Track CPD credit

Some of your learners hold a professional registration. Pharmacists, nurses, real estate agents and financial advisers all have to keep earning continuing professional development each year and show their board they did.

CPD tracking lets you price an activity in the credit that board counts, print that credit on the completion document, and give the learner a statement covering a whole registration year.

Most RTOs never need this, so it is off until you turn it on.

Turn it on

Go to Settings → CPD and switch on Enable CPD tracking.

Turning it on adds a CPD section, a credit field on your courses, a CPD tab on learner records, and a statement learners can download from the portal. Turning it off hides those staff and learner surfaces, including direct links. Settings stay available so an administrator can turn the module on again. Nothing is deleted, and credit already printed on a document stays on that document.

Add a scheme

A scheme is one board or licence rule. Give it a name and choose the word it counts in: pharmacy counts credits, nursing counts hours, several property regulators count points.

The unit is fixed once credit has been recorded against the scheme, because changing it would change what every past total meant.

Set the cycle

A cycle is a repeating span of months. Enter the start of the first cycle and its length. For a pharmacy year that runs from 1 October to 30 September, set the first start to 1 October and the length to 12 months. RTObase calculates each following cycle from that pattern.

If the board changes its cycle, add a new pattern from the first affected date. Earlier cycles keep their original boundaries. Credit stays in the cycle that applied when the completion document was issued.

Set a pattern that covers the current date. Without one, new completion documents cannot record a cycle.

Add categories, if your scheme has them

Skip this unless your board sets a floor or a ceiling on part of the total.

Pharmacy does: of the 40 credits a pharmacist needs, at least 20 must come from Group 2 and Group 3 activities. That means Group 1 is effectively capped at 20.

Give each one a code and a name, then set the rule.

Set the requirement

A requirement has two parts, and you may only need the first.

The total is how much a learner needs in the cycle. For pharmacy, 40.

Category rules set a floor, a ceiling, or both. A ceiling caps what that category contributes to the total, which is the part people find surprising: a pharmacist who does 30 Group 1 credits against a ceiling of 20 has earned 30 and can only count 20, so they are still 20 short of 40. RTObase shows both numbers for exactly that reason.

Price your courses

Open a course, go to Design → Completion rules, and find the CPD credit card.

Enter the hours and the per-hour rate and the credit works itself out, or enter the credit directly. Keeping the hours and the rate is worth doing: if a board ever asks how six credits were arrived at, you can show them the working.

Choose the activity category when the scheme uses category floors or ceilings. That category is saved with the issued credit, so the statement can apply the correct rule later.

Add the activity's accreditation number here too. It prints on the learner's certificate, and it is what they quote in their own log.

A course that does not issue a completion document cannot carry credit, because the credit rides the document. Turn completion documents on first.

Changing a price later

Editing a course's credit only affects documents issued from that point on. A statement a learner is already holding never changes.

That is deliberate. If a board audits a pharmacist against your record three years from now, both copies still say the same thing.

Register your learners

Open the learner's record and use the CPD tab to register them for a scheme, with the number their board knows them by.

Registering matters even before they have done anything. It is what puts them on the CPD roll, and a learner who has earned nothing this cycle is exactly the one you want to find.

Record an adjustment

An administrator can record a signed adjustment from the learner's CPD tab. Choose one of the learner's current or ended registrations. Enter a positive credit amount to add to the total or a negative amount to reduce it.

Use an adjustment when the provider needs to record an external activity, correct an imported balance, or account for evidence that did not produce a completion document in RTObase. Record the activity name and date, the reason, and any evidence reference. Add the category when the scheme uses category floors or ceilings.

An adjustment cannot be edited or deleted. If it was wrong, an administrator records a reversal with a reason. The reversal adds an equal and opposite entry, while both entries stay in the credit history. Staff can view adjustments and reversals but cannot create them.

What learners see

A registered learner gets a CPD page in their portal showing the credit this provider recorded in the current cycle and a statement they can download for their own records. The statement includes staff-recorded adjustments. Those adjustments may describe external activity and its evidence.

Accredited training earns CPD too

CPD is not the same thing as non-accredited training, and the two often overlap. A nationally recognised immunisation skill set is AVETMISS reported, needs a USI, and is marked competent or not yet competent, and it earns CPD credit as well.

So you can price any course, accredited or not. Credit prints on a Statement of Completion and on the CPD statement. It is deliberately kept off a Statement of Attainment and off a qualification certificate, because those are regulated documents and mixing another body's credit into them muddies what is nationally recognised.