine-protected key storage, individual user accountability through Windows authentication, comprehensive audit logging, and controlled backup and recovery processes.

These features can provide useful evidence supporting information security controls related to cryptographic key management, access control, accountability, logging, and business continuity.

What it doesn’t do: ISO/IEC 27001 certifies an organisation’s Information Security Management System (ISMS), including its policies, procedures, risk management processes, governance arrangements, and continual improvement activities. A software application alone cannot make an organisation ISO 27001 compliant or certified.

Using MintEncoder does not grant, imply, or guarantee ISO/IEC 27001 certification. Organisations remain responsible for implementing and maintaining the wider security, governance, and operational controls required by the standard.

PCI DSS

What supports it: MintEncoder does not store, process, or transmit payment card data. There are no fields within MintEncoder for card numbers, CVV values, expiry dates, or other cardholder data.

Because MintEncoder operates entirely offline and is focused solely on software licensing, it typically falls outside the scope of PCI DSS card data processing requirements.

What it doesn’t do: If your organisation accepts card payments, PCI DSS obligations remain the responsibility of the payment systems and service providers involved in processing those transactions.

Using MintEncoder does not reduce, replace, or satisfy any PCI DSS requirements that apply to your payment environment.

Cyber Essentials

What supports it: MintEncoder incorporates several security-focused design principles that align with the objectives of Cyber Essentials. These include local-only data storage, offline licence signing, individual user accountability through Windows authentication, comprehensive audit logging, and controlled backup and recovery processes.

MintEncoder is designed to operate within a secured Windows environment and supports organisations by providing traceability of administrative actions through its Audit Log.

What it doesn’t do: Cyber Essentials assesses an organisation’s overall cyber security posture, including areas such as secure configuration, access control, malware protection, patch management, and network security.

While MintEncoder can form part of a wider Cyber Essentials strategy, it does not itself satisfy or certify compliance with the Cyber Essentials scheme. Organisations remain responsible for implementing and maintaining the technical and operational controls required for certification.

Important: This section is provided for general information only and should not be considered legal, regulatory, audit, or compliance advice. Compliance requirements vary between organisations, industries, and jurisdictions. You should consult appropriately qualified legal, compliance, security, or audit professionals when assessing your organisation’s specific obligations.