Compliance Checks and the Annual Standards Sign-off

Every organisation has Compliance checks. RTObase checks your records against the rules and tracks the dates your regulators set. You act on what it finds.

Organisations that turn on Standards reviews also get Compliance > Standards. This is one Standards sign-off a year. An administrator reads one summary of what RTObase holds for each of the 23 Outcome Standards and the fee rules, adds a required change for anything that needs fixing, and signs once. Signing freezes the summary, and the signed copy becomes your audit pack.

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Choose the task you are doing. Each row is a separate action.

Compliance checks

Open Compliance from the sidebar. The Compliance checks tab lists, for every organisation:

• Rule alerts: problems the automatic rules find in your records, grouped with an affected-record count. See Automated Compliance Alerts.
• Regulator dates: Total VET Activity, the Annual Declaration on Compliance, Quality Indicator data and the Annual Registration Charge.
• Registers you keep in RTObase.
• Dated commitments from your records: validation due dates, trainer credential expiry, policy review dates, and ESOS welfare and monitoring reviews for CRICOS providers.
• Assessment validation reviews and product transitions.

Due now shows what needs you today. Coming up shows the rest of the year. The notification bell counts the same list.

When you fix the owning record, its alert clears by itself. If you open an alert that has already cleared, the page says it resolved at source and links back to Compliance checks.

Turn on Standards reviews

Standards reviews are off by default. An administrator turns them on in Settings > General > Turn on Standards reviews. This adds the Standards tab, the yearly sign-off, the audit pack and two reminder emails a year.

Turning it off hides these again. Sign-offs, earlier reviews and audit packs already made are kept, not deleted. Compliance checks stay on whatever this setting says.

The Standards summary

Compliance > Standards shows one read-only summary, built from records RTObase already holds. Problem areas sit at the top. Under each of the 23 Outcome Standards it shows lines such as enrolments, classes, feedback, validation programmes, complaints and appeals, trainer authorisations, published policies and governance records.

• A Standard's status comes only from open rule alerts. A Standard with an open alert shows it. Nothing else changes a status.
• Parts you do not use in RTObase show as not used, never as a gap. Confirm those parts from your own records.
• Missing facts are named in plain words with one link to the setting that fixes them, for example a missing website address.

The summary also covers the fee rules:

• prepaid fees above $1,500 per learner, which need fee protection;
• your terms and refund page;
• the ESOS 50% rule, for CRICOS providers.

The fee lines count payments recorded in RTObase. Payments taken outside RTObase are not counted.

Required changes

Add a required change for anything in the summary that needs fixing. Each change records what needs fixing, what has to change, an owner, a due date and a status. Required changes stay on the list until they are done, even after the year is signed. Deleting a change does not alter a sign-off that is already signed.

Sign once a year

The sign-off for year Y covers 1 January to 31 December of the year before. For example, the 2027 sign-off covers the 2026 calendar year.

An unsigned sign-off stays open until the next one opens on 1 February. In January you can still sign last year's.

To sign, read the summary, add any required changes, then select Sign off and confirm. You can add a short note. If required changes are still open, the year is signed as Changes needed. If none are open, it is signed as Standards met. You can keep working on open changes after signing.

An administrator, or a member with Compliance and CPD: Manage, signs. Members with Compliance and CPD: Edit can add required changes but cannot sign.

Once signed, select Show the signed copy to see exactly what was frozen. Earlier years are listed under History.

Download the audit pack

After the year is signed, select Download audit pack. You get one ZIP file with:

• A readable PDF: cover and RTO profile, scope, locations, the 23 Standards by quality area, fees, missing facts, required changes and the signed declaration.
• Supporting files: CSVs, your published policy files, uploaded final TAS files and the validation programme list.

The pack is made from the frozen signed copy and stored. Every download returns the same file. If a policy or TAS file listed in the signed copy can no longer be found, RTObase names it and does not make the pack, so a stored pack is never missing a file. Packs from earlier years stay in History.

The old Audit Packs page now opens Compliance > Standards.

Reminder emails

RTObase sends two emails a year to the administrators of an organisation with Standards reviews on:

• Annual Standards Sign-off Open on 1 February;
• Annual Standards Sign-off Due on 8 March, 7 days before the due date.

Neither email is sent once the year is signed. Organisations regulated by TAC (WA) get no reminders yet. Edit the templates or turn the emails off in Communications > System Messages. Pause all System Messages also stops them. See Notification Templates.

RTObase no longer sends a weekly assurance email. A mute link from an old weekly email now says the email has stopped.

Existing policy and training documents

Open Document evidence under Where the work happens to see course Training and Assessment Strategy (TAS) files and the policy register. Existing files stay where they are and do not need to be uploaded again. A course TAS can also be generated section by section from live data and approved on the course's Review and publish step; see Create and design a course.

Published policies appear in the Standards summary, and the audit pack includes your published policy files and uploaded final TAS files. Draft and archived versions stay in the register but are not included.

Assessment validation

The Assessment validation screen (under Where the work happens) keeps one row per in-scope product. It records:

• the five-year outer due date and any earlier risk-triggered date;
• the training-product and assessment-tool versions reviewed;
• the completed-assessment population and sample rationale;
• de-identified selected assessment references;
• validator credentials, suitability and independence declarations;
• findings, implementation and effectiveness.

Use Start guided validation to work through one product at a time. RTObase resumes at the first incomplete stage:

1. confirm scope, versions, risk and the outer/earlier due dates;
2. select a representative completed-assessment sample and record why each item was chosen;
3. confirm panel credentials, current expertise and independence;
4. review the evidence and record findings;
5. implement every required change in its owning product screen;
6. verify effectiveness and sign the immutable evidence manifest.

Non-accredited courses and course shells without a nationally recognised product code are excluded from this Standard 1.5 register. Their nationally recognised units remain visible where they are themselves in scope.

For a Satisfied or Change required decision, RTObase requires a planned product/tool version, a representative sample and a suitable panel. Any involvement in the tool, delivery or original judgment requires an independence note. Validation due dates appear in Compliance checks, and the validation programme list is included in the audit pack.

Trainer authorisation

The organisation-wide Trainer Matrix remains the place to declare which units each trainer can deliver or assess. The Trainer authorisation screen (under Where the work happens) reads that same declared scope and projects it as:

trainer × product or unit × Deliver, Assess or Under direction

It explains missing credential pathways, authentication, training and assessment currency, unit-scoped vocational competence, industry currency, regulator accreditation, professional development and supervision. Every gap is written as the action to take, for example Authenticate the trainer credential or Record relevant professional development, rather than as an internal reason code. Trainers cannot approve their own workforce authorisation.

Use Open trainer matrix to change declared scope. Return to Trainer authorisation to review the evidence-backed result and link evidence; granting scope in the matrix never makes a trainer authorised by itself.

When linking evidence, I have sighted and verified this evidence is ticked by default, because linking from this screen is a staff member saying they have sighted it. Untick it to record the evidence for somebody else to confirm. The Evidence date records when the competence or activity was actually demonstrated and can be backdated; the confirmation itself is always stamped to the confirming person at the moment they confirm.

A Not authorised row should not be scheduled for that deliver or assess role until the listed evidence gaps are resolved. Use Resolve gaps to link or review evidence. Change the Trainer Matrix only when the intended trainer, unit or role is itself incorrect.

Trainer authorisation is assurance guidance, not a hidden scheduling switch. Existing reservations continue to operate after cutover. Treat a Not authorised result as work to resolve before assigning future delivery or assessment, and use the Trainer Matrix to correct the intended scope.

Trainers record their own currency

A trainer signed in to the backoffice sees My currency in the sidebar. It shows what they are authorised to deliver and assess, what is missing, and when their evidence expires, and it lets them record their own professional development and industry-currency evidence with Record my evidence instead of emailing certificates to whoever maintains the records.

Self-recorded evidence stays inert until a colleague confirms it on the Trainer authorisation screen, where pending items appear with a Confirm action. Nobody can confirm evidence about themselves, whatever their role: an admin who also trains still needs a second person to confirm their own records. Once confirmed, the confirmer and the confirmation time are fixed; they cannot be edited, backdated or moved to someone else.

Training-product transition wizard

RTObase monitors active products used by your organisation. A training.gov.au change remains silent on its first observation. It becomes reviewable only after the same fingerprint is observed again or an independent source confirms the change.

A training-product transition is the controlled move from an old or changed qualification, skill set, course or unit to its regulatory replacement. It is not a student transfer. The wizard coordinates the records, people, dates and communications that may need to change while protecting current learners and live delivery.

The transition wizard is resumable:

1. Review the national change.
2. Confirm equivalence, scope implications and dates.
3. Review grouped impacts across offerings, TAS, assessment, trainers, resources, students, bookings, website, reporting and communications.
4. Prepare each affected item.
5. Approve and activate with an impact-hash guard.
6. Monitor applied changes and close after effectiveness checks.

One server-side eligibility decision protects enrolment, commencement, scheduling, publishing and imports. A training.gov.au outage does not create an observation or change operational data.

After the New enrolment cut-off, nobody new can join a course for the old qualification. Learners already on the course continue through teach-out. You can still resume a deferred learner, reactivate a learner or move them to another class of the same course. The check only refuses a learner joining a different course. The cut-off day is the last day a new learner can join. RTObase reads the date in Sydney, not UTC, so the cut-off does not run over into the next Australian morning.

The student review counts every learner on an affected course, including learners enrolled without a class.

Earlier Standard reviews

Per-Standard guided reviews are retired. You cannot start a new one, link evidence to one, or run a review session. A review that was already in progress can still be finished from its link. Its required changes appear in the Required changes list on the Standards page.

The earlier audit pack generator and the weekly assurance email are also retired.

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