If you are in a business or work as a consultant in a field where you need to be licensed or certified (or are working toward any sort of licensing or certification), then you will likely need to take some continuing education credits on a periodic basis. More and more conferences and workshops are offering continuing education credits, but it will still be up to you to find them, keep good records, and submit those records in order to obtain your continuing education credits for your profession.
All sorts of professions now have continuing education requirements—many of these are the same professions that seem to be most compatible with the home business—massage therapists, health care professionals, child care workers, social workers, etc. Keeping up with training and education can be a key element in keeping certification and licensure up to date. It is up to you to find out who you apply to for your certification and what the continuing education requirements are. This will guide you in attending conferences, workshops and classes, in order to meet your continuing education (ceu) requirements.
Keep in mind, that as a home business owner, you should keep accurate records of how much you spend for your continuing education classes and requirements, as well as the actual contact hours. The expense should be deductible on your taxes as a business expense, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve kept a true accounting of what you spend, to whom, as well as any attendance certificates or other information you get from the person or entity offering the continuing education units. Make sure they are qualified and certified to offer the units or you won’t get professional credit for them.
As a final word of advice, try not to wait until the last minute—pace yourself and make decisions about attending conferences and workshops based on whether or not you can get continuing education credit for them and you won’t feel the panic of having to get in so many hours before your license runs out!
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