Quick reference A quarterly review is a structured check-in on your annual development plan. Run one per quarter (Q1–Q4). For each development objective, you record a disposition — a deliberate decision about what happens to it next. Completing a review creates a plan snapshot (a numbered version of your plan at that point), giving you a transparent record of how your plan evolved during the year.
8.1 Why quarterly reviews exist
When you design your development plan at the start of the year, it reflects what you know then — your role, your priorities, your available time. By the time Q2 arrives, things may have changed. A course you planned was cancelled. A new project absorbed three months of your time. An unexpected opportunity emerged that wasn’t in the plan.
CIMA’s CPD requirements recognise this. The Professional Development Record Form asks you to document not just what you planned, but what actually happened — including what changed and why.
Quarterly reviews are the mechanism for managing that change deliberately. Instead of arriving at year-end with a plan that no longer reflects reality, you update it progressively — four times a year — with a clear record of each decision.
Why this matters for audit: CIMA’s monitoring team reviews not just whether you completed development activities, but whether you followed the 6-step cycle. A well-maintained plan with quarterly reviews — showing what you continued, what you completed, what you deferred and why — is far stronger evidence of engagement with the cycle than a record that simply lists activities.
Quarterly reviews are optional — but CPDFlow makes them worthwhile
Quarterly reviews are not a CIMA requirement, and they are not mandatory in CPDFlow. You can log activities, complete objectives and close your cycle without ever running one.
That said, doing a plan review manually — tracking what changed, recording why, and maintaining a version history — is genuinely difficult to do well without tool support. CPDFlow turns what would otherwise be a time-consuming and easy-to-skip discipline into a guided 10-minute process, four times a year. The result — a clear, versioned record of how your plan evolved — is powerful evidence of the kind of active, reflective CPD engagement that CIMA’s 6-step cycle is designed to produce.
If you are new to CPDFlow or short on time, skip this chapter for now and come back to it when you are ready to run your first review. If you want to get the most from the application and build the strongest possible audit record, this is the feature worth investing in.
8.2 When to run a quarterly review
| Review | Covers | Run when |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 review | January–March (or months 1–3 of your cycle) | Around the end of Q1 |
| Q2 review | April–June (or months 4–6) | Around the end of Q2 |
| Q3 review | July–September (or months 7–9) | Around the end of Q3 |
| Q4 review | October–December (or months 10–12) | Before cycle close |
Dates are based on your cycle’s start date, not necessarily the calendar year. If your cycle runs April to March, your Q1 ends in June.
You do not have to run each review exactly on the quarter boundary — a few weeks either side is fine. What matters is that each quarter has a documented review before the cycle closes.
Missed quarters: If you start a Q3 review without having completed Q1 or Q2, CPDFlow automatically creates skipped records for the missed quarters. This keeps your plan history complete. Skipped reviews are flagged in your plan snapshots — they are not errors, but you should add a note in your Q3 review explaining the gap if asked at audit.
8.3 The review wizard — overview
Go to Reviews in the sidebar. Your current review status is shown for each quarter.
Select Start Review (or Resume Review if you have started one and not yet confirmed it) to open the review wizard.
The wizard has four steps:
- Overview — summary of your objectives and activities for the quarter
- Dispositions — record a decision for each objective
- Activity Check — resolve any activities linked to closed objectives
- Confirm — finalise the review and create a plan snapshot
You can leave and return to a review at any point before confirming — your progress is saved automatically.
8.4 Step 1 — Overview
The Overview step shows a summary of what happened in the quarter:
- Objectives assigned to this quarter
- Activities logged
- Hours contributed
- Any activities flagged as overdue
This step is informational — it sets the context for the decisions you are about to make. Review it, then proceed to Step 2.
8.5 Step 2 — Dispositions
This is the core of the review. For each development objective, you record a disposition — a deliberate decision about what happens to it.
Disposition options
| Disposition | Meaning | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Continue | The objective carries into the next quarter unchanged | On track, still relevant, work continuing |
| Completed | The objective has been achieved | Learning done, outcome achieved — even if some planned activities didn’t happen |
| Deferred | The objective is postponed to a specific future quarter | Still relevant but circumstances changed — choose the new target quarter |
| Cancelled | The objective is abandoned | No longer relevant, circumstances changed permanently — a reason is required |
Q4 only — Defer to Cycle Close: In your Q4 review, instead of deferring to a future quarter, you can select “Defer to Cycle Close.” This flags the objective for final disposition during the cycle close wizard, where you will decide whether to carry it into the next cycle.
Disposition notes
Each disposition can include an optional note — a brief explanation of the decision. Notes are recommended for anything other than a straightforward Continue, as they provide context for the plan snapshot and any future audit review.
For Cancelled objectives, a cancellation reason is required (from a short list: “No longer relevant”, “Role change”, “Circumstances changed”, “Other”).
Linked activities
When you select Completed or Cancelled for an objective, CPDFlow surfaces the activities linked to it in a sub-panel beneath the disposition selector.
For each linked activity that is still open (Planned or In Progress), you are prompted to choose:
- Mark Completed — the activity was done
- Cancel — the activity will not happen
- Leave as Planned — the activity was planned but not done; keep the record honest
“Leave as Planned” is always a valid choice. Your CPD record should reflect your intent, not just your achievements.
8.6 Step 3 — Activity Check
After dispositions are recorded, CPDFlow runs a sweep of any remaining activities that need attention — activities that slipped through Step 2 or were not linked to an objective.
This step is automatically skipped if there are no activities requiring attention.
Three groups of activities may appear:
| Group | Description |
|---|---|
| Linked to a closed objective | Activities whose objective was Completed or Cancelled in Step 2, but whose own status is still open |
| Unlinked activities from this quarter | Ad-hoc activities with no linked objective, logged during this quarter |
| Stale activities from prior quarters | Activities from an earlier quarter still sitting in Planned or In Progress |
For each, you have the same options: Mark Completed, Cancel, or Leave as Planned.
8.7 Confirming the review
When you are satisfied with your dispositions, select Confirm Review.
Confirming a review:
- Applies all objective mutations (status changes, quarter reassignments, cancellations)
- Creates a plan snapshot — a numbered, immutable record of your plan at this point in time
- Marks the review as Confirmed — it becomes read-only
Plan snapshots are permanent. Once confirmed, a review and its snapshot cannot be edited. This is intentional — the snapshot is your audit trail. If you made a mistake or need to add something after confirming, use the Post-confirmation amendment feature (see Section 8.9).
8.8 Plan snapshots — understanding plan versioning
Each confirmed review creates a numbered version of your plan:
| Event | Version |
|---|---|
| Cycle activated (Draft → Active) | v1.0 — baseline plan |
| Q1 review confirmed | v1.1 |
| Q2 review confirmed | v1.2 |
| Q3 review confirmed | v1.3 |
| Cycle closed | v1.4 — final plan |
You can view all snapshots from the Reviews page. Select View Snapshots to see the version history.
Selecting any two versions shows a comparison view — a diff of what changed between them: objectives added, completed, deferred, cancelled, with the reasons recorded at each review.
This comparison is what you use to populate the “Evaluate” step of the CIMA form — it gives you a clear narrative of how the year actually went versus how it was planned.
8.9 Post-confirmation amendments
If you confirm a review and then realise you missed an objective, or need to add something that was overlooked, you can add a post-confirmation amendment.
From the Reviews page, open the confirmed review and select Add Amendment. This creates an additional objective in your plan under that review period. The original confirmed snapshot is not modified — the amendment is recorded separately.
Amendments are for additions only. You cannot change a disposition that has already been confirmed.
8.10 Q4 review — what’s different
The Q4 review is the bridge between your current cycle and cycle close. It works the same way as Q1–Q3 with two differences:
-
No forward quarter to assign to — instead of “Continue to Q[n+1],” the disposition for an objective still in progress is Defer to Cycle Close. This flags it for the final evaluation in the cycle close wizard, where you decide whether to carry it into the next cycle.
-
The review does not reach “Confirmed” — Q4 reaches an Open state after the first disposition is saved, and remains open as you work through it. The final confirmation happens in the cycle close wizard, not the review itself.
What’s next?
After Q4 is complete, you are ready to close the cycle. See Chapter 9 — Cycle Close for the end-of-year workflow: final activity resolution, reflective evaluation, and sealing the cycle as a complete, read-only record.