Qualifications that award themselves.
You define what each qualification requires. When a member meets the last requirement, the qualification is awarded and any rank it unlocks is granted at that moment, without an officer cross-referencing a spreadsheet at the end of the quarter.
Courses, ratings, and ranks
A rating is a qualification your organization awards — Shelter Operations, Ground Search Team Member, Radio Operator. It requires courses, and it can require other ratings first. A rank is a position on your progression ladder, and it requires ratings. That is the whole model.
- Sheltering Fundamentals
- Shelter Operations
- ADA & Functional Needs
One member's afternoon, with no administrator involved.
What triggers it
- Finishing a course, however it finished. The last lesson, a passed exam, an evaluator's sign-off, or an admin verifying an outside certificate. All four paths run through the same completion check.
- Every gate is re-checked, not just the obvious one. Finishing a course can complete several ratings at once, and those ratings can complete a rank, or several ranks where the member already held the requirements for higher ones.
- The member is told. They see what they earned when they earned it, rather than finding out at the next muster.
What the gates can be
- Required courses. All of them, in any order; sequencing is what prerequisite ratings are for.
- Prerequisite ratings. A rating can require other ratings first, which is how a progression is expressed: Team Leader after Team Member, not alongside it.
- Which units it belongs to. A rating is offered to the units it's attached to, so a Marine Rescue qualification doesn't appear on a comms team's board.
- A current credential, if you run the Documents module. A rating or rank can additionally require a valid document on file — a medical clearance, a driver's licence, a background check — and a lapsed one holds the advancement.
Why a member hasn't advanced yet
Automatic advancement is only trustworthy if you can see why it did or didn't happen. Open any member and the platform shows the same gates it evaluates, with the unmet ones named.
- Mass Care Basics — earned Apr 2, 2026
- Shelter Operations — earned Sep 12, 2026
- Incident Command (ICS-300) — not earned
- ICS-100 — completed Jan 18, 2026
- ICS-200 — completed Mar 3, 2026
- ICS-300 — 4 of 7 lessons, exam not attempted
The advancement check. Illustrative member; the gates are your own.
Built from the same code that awards
The report is not a second implementation that can drift from the first. It asks the advancement engine itself what it sees, so the screen and the platform cannot disagree, and support reads the same report you do when you call.
It flags your configuration, too
A rank with no ratings attached, a rating with no courses, or a published course nothing points at are called out at the top. An advancement that looks broken is usually a rating somebody left half-wired, and this is where that shows.
Actions from the same screen
Re-run the evaluation after a data fix, award a rating by hand, or revoke one awarded in error. Each is an action by a named admin, and each is written to the audit trail.
Ladders, qualification sets, and blends
A rank structure is central to some organizations and absent from others. All three shapes below run through the same screens, and a member is never shown a “next rank” that doesn't exist for them.
A progression ladder
Trainee, Responder, Team Leader, Incident Commander. Each rank requires the ratings below it; members advance as they qualify, and the roster shows where everyone stands.
A set of qualifications
No ladder at all: members collect the ratings their interests and the mission call for. Everyone is a “Member,” and readiness is measured by what they hold rather than what they're called.
A ladder with side paths
A short rank progression for the core role, plus specialist ratings that anyone can add: swiftwater, K9 handler, drone, comms.
It uses your terminology
If your organization says Team rather than Unit, Officer rather than Member, or Grade rather than Rank, set those terms once and every screen, email, and report uses them — including this one's real counterparts. Progress indicators blend courses and ratings rather than keying off rank, so a flat organization sees a meaningful number, not an empty ladder.
Awards that need a person
Not everything worth tracking can be earned by finishing a course, and not every award should happen without somebody deciding. Both cases are supported directly.
Ratings a course can't earn
- Mark a rating as awarded by an admin only. Field-qualified, cleared to drive the apparatus, signed off by the training officer — judgments that belong to a person. The platform never awards these on its own, and the rating says so.
- Time-in-service works the same way. A tenure rating carries no courses and is granted by an admin when the time is served; a rating with nothing to complete is never awarded automatically.
- Revoking is a supported action. Where a rating went to the wrong person, or lapsed for reasons the platform can't see, an admin can take it back and the reason is recorded.
- Rating awarded automaticallyShelter Operations Sep 12, 2026 3:41 PM · all required courses complete
- Rank advancedResponder → Team Leader Sep 12, 2026 3:41 PM · triggered by the award above
- Rating awarded by an adminApparatus Driver Aug 30, 2026 · by T. Ochoa · “Road test completed 8/29”
- Outside course verifiedFEMA IS-100.C Aug 4, 2026 · by M. Reyes · certificate on file
Every award, automatic or by an admin, is recorded here.
What automatic advancement won't do
It does not decide that somebody is ready. It decides that the requirements you wrote down have been met, which is a smaller claim. Where readiness in your program depends on a judgment call, put that judgment into the requirements as an admin-awarded rating or a practical evaluation, and the automation waits for it.
It also does not expire a qualification you set no expiry on. A rating that should lapse has to be expressed as one, through a credential requirement with an expiry date or by revoking it.
Show us your qualification chart.
A ladder, a matrix, or a page of hand-drawn arrows — we'll set it up as ratings and ranks and walk a member through it on the call.
Pick a time that suits you, or email us about ratings & advancement.