Can I have a certificate for last Tuesday?
Your body runs a monthly webinar series, regional branch evenings, and an annual conference with parallel sessions. Members use these for CPD. After every event, emails arrive asking for a CPD certificate. For webinars, a staff member downloads the attendance report from Zoom or Teams, checks who stayed long enough, and mail-merges certificates. For branch evenings, the sign-in sheet is posted or photographed to the office.
The conference is the worst. Members attend different sessions and want certificates showing which ones, with the right hours. The sign-in sheets at session doors are incomplete, and some members swapped sessions. Weeks later, the certificates go out, and some are wrong.
Why CPD credit for events is so manual
Attendance is captured in different ways for every type of event, and none of it flows to the member's CPD record.
- Webinar platforms record attendance, but in their own reports.
- Branch meetings use paper sign-in sheets.
- Conference sessions need attendance per session, not per day.
- Rules about minimum attendance time are applied by eye.
- Certificates are produced by mail merge.
- Members then enter the same event into their CPD record themselves.
The underlying issue is that attendance and CPD records are separate, so staff bridge the gap by hand.
What manual certificates cost
Staff spend hours after every event on certificates, and the conference creates a backlog. Errors, such as a missing session or wrong hours, generate more emails. Members have to double-enter events in their CPD record.
Branch volunteers are asked to post sign-in sheets and chase attendees, which they do not enjoy. And the body cannot easily see which events members value for CPD.
How we build event CPD credit
- Each event or session is set up with its CPD hours and category, and any minimum attendance rule.
- For webinars, attendance is read from Zoom or Microsoft Teams through their APIs or reports, and matched to members by email.
- For in-person events, attendees check in by scanning a QR code at the door with their phone, or by staff scanning a badge.
- At conferences, each session has its own QR code, so attendance is recorded per session.
- Attendance that meets your rules is credited to the member's CPD record automatically, and a certificate is issued as a PDF with the event, date and hours.
- Non-members who attend receive a certificate by email, without a CPD record.
- Branch organisers see attendance for their events without handling paper.
| Event type | How attendance is captured | What the member gets |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly webinar | Platform attendance report | CPD entry and certificate |
| Branch evening | QR check-in at the door | CPD entry and certificate |
| Conference session | QR code per session | Entry per session, one certificate listing all |
| Recorded webinar watched later | Viewing record, if you allow it | Entry under your rules |
Minimum attendance rules and what counts are set by your body, and applied the same way for every event.
After an event
When the webinar ends, attendees who stayed long enough have the hours on their CPD record and a certificate in their inbox by the next morning. At branch evenings, members scan in at the door. At the conference, members scan into sessions, and on the final day receive one certificate listing everything they attended.
Staff spend the week after the conference on feedback and next year's plans, not on certificates. The programme team can also see which sessions drew the most members for CPD, which helps when choosing next year's topics.
Is this your events team?
- Members email to ask for CPD certificates after events.
- Certificates are produced by mail merge.
- Branch sign-in sheets are posted to the office.
- Conference certificates take weeks and contain errors.
- Members enter your events into their CPD records by hand.