Training tracking software promises that nothing will lapse, and most of it tracks the wrong thing: how far a learner is through a video. The employer who keeps a workforce's records needs to track three other things: which people are required to hold which courses, when each held course expires, and which sessions have to be booked in the next quarter to keep the compliance figure where it is. This page is for that record keeper at a United States employer: what to track, how far ahead the reminder should ring, how the tracking should be read off the training records rather than kept beside them, and how to test a product on your own crew before paying for it. The training dashboard on this site works the figures the tracking should produce.
Track requirements, holdings and the gap between them
The first thing to track is not completion but requirement: for each role, the list of courses a person in it must hold, and for each person, the role they are in today. The second is the holding: the date each required course was last held and the expiry that follows. The gap between the two, required but not held, or held but expired, is the whole point of tracking, and a product that shows completion percentages without showing the gap by name is tracking the learner rather than the risk. Ask to see the list of people who cannot legally do a task this morning; if the product cannot print it, it is not tracking.
When the reminder should ring
A reminder that fires on the expiry date is a notice that you are already out of compliance. The useful reminder fires far enough ahead to book a session, get the person released from the line and get the sign-off written up, which for most courses means around a quarter ahead for the record keeper and a month ahead for the supervisor. A forklift evaluation falls due every three years under the OSHA standard, an annual hearing conservation refresher every year, and the reminder schedule has to be set per course rather than globally. Whoever books the session, not the learner, is the person the reminder should reach.
Tracked off the records, not beside them
Tracking that lives in its own screen, updated by hand when someone remembers, drifts from the records within a quarter. The expiry should be a date the software derives from the held date and the course's interval; the status should be a word the software derives from the expiry and today; and the dashboard should be counts over those derived statuses. Then a supervisor writing up a held session changes the tracking with no second step. Test it in the demo: add a held session against a person whose course was expiring, and watch whether the dashboard figure moves without anyone touching it.
Testing it on your own crew
Bring a real slice of the workforce to the trial: one site, every role, every course with its interval, and last year's held dates from your spreadsheet. Import it, then ask the three questions an inspector asks: who is not in date for this machine today, what expires before the end of the quarter, and show me this person's record. If any of the three takes more than a minute or needs a report to be built, the product is tracking something other than what you need. Then export everything and open it in a spreadsheet, because the export is the record you keep if you ever leave.
Questions people ask about training tracking software
Should training tracking software also deliver the training?
Only if you deliver training as content. An employer whose training is a session with a trainer, an evaluation on a machine or an external certificate has nothing to deliver through the software and should not pay for a player, a course library or a quiz builder.
How far ahead should the expiry reminder fire?
Far enough to book the session and release the person: a quarter ahead for the record keeper, a month ahead for the supervisor, set per course. A reminder on the day of expiry tells you that you are already out of date.
Does Inductvo track training?
Inductvo Pro derives the expiry from the held date and the course's interval, derives the status from the expiry, reads the dashboard from the statuses and reminds the record keeper and the supervisor before a holding lapses. The free dashboard on this site works the same figures from typed-in counts.