With two months left of the CPD year, ICAEW has been working to make it easier to understand where you are in meeting your annual obligations and to record your CPD activities.

Understanding what you need to do

Following feedback from members, the online CPD record has improved the trackers that tell you how much CPD you have completed and any evidence or information gaps in your record.

The updates mean you can now see exactly how many hours and minutes of CPD you have recorded, both overall and for verifiable hours. There are new trackers to show you if you have started recording an activity and not finished, as well as if any activity is missing verifiable evidence.

“We all know how easy it is to get distracted by an email or have a call come in,” says Andrea Cook, ICAEW’s Director, Specialised and Lifelong Learning. “These changes are aimed at helping members to spot, ahead of 1 November, where they need to revisit activities to ensure their record is complete for the year.”

The changes to the trackers aren’t limited to the current CPD year, meaning that you can look back at previous years and see at a glance if you have any incomplete activities.

Sharing your professional development

ICAEW understands that your online CPD record isn’t just a useful tool for you to keep track of activities you’ve completed each year, but a great way to discuss your professional development with managers, employers and mentors. The latest updates to the record have made it much easier to access and download all aspects of your digital record.

At the bottom of the main page, there’s now a button that allows you to ‘Export all activities’ for the CPD year. It will generate a zip file that includes an Excel document of all your CPD activities, as well as three PDF files.

The first is a PDF version of your entire record and all the details that you’ve recorded against each activity. This comprehensive file is accompanied by a summary version and your reflective plan – where you consider your CPD needs for the year. Previously, it was easy to add a reflective plan to your record, but difficult to share it or keep track of updates.

Now, the record automatically displays the last time you updated your plan and you have the option to download your reflective plan from this part of your record. So each time you make changes, you are able to keep a record of this.

Email formats now accepted

To verify CPD hours within the digital record you must upload independent evidence of the activity’s completion. For many CPD activities emails can provide this evidence, but previously to upload emails into your record you first had to convert it into another file type, such as an image or a PDF.

The update to the CPD record now means you can upload .msg and .eml file formats ontoon to the record. These new formats must, however, still be within the maximum file size of 10mb.

“We continue to listen to our members and evolve the digital CPD record to help make it as useful as possible,” says Cook. “Making these changes we hope will help to support a smooth end to the CPD year.”