Candidate records, marking and certification without the spreadsheets.
For awarding bodies, vocational colleges, and any organisation that formally assesses people and has to keep an auditable record of the result. I build the system that runs it, end to end. I have already built one: it is called Perform Data Track.
The syllabus is rigorous. The admin around it is a shared drive.
Organisations that assess people are usually meticulous about the standard and improvised about everything surrounding it. Not through carelessness: the systems grew one spreadsheet at a time, each one a reasonable answer to the problem in front of someone that week.
Entry forms are PDFs that come back by email.
Someone downloads the form, fills it in, emails it back, and a member of staff retypes it into a spreadsheet. Every entry is handled twice, and the second time is where the mistakes get in.
The candidate list lives in more than one place.
One spreadsheet for entries, another for fees, a third for results, and a shared drive for the certificates. They agree with each other right up until the moment someone edits one of them.
Assessors mark on paper.
Marks are written on a sheet, carried back to an office, and typed in by someone who was not in the room. It is slow, and it puts a transcription step between the judgement and the record.
Certificates are produced by hand.
A template, a mail merge, and an afternoon. It works until volume climbs or a name is spelled wrong on something a candidate keeps for life.
There is no audit trail when a result is challenged.
A candidate queries a grade from two years ago. Answering means finding the right spreadsheet version, the right assessor, and hoping the paperwork survived the last office move.
Fees are reconciled by eye.
Entries arrive by one route and payments by another, so someone matches bank transfers to candidates manually every cycle and chases the ones that do not line up.
One pipeline, from entry to certificate.
You do not have to take all of it. Most organisations have one stage that hurts more than the rest, and the sensible first version fixes that stage and leaves the others alone until they are worth touching.
Candidate registration
Candidates and their organisations entered once, with learner numbers, and reused everywhere after that. Bulk import for the ones you already hold in a spreadsheet.
Sessions and scheduling
An exam sitting, an audition day, an assessment window. Candidates grouped by level, discipline, or whatever your syllabus divides on, with the schedule visible to everyone who needs it.
Assessor marking
Assessors mark against your criteria on the device in front of them: marks, totals, and written comments captured at the point of judgement rather than copied off paper later.
Moderation and sign-off
Which sessions are fully marked, which are not, and who still owes you a result. Nothing gets released until it has been through whatever check your regulator or your own standards require.
Certification
Certificates and feedback sheets generated from the marks already in the system, as PDFs, in the format you already issue. No mail-merge, no retyping names.
Exports and audit records
Spreadsheet exports for the people who want a spreadsheet, and a record of what was awarded, by whom, and when, for the day a result gets queried.
Two systems in this exact shape, already built.
A platform for running and marking performing-arts exams.
Multi-tenant by organisation, with schools and learners underneath, each learner carrying an individual learner number. Exam sessions hold groups by level and genre; examiners mark them with grades, totals and written comments; certificates and feedback sheets come out as PDFs; each session exports to a spreadsheet for anyone who still wants one. Candidates load in bulk from CSV. Access is role-based across administrators, teachers and examiners, and staff who hold more than one role can switch between them.
It is my own software, and it has run real exam sessions for a UK performing-arts training organisation.
Read the case study ->Four spreadsheets and a paper register, replaced.
A learning platform for a university department, used by around 200 students and staff. It replaced four spreadsheets and manual attendance registers: attendance now records itself as students work through lessons, saving staff more than four hours a week.
I later built its assessment engine on top: quiz authoring, timed sittings, marking, and grade passback straight into the Canvas gradebook, verified working against a live Canvas instance in July 2026.
Read the case study ->Separately, I rebuilt the website for Independent Dance Training, a UK dance examination awarding body, halving bounce rate and tripling page speed.
Sometimes you should buy this, not build it.
Products already exist for this, and one of them may fit you.
ExamTrack is a UK product built specifically for awarding organisations, covering learner registration through marking, moderation and standardisation to certificate issue and reprinting. It is already used across the performing arts. If what you award fits its model, buying it will be faster and cheaper than commissioning anything from me.
If your pain is enrolment, registers and fee collection rather than assessment, the studio and class management products, such as Class Manager, Studio Director and Pebble, are the right place to look first.
Where a custom build genuinely wins.
- ✓Your syllabus, grading scheme or moderation process does not fit the product’s model, and bending your standard to fit software is the wrong way round.
- ✓Per-learner or per-entry fees scale badly against your volume, so a one-off cost is cheaper across any sensible time horizon.
- ✓You need to own the system and the records outright, rather than rent access to your own history.
- ✓The pain is in one specific stage, and you want that stage fixed without replacing everything that already works.
Working out which of those you are is most of what the review below is for. I would rather tell you to buy something than sell you a build you did not need.
Someone should be able to answer who can see the records.
A system holding candidate records needs more looking after than a marketing site, and the difference is not page speed. It is whether accounts belonging to people who left two years ago still have access, how long results are being kept against how long you meant to keep them, and whether a backup has ever actually been restored rather than merely reported as running.
Care — System, £195 a month, covers hosting, patching, monitoring of error rates and job queues, database backups with a tested restore, and an annual access and data-protection review written up so you can hand it to a governor, an auditor or an awarding body that asks.
Next working day response. No minimum term, no notice period. The first 3 months are included with the build.
See what care covers ->- ✓Every account with access to candidate data, and whether it still needs it
- ✓Accounts belonging to people who have left
- ✓How long records are kept, against how long you intend to keep them
- ✓A backup restored to a scratch environment and checked
- ✓Confirmation you can still export your data on demand
Start with two weeks, not two quarters.
Admissions & Assessment Admin Review
- ✓A structured review of how candidates, auditions, assessment and records are handled now
- ✓Where staff time is going, quantified in hours per cycle
- ✓What could be automated, what should not be, and what to buy off the shelf instead
- ✓A written report you own, with costed options
- ✓Fee credited in full against any build commissioned within 90 days
Commissioning a system is a large first decision to make about a developer you have never worked with. A fixed-price review is a small one, and it produces something useful either way: a written account of where the time actually goes and what it would cost to stop losing it.
It is priced deliberately. £750 normally sits below the threshold where a purchase has to go through a procurement process, so one budget holder can sign it off. And because the fee comes off any build commissioned within 90 days, it costs a serious buyer nothing.
One project at a time, direct with me, no account layer. If the answer is that you should buy an off-the-shelf product, the report will say so and name it.
Common questions.
What does the Admissions & Assessment Admin Review actually involve?
£750, fixed, over 2 weeks. I go through how candidates, auditions, assessment and records are handled now, end to end, and write it up: where staff time is going, quantified in hours per cycle; what could sensibly be automated; what should stay manual; and what is better bought off the shelf than built. You get a written report you own, with costed options. If you commission a build within 90 days, the fee comes off it in full.
Do I have to commit to a build?
No. The report is the deliverable and it is yours whatever you do next, including taking it to another developer or to a software vendor. It is priced so that a single budget holder can approve it without a procurement process, which is the point of it.
We are not in the performing arts. Is this relevant?
Yes. The proof happens to sit in performing-arts examining, but the underlying problem is the same wherever people are formally assessed against a standard and the outcome has to be evidenced: sports and coaching awards, first aid and health and safety training, trade skills and card schemes, language schools entering candidates for external exams. Candidates, sessions, assessors, marking, moderation, certification, records.
What if we already use ExamTrack, or a studio management product?
Then you probably should not be commissioning a custom build, and I will say so. See the section above: I would rather tell you that on a call than three months into a project.
Who owns the system and the data?
You do. The code, the database, and the records are yours, and your data is exportable on request. There is no per-learner fee and no arrangement where leaving means losing your history.
What happens after it goes live?
Care — System covers it at £195 a month: hosting, patching, monitoring of error rates and job queues, database backups with a restore that is actually tested, and an annual access and data-protection review. Next working day response, and no minimum term. Change work is bought in prepaid blocks rather than metered monthly, so nothing expires unused.
What does a build cost after the review?
It depends on how much of the pipeline you need and how much of your existing data has to come across, which is exactly what the review establishes. For scale: a focused system sits in the £4,500 band, and a full assessment and certification platform sits in the from £7,500 band. Every quote is fixed and agreed before work starts.
How much of this have you actually built before?
The whole pipeline. Perform Data Track is my own platform for running and marking performing-arts exams: registration, sessions, examiner marking, certificates, feedback sheets, exports and role-based access, and it has been running real exam sessions. Luciera is a university learning platform where I built the quiz and assessment engine, including marking and grade passback into Canvas.
Admissions & Assessment Admin Review
- ✓A structured review of how candidates, auditions, assessment and records are handled now
- ✓Where staff time is going, quantified in hours per cycle
- ✓What could be automated, what should not be, and what to buy off the shelf instead
- ✓A written report you own, with costed options
- ✓Fee credited in full against any build commissioned within 90 days