5 Reasons to Ditch Excel for your CPD Logs
How many hours did you really spend wrestling with that CPD spreadsheet last year? Be honest. For many professionals, the answer is ‘too many’.
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Stop forgetting to log CPD time
Let’s face it, as good as Excel is, it’s only useful if you remember to actually use it. One of the biggest bugbears using Excel as a CPD log is trying to remember to transfer handwritten records into a file on the computer. Excel is not a tool that lends itself to working directly on a mobile screen and invariably, things get missed. Recording time spent on development activities there and then, along with fresh reflection, brings so much more value to the process. Stop making your CPD log an afterthought, and bring it into the room.
CPD is more than just numbers
Excel is a tool that is unparalleled for most people when it comes to crunching large sets of numbers. But that’s not what CPD is. Yes, cumulative hours spent on activities, aggregated by year are hugely useful, but the reflection and the learning - the qualitative part of the log - is arguably much more valuable, and just not the kind of information Excel excels at. How meaningful is reflection when it’s just another cell in a table to be filled out.
The missing link - where’s the evidence
So you’ve got a spreadsheet with many hundreds of rows of studiously recorded activities - many of which have an associated certificate or record - but where are they? Often times these are filed away in a random folder, or on your institution’s website - safe enough - but what if you want to find them again? It’s time to find a tool that will store the evidence directly with the record - safe, secure and accessible.
Lost goals and disconnected activities
It’s a standard process. One tab for goals, one for activities. But without some fairly complicated formulas that are prone to break the moment the wind changes (trust me), how are you to build the link between the two?
Being able to log CPD time against an ongoing goal allows you to focus on what’s really important and drive development forward. It’s also extremely useful to be able to see at a glance how many hours you’ve spent in pursuit of one goal compared to others, and perhaps evaluate priorities as you progress.
Submission stress and the reporting nightmare
Depending on the institution or professional body you are reporting to, providing CPD records is either a regular activity, an audit based surprise request - or sometimes both. The scramble to gather records, evidence and produce a professional report whilst using Excel is not fun, or particularly effective. As an assessor for my own professional institution, I can say that the professional part of the CPD report is also often missed in favour of getting it done.
Why not do both!
There is an answer…
We have build CPD Logbook as a direct answer to the woes of using Excel. Logging activities is a breeze, offering the ability to link activities with ongoing goals, provide reflection, save evidence directly in-app and output stunning professional reports in seconds.
The feedback is clear - keep Excel for all the things Excel is good at. For CPD logging, sign up for CPD Logbook today - for free!
Photo by Maria Fernanda Pissioli on Unsplash
P.S. If you’re tired of the spreadsheet struggle, we built CPD Logbook to solve these exact problems. It’s built around goals, reflections, and one-click reporting. It’s completely free to get started.