Tracking CPE: Are Compliance Monitors that Important?

April 30, 2020

Tracking your CPE credits can be frustrating when you’re earning credits from different organizations, websites, and webinars. And when it comes to tracking CPE for your firm or organization, it’s an even bigger nightmare. Employees earning credits and forgetting to turn them in? Employees claiming to have earned credit that they have zero proof of? These are just a few of the problems organizations face when trying to track employees’ CPE.

Tracking Your Own CPE

When it’s just you tracking CPE, it might seem easy in the beginning. But as the years go by, you start to realize that keeping up with all those certificates is a little trickier than you thought. CPE requirements are always changing, and with more certifying bodies than ever, managing your own CPE compliance is enough to give anyone a headache.

And as you add more licenses and certifications, it gets even more complicated. What if one of those changes the requirements? What if a deadline changes?

Doing it all yourself can be difficult. What should you do?

You can always keep tracking it yourself, putting together an elaborate Excel spreadsheet to track requirements, due dates, and certificates. Create a dedicated Certificates folder on your computer—or, even better, an external hard drive service like Dropbox or Box—to track all your certificates. But what if the rules change? Are you keeping up with everything?

If that sounds overwhelming, there’s another option. Choose a CPE provider that offers some kind of CPE Compliance Monitor. Multiple platforms offer them, including AICPA-CPE Express, Illumeo, and CPELink. These monitors typically allow you to upload certificates from other platforms, including competitors and in-person events. But the best part is that these monitors also track the CPE you still need to complete before your certification’s deadline.

These CPE Compliance Monitors were designed to stay on top of all the deadlines and requirements set by the governing bodies to ensure that their users don’t miss a thing. So if tracking your own CPE feels overwhelming, find a CPE provider who offers a Compliance Monitor.

Tracking Your Organization’s CPE

If tracking one person’s CPE feels overwhelming, imagine tracking dozens of people—or hundreds, or more. How can you possibly track it all manually?

Now, some organizations do try to track things manually. Or they simply require their employees to track CPE on their own, leaving them open to potential issues if the employee misses a deadline or a requirement.

But what would make it easier is to use a CPE provider that offers organizations tools that help track CPE for users. Platforms like Surgent CPE, Becker, Illumeo, and AICPA-CPE Express offer these kinds of tools. Most allow organizations to assign courses and webinars, track attendance, and keep records of CPE certificates. And, of course, these organizational tools are like the individual Compliance Monitors in that they also track certification and license deadlines and requirements.

Compliance Monitors for All

Whether you’re looking to track your own CPE or the CPE of your employees, it’s clear that a compliance monitor is just the ticket to make sure you stay on top of all deadlines, requirements, and tracking. So if you don’t currently have a CPE provider that you love, now may be the perfect time to make the switch to one of the providers that does offer compliance monitors for individuals and firms or organizations. You can see which ones do in our CPE-Compare grid where we list all the details of CPE providers and the features they offer.