Quick reference A CPD cycle is a 12-month period of professional development structured around CIMA’s 6-step process. Your cycle moves through five states — Draft, Planned, Active, Evaluating, Complete — each representing a different phase of work. You can only have one Active cycle at a time. Historical cycles remain readable as a permanent record.
2.1 What a CPD cycle is
A CPD cycle is your annual development record — the container that holds your objectives, activities, quarterly reviews and reflections for a given 12-month period. At the end of the year, it becomes your CIMA submission.
Every piece of work in CPDFlow belongs to a cycle. When you create an objective, it is permanently bound to the cycle it was created in. When you log an activity, it sits in a cycle. Quarterly reviews are run within a cycle. This structure keeps your records clean and historically accurate — what you planned in 2025 stays in 2025, even when you start planning 2026.
2.2 Cycle states
A cycle moves through five states during its lifetime. Understanding these states helps you know what you should be doing at each stage of the year.
| State | Phase of year | What you do here |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Start of year — setting up | Define your role context. Complete your competency self-assessment. Create initial objectives. |
| Planned | Plan confirmed | Development plan is finalised and baselined (Plan v1.0). Objectives locked in — changes go through quarterly reviews. |
| Active | Main working period | Log activities. Write reflections. Run quarterly reviews (Q1, Q2, Q3). |
| Evaluating | End of year | Final evaluation. Compare plan vs actuals. Identify carry-forwards. Prepare for close. |
| Complete | Closed | Read-only archive. Informs the next cycle. |
The normal flow is forward through these states. You can move backwards where needed — for example, returning from Evaluating to Active to add a late activity, or reopening a Planned cycle to adjust objectives before fully committing.
What changes when a cycle moves to Planned
Moving a cycle from Draft to Planned is a meaningful step — it represents the moment you commit to your development plan for the year. When this happens:
- Plan v1.0 is created — a snapshot of your objectives as they stand at this point. This becomes your baseline for the whole year.
- Your objectives are considered set. Changes from this point are managed through quarterly reviews, which create new plan versions (v1.1, v1.2, v1.3).
You do not have to have every objective fully formed before moving to Planned — you can add objectives later through quarterly reviews. But the objectives you have at this point form your documented starting plan.
What “Active” means in practice
Active is where you will spend most of the year. There is no single action that triggers the move to Active — you simply transition the cycle when you are ready to start logging work against your plan. Many members activate their cycle as soon as their initial objectives are created.
Evaluating
As your cycle end date approaches, CPDFlow will prompt you to move to Evaluating. This is the final phase before close — reviewing the year as a whole, writing your overall evaluation, and working through the cycle close wizard. See Chapter 9 — Cycle Close for the full process.
2.3 Creating a new cycle
Go to Cycles in the sidebar and select New Cycle.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | Optional label — defaults to the date range. You can rename it anything useful. |
| Start date | First day of the CPD year. Common choices: 1 January, or your CIMA membership anniversary month. |
| End date | Typically 12 months after start — adjust if your cycle spans a different period. |
The new cycle is created in Draft state. The Quickstart Guide on your dashboard will direct you through the first steps.
Only one cycle can be Active at a time. If you already have an Active cycle, you can create a new cycle in Draft but cannot activate it until the current one is Complete. This is a CIMA compliance constraint — your CPD record must have a clear, non-overlapping timeline.
2.4 Carrying forward objectives from a previous cycle
When you start a new cycle, you may have incomplete objectives from the previous one — development goals you did not finish, or work you want to continue.
CPDFlow surfaces these as a bring-forward panel on the new cycle’s detail page.
For each eligible objective from your previous cycle, you can:
- Bring forward — a copy of the objective is created in your new cycle, linked back to the original. You can then develop it further, link new activities, and reflect on it in context of the new year.
- Dismiss — the objective is noted as dismissed and will not appear again. The original in the closed cycle is unchanged.
Bringing an objective forward does not change the closed cycle — the original remains exactly as it was in your historical record.
2.5 Navigating between cycles
The cycle selector in the header controls which cycle you are currently viewing. All data on the Objectives, Activities and Reviews pages is scoped to the selected cycle.
To view a historical cycle — for reference, or to produce a historical CIMA Declaration — select it from the cycle selector. The pages update to show that cycle’s data.
Archived cycles: Cycles more than a year old may be shown as Archived. They are still fully accessible — select “Show archived” in the Cycles list to make them visible.
2.6 The cycle detail page
The cycle detail page is the control centre for your current cycle. From here you can:
- See overall progress across all 6 steps
- View hours logged vs target
- Check the readiness checklist before closing
- Transition the cycle state (Draft → Planned → Active → Evaluating)
- Begin the cycle close wizard
The readiness checklist near the bottom of the page shows what still needs attention before you can close the cycle — open activities, unreviewed inbox items, incomplete Q4 review. Work through this list before starting the close wizard.
2.7 Locked cycles
Once a cycle reaches Complete, it becomes read-only. You can view everything — objectives, activities, snapshots, reflections — but nothing can be added or changed.
This is intentional. Your completed cycle is an audit record. Its integrity depends on it being unchanged after the fact.
If you need to access information from a locked cycle — to reference a past objective, or download a previous CIMA Declaration — select it from the cycle selector and browse as normal.
What’s next?
The first meaningful step in a new cycle is your competency self-assessment — the foundation of your development plan. See Chapter 3 — Competency Assessment.