Continuing Education Sponsors

CFP Board requires registered CE Sponsors to report attendee lists electronically. By sending these lists electronically, you will avoid the hassles of missing CE certificates, lost attendee lists and phone calls from CFP® certificants trying to report their CE hours.

Program attendees will appreciate it.
When you report CE electronically to CFP Board, CFP® certificants are relieved of this manual task. Not only is it a value-added service you can offer attendees, our experience shows that CFP® certificants are increasingly seeking out those CE sponsors that offer this convenience.

Less paperwork and fewer phone calls.
With electronic reporting, it's not necessary to provide certificates of attendance to CFP® certificants. Instead, within 2 business days of transferring your information to us, the certificant can check the status of his or her CE hours on our Web site. Furthermore, hours reported electronically are not subject to audit by CFP Board, meaning that certificants won't call you months later trying to replace lost certificates.

Easy and free. All you need is an Excel spreadsheet.
Use the following step-by-step instructions to view the Excel spreadsheet. There is a sample spreadsheet to help you get started. We'll even be happy to walk you through the process by phone. After you do it once, you'll see how simple it is.

Have Questions? Help is available.
Please contact CFP Board at 800-487-1497 or by e-mail at cesponsor@CFPBoard.org.

Reporting CE Using an Excel Template

Overview
These instructions have been written for reporting continuing education credits electronically to CFP Board using the provided Excel spreadsheet template. Using the template will eliminate much of the confusion associated with using comma-delimited formats. Please do not alter this template in any way as it may delay the processing, or make the report unusable. All formats mentioned in these instructions have been built into the template for ease of use.

The template consists of a header record and body. The header record allows CFP Board to validate the data correctly, and ensure that no data is duplicated or omitted. The header record must be completed in its entirety for proper processing. The body area is for the listing of individuals and the courses they have completed. Each course must be listed individually, even when reporting multiple courses for the same individual.

The completed template should be e-mailed as an attachment to cereport@CFPBoard.org.

Download/Save the Excel Template

Instructions:

1. Save the template somewhere on your computer where you will remember where it is. Double click on the template icon to open it, or open Excel and click on File in the toolbar, and then Open. In the Open window, browse to the saved location of the template, highlight the template file, and click on the Open button in the lower right hand corner of the window.
   
   
   
   
2. Immediately following this paragraph is an example of the template with the header row almost complete, and highlighted in green. Enter the information requested in the header record in row 2 of the template. Leave the number of records blank for now. The number of records will be tallied and entered in a later step.
   
   
   

   The following table offers a brief description of each field in the header record.
   

   CE Sponsor Code Number	A number assigned to you by CFP Board that should never change.
   Sponsor Name	This should exactly match CFP Board records. If a name change occurs, be sure to notify CFP Board before submitting reports under the new name.
   Sponsor Batch Date	The date the report was created in "mm/dd/yyyy" format.
   Sponsor Batch Number	A number that increments sequentially for each report submitted. This number and the date are used to ensure that a duplicate report is not being processed, and that a report has not been missed.
   Number of Records being Reported	The total number of records that this report contains, not including the header record.

   
   
3. Once the header record has been completed, begin entering the individual and course information in the body. Immediately following this paragraph is an example of the template with the body and some sample records highlighted in green. Enter the first record to be reported in first empty row of the body. Each course being reported must have its own row, even when reporting multiple courses for one individual. When the first record is complete, move down to the next available row. Do not leave empty rows. When all records have been entered into the body, count the total number of records, and enter that number in the number of records box previously left blank.
   
   
   
   The following table offers a brief description of each field in the course records. Please make special note of the "two out of three" check system used by CFP Board, as failure to provide at least two of the required pieces of information will delay the processing of the report.

   Two out of three check:

   CFP Board uses a "two out of three" check system to validate the identity of a certificant. In addition to their name, CFP Board must be provided with either their certificant/CFP Board ID number issued with their initial certification, or the last 4 digits of their social security number to validate their identity. A middle name or initial is optional, but encouraged.

   The following table offers a brief description of each field in the body.

   CE Sponsor Program ID Number	This should be a unique alphanumeric value identifying the course completed, and it should not change over time. It will be tracked in CFP Board's database, and the course must be approved for electronic reporting before hours can be credited.
   Program Name	This should be the title of the course that was completed, and should exactly match the title in CFP Board's database. This field is used to verify that correct data has been received; therefore, it should not change over time. If a course title change occurs, CFP Board must be notified before reporting credits under the new name.
   Date Individual Completed	This should be the date the individual completed the course. A check is made to ensure that courses taken during a prior CE Period are not credited to a more recent CE Period.
   Last 4 Digits Attendee SSN	This is an optional field used in a two out of three check to determine if the individual is a CFP® certificant. If it is provided, hyphens will be added by the built in formatting, but it can be entered as a simple numeric string. If it is not provided, the field should be empty. Only the last 4 digits are required.
   Attendee CFP Board ID	This is an optional field used in a two out of three check to determine if the individual is a CFP® certificant. If it is provided, leading zeros may be included, but are not necessary. If it is not provided, the field should be empty.
   Attendee Last Name	This is the individual's last name, and may contain spaces between common prefixes such as "Van", "De", "Mc" etc. Designations should not be included with the name. Hyphenated names can be accepted as long as at least one name matches the last name contained in CFP Board's certificant database.
   Attendee First Name	This is the individual's first name. It should not contain prefixes such as Doctor or Captain.
   Attendee Middle Name	This is the individual's middle name or names. This field is optional, but is intended for providers who carry the middle name in a separate field. It is used to resolve situations where certificants have the same first and last name. If a middle name is not provided, the field should be empty.

   
   
4. When all of the information has been entered into the template, save your completed report on your computer, and email it as an attachment to cereport@CFPBoard.org.
   

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