Release 7.1 - 18th August 2026

Apprenticeship Funding Rules

In this release, we have a few enhancements related to the apprenticeship funding rules:

Employer Agreement ID - we have extended the ability to add an employer agreement ID to all employer types. When creating a new or editing an existing employer, you will be able to add the agreement ID:

Employer Agree ID.png

If you have entered an agreement ID for an employer, it will then populate in all 26/27 apprenticeship applications and will be displayed in the following places:

  • The 'Employer Details' page
  • Training Plan document
  • ILR

EPA Costs - In a previous release we updated the validation on the EPA cost field to allow a value of £0 (previously a minimum of £1) for learners moving to a new version of a standard where there is no longer involvement from an assessment organisation. This has been extended to applications of all academic years.

Further updates

We are working on some additional updates that will be released shortly, including:

  • Employer co-investment - updating the co-investment logic to make it clear that all learners under 25 will be fully funded by the government.
  • Optional EPA - extending the optional EPA flag applied in the 26/27 applications to 25/26 applications.
  • Activity exemption reason - adding an enhanced activity exemption reason to help identify RPL reductions.

Tenant Settings

We have updated the Tenant Settings page so that if you are Premium customers you can access this page to enable your CENTURY integration.

However, Premium customers will no longer be able to see Enterprise features, such as Bud Assist for Learners or Turnitin integration, on the Tenant Settings page. If you are interested in these features, please speak to your Customer Success Manager.

 

Bugs

  • Trainers unable to sign off completed Learning Support Plans Trainers were sometimes unable to sign off a Learning Support Plan after it had been completed. This is now fixed, and trainers can sign off completed plans as expected.

  • Content Library Activity updates not propagating to large learner groups
    Updates to a Content Library Activity weren't propagating to learners when more than 10,000 learners were assigned. This is now fixed, and updates propagate correctly regardless of the number of learners assigned.

  • MFA status showing as Enabled before setup is complete Fixed an issue where a trainer's MFA status in Security Settings could change from Pending to Enabled after scanning the QR code, even if they hadn't entered the confirmation code and completed setup. MFA status now only updates to Enabled once setup has been fully confirmed.

  • QAR upload failing for 2026/27 ILR files Fixed an issue where uploading a 2026/27 ILR file would throw an exception during validation.

  • Co-investment applied incorrectly for 15-year-old learners Fixed an issue where non-levy learners aged 15 at the start of their apprenticeship (when their 16th birthday fell within the last-Friday-of-June to 31 August exemption window) were not being marked as fully funded. The funding document now correctly shows these learners as fully funded, with no employer contribution requested, in line with the apprenticeship funding rules.

 

Business Intelligence Release - 19th August 2026 (3:45pm)

Please note your reports may be blank for a brief time afterwards 

 

Bud Assist for Learners - Safeguarding Reporting

We have introduced a new Management Report to help you closely monitor safeguarding concerns flagged from learner interactions with Bud Assist. It can be found using the link in Management Reports to "Bud Assist Safeguarding"

When a learner engages with Bud Assist in a way that raises a safeguarding concern, the message is flagged, so you can review it and respond as needed. This new report brings those flagged messages together in one place, making it easier to keep on top of new concerns and spot trends in behaviour over time.

This is the first in a series of monitoring tools designed to help you ensure learners are using Bud Assist safely and productively. The next update to this feature will add the ability to view full conversation transcripts for your learners and download them.

 

Data Warehouse and Reporting Bug Fixes

In this release we have fixed the following bugs:

  • Custom Data Exports timing out Some providers were intermittently unable to export review data from Custom Data Exports, with the process failing on a 524 timeout error. This has now been resolved. 
  • Missing data in EPA Processing Times and Progress Links Data was missing from the EPA Processing Times report and the EPA Progress Links view in the Data Warehouse. This has now been resolved. 
  • Finance Reports appearing blank on the last day of the academic year Finance Reports were appearing blank on the final day of the academic year. This only affected that single day and will not recur next year. 
  • URLs in ILR Reconciliation Reports not opening We're aware that some URLs in this report aren't opening a learning plan at all. Improvements have been made, and work on this continues.