Training keeps what each person must know, the sessions that teach it, and the proof: a salon's keratin and color certifications, its safety classes and the register; a maker's operators trained on the SOPs they work to. It lives where the team is managed: a Training tab beside the people under the team's section, a Training tab on each person's page, and My training in everyone's own menu.
Turn it on
An owner switches Training on in Admin, Modules. It is off until then, and while it is off nothing is asked of anyone, no session is held, and the calendar checks nothing. The demo has it on.
Two switches on each login (under Settings, Logins) say who does what:
- Training sets trainings up, schedules sessions and puts people on them, takes attendance, and records certificates. Owners, admins and managers have it unless an owner turns it off.
- Sign off training signs a skill off as the trainer who watched it done, signed with your own name, and takes a session's attendance. Owners have it; an owner gives it to the trainers.
Everyone sees their own training under My training, with no switch at all.
A training
A training says what someone must know and how it is proved. Under Trainings, add one with:
- Its title, and what it covers.
- How it is proved. An SOP read and signed: it is done when the person has signed the version in effect, read from the SOPs' own records, and asks for a new signature when a new version takes effect (this kind is offered while SOPs are on). A session attended: attendance taken on the day completes it, or one step of it when it takes several sessions. A skill signed off by a trainer who watched it done. An outside certificate: its issuer, number, dates and file, recorded by whoever manages training. For a certificate, name a kind of staff license that counts for it, and a license of that kind under the person's Licenses stands in with its own expiry.
- How long it stays good: so many months, or for good. A certificate with its own last day keeps that day.
- Who must have it: everyone, a seat on the team (owners, admins, managers, the front desk, staff), everyone at a location, whoever performs a service, a person by name, whoever holds a job, or everyone in a department's jobs. A person who matches any row must have it.
A training no longer asked of anyone is retired: kept with every record, asked of nobody, gating nothing. Its coming sessions are canceled first. It can be brought back. How a training is proved stays as it is once anyone has completed it: retire it and add a new one instead.
Jobs and departments
A department (Production, Quality, Front of house) holds jobs (Line operator, QA technician, Colorist), and a person holds one job or several: a line operator who also drives the forklift holds both. A training asked of a job is needed by whoever holds it; asked of a department, by everyone in any of its jobs. A job can be in no department.
Set them up under The Matrix, By job, Jobs and departments: add a department, add a job in it with who holds it, and change either later. A person's jobs are also set on their Training tab under the team. Someone with the Training switch or Services and the team's sets them up.
Nothing is deleted. A job is archived when it is no longer used: it asks nothing of the people who held it, and it is kept with them for when it is brought back. A department is archived once no job in use is left in it. Each can be brought back from the sheet.
HR keeps its own job title on a person's file; it is suggested from the jobs, and the jobs someone holds show beside it. A department grants and limits nothing: what someone may see and do is still their login's switches.
The matrix
The Matrix reads two ways. By person, it is everyone against every training in use, the screen an auditor asks for. Each cell says where the person stands:
- Current: on file and good for more than 30 days.
- Due soon: it runs out within 30 days.
- Expired: it ran out, or, for an SOP training, a newer version is in effect than the one they signed.
- In progress: booked on a session coming, or some of the sessions it takes attended.
- Not started: nothing on file.
A dot means the training is not asked of that person. Filter it by job or department, location, seat and training; a job or a department narrows the trainings too, to the ones its people need or have. With SOPs on and standards set up under Quality, Standard narrows either way of the matrix to the trainings that serve one standard's clauses: who is trained for OSHA, or for ISO 9001, in one step. Tap a cell to open the person's record; Download as a spreadsheet gives the same as a CSV, with the day each one runs out and the jobs each person holds.
By job, the trainings run down the side, and across the top each department, led by a column for the whole department, then its jobs, the jobs in no department, and the people who hold no job. Each cell's mark says whether that job needs the training:
- ● the job itself, or the whole department, needs it.
- ◐ it needs it through its department, or (on a department's own column) some of its jobs do.
- ✱ everyone needs it.
- ○ some of its people need it another way: their seat, a service they perform, their name.
- · nobody in it needs it.
Under the mark, how many of those who need it have it, of how many; the color is the most pressing of them, as on the person matrix. A person who holds two of a department's jobs counts once in its column. Tap a job's or a department's heading to open the person matrix for its people, or a cell for its people and that training. Change what each job needs turns each cell into a switch: tap it to ask that job or the whole department for the training, or to stop asking it. A training everyone must have is changed on the training itself, and the last thing a training asks of anyone cannot be turned off (retire the training instead).
On a training's page, Standards It Serves names the clauses of the standards it answers, and with the Quality switch Change the clauses it serves picks them.
A person's record
A person's record of one training keeps every piece of proof, newest first: the one that counts (the one that keeps them good the longest), the ones superseded by it, and any taken back. Each says who, when, how (the trainer's signature, the certificate's issuer, number and file, the session attended, the SOP's version) and when it runs out. Nothing is ever deleted: a completion recorded against the wrong person, or a certificate that turned out not to be valid, is taken back with a reason and stays on the record, struck through, and the one before it counts again.
From the record, whoever manages training records a certificate (a PDF or a picture is kept with it), and a trainer signs a skill off, typing their own name as the team knows it. Nobody signs off their own skill.
Sessions
Under Sessions, schedule a session with its training, its trainer (someone on the team, or a name from outside), its day and time, how long it runs, a place (and a room from Resources, which is held too), room for so many, and a note to the people on it.
- People are put on it by name, or everyone who is due for its training in one go, as far as its room allows. Someone with a client booked then is said so and left off.
- Their calendars: the session holds the trainer's, each trainee's and the room's time on the calendar as a block named for it, so no client is booked over it. The calendar will not let one of those blocks go by itself: move or cancel the session instead, and everyone's time moves or is freed with it.
- Telling people: each person on it, and the trainer, gets a to-do in their list and the app's own email, when it is scheduled, moved or canceled, and when they are taken off it. A demo sends nothing.
- Attendance is taken on the day or after, by whoever manages or signs off training: each person attended or absent. Attending completes a session training, or one of the sessions it takes, and the completion is kept with the session and who took the attendance. Once taken, each person's mark stays as it was.
The calendar
Calendar lays training out by month: each session on its day, and each person's renewal on the day the proof that counts runs out (a certificate's own day, or so many months after the training was completed). Tap a day to read all of it under the month; on a phone, a day shows dots until it is picked. Filter it by training, seat, job or department, and location.
Beside the month, Due now is what has run out, was never started, or is in progress, a training at a time; Coming due this month is what runs out in the month shown. For a session training, Book a session for them opens a new session with the training and the people not booked yet filled in, on a day a week before the first of them runs out (or today). A certificate, a skill or an SOP is renewed from the person's record instead.
My training
My training, in your own menu, shows what is asked of you: what is due (missing, in progress, running out or run out), the SOPs you can read and sign now, your sessions coming and past, what is current, and your certificates with their files. The same shows on your page under the team, for whoever manages training.
Training that gates work
A training asked of whoever performs a service gates that service: keratin smoothing requires the keratin certification. Under Trainings, the business chooses what the calendar does when someone is booked for a service whose training they are missing, or will have let run out by the day of the visit:
- Nothing: the matrix still shows it; the calendar books anyone.
- Warn: the booking panel says whose training is missing or run out, naming it ("Tomás's Keratin smoothing certification ran out on 09/30/2026: Keratin Smoothing needs it."), and books the visit anyway.
- Refuse: the visit is refused with that sentence, at the desk and when a visit is dragged onto them, until the training is current.
With Warn or Refuse on, online booking never offers that person for that service, and offers no time past the day their proof runs out.
The clock
Each morning the app looks at every training and certificate running out: 30 days before, and again once it has run out, the person and their manager (the manager of the location they work at, else the business's managers, else its owners) each get a to-do and the app's own email, once each. The same shows as Due soon and Expired on the matrix. A demo is told by the to-dos alone and sends nothing.
Programs and the API
Trainings, the matrix by person and by job, the calendar, the departments and jobs, a person's record, sessions, certificates, sign-offs and the gate are in the API under /training, and the assistant reads Training while it is on. The events are training.completed, training.expiring, training.expired and training.session.scheduled; none carries a certificate's file. A sign-off through a program is signed by the key's maker, who needs Sign off training, and waits for a person by default.
Best practices
- Start from what an auditor or the board asks for: the certifications a service needs, the yearly safety class, the register. Add the rest as it comes up.
- Ask a training of whoever performs a service rather than of a seat, where it is about the service: a new stylist who takes the service on is asked for it the day they do, and the gate can stand on it.
- Name the kind of license that counts for a certificate training, and keep the team's licenses current under Licenses: one record serves both.
- Give Sign off training to the people who really train others, and keep it from the rest; a sign-off is proof an auditor reads.
- Schedule a session when the matrix shows several people due soon, and put everyone due on it in one go; their time is held before a client can take it.
- Turn the gate to Warn before Refuse, and read the warnings for a few weeks: the matrix must be filled in before the calendar can trust it.
- When a certificate turns out to be wrong, take it back with the reason rather than recording over it: the record of what was believed, and when, is part of the proof.
Questions people ask
Someone's keratin certification is on the matrix as expired, but she renewed it. Record the new certificate on her record (open her cell on the matrix): it counts from the day it was issued, and the old one is kept as superseded.
A person signed the SOP but the matrix says expired. A newer version of the SOP took effect since. They read and sign the new version under the SOPs; the signature completes it again.
Can I take attendance before the session? No: on the day, or after. Until then the people on it show as in progress.
Why can I not delete a block the session holds? The block is the session's hold on the calendar. Move or cancel the session instead, and everyone's time moves or is freed with it.
The trainer is not on the team. Pick A trainer from outside and type their name. Their time is not held, since they have no calendar here.
A job needs a training, but nobody shows on the matrix by job. Nobody holds the job yet: its cell says so. Put people on it under Jobs and departments, or on their Training tab.
Someone changed jobs. Change the jobs they hold: what the new job needs is asked of them at once, and what only the old one needed is not, while their records are kept.
Does a training ask something of a bookkeeper's or a designer's login? No. Trainings are asked of the team's people (staff rows); a login with no person on the team is asked nothing.