The apprenticeship service for SMEs is an essential tool for reserving funding, giving provider feedback and advertising apprenticeship vacancies.
What is the apprenticeship service?
The apprenticeship service (previously known as the digital apprenticeship service or DAS) was set up a number of years ago. It originally gave levy-paying employers the ability to digitally access and manage their apprenticeship training. It was designed to give employers more choice and control, with the ability to make more informed choices.
From January 2020, it became available for SMEs and now all employers use the apprenticeship service for their apprenticeship management.
The service allows you to:
- Access and manage funding
- Receive transfers of apprenticeship funding
- Search for apprenticeships and training providers
- Choose an approved training provider
- Advertise appenticeship vacancies
- Give feedback on apprenticeship training.
Guidance on using the apprenticeship service for SMEs
There are a series of steps you would need to go through to start your apprentices via the apprenticeship service.
Account set-up
To set up your account, you will need your business details (e.g. email, address and companies house number – if you have one), and your government gateway login for your organisation. If you don’t have a government gateway login, this will need to be set up first.
It is advised that more than one person at your organisation has access to the service account so that it can continue to be managed if a particular individual is on holiday or off sick. You can also give different permissions to different people within your company.
Reserve funding
To set up an apprenticeship and reserve funding, you will need to know which apprenticeship standard is going to be completed and the start month. You are able to amend these details prior to the apprentice starting.
Funds can be reserved for up to three months before the apprentice starts. After this time, the reservation will expire and you will need to create a new one.
Use funding
To stop the apprenticeship funding from expiring, you need to add the details of the individual apprentice, including their name and date of birth. You will confirm these details, as well as the training and assessment costs, which would have been agreed between you and your training provider.
This will change the status of your reserved funding from active to used.
Support in using the apprenticeship service for SMEs
As a training provider, we can talk you through each of the steps. In some cases, you can give us permission to do some of the data entry or reserve funding on your behalf. If you are an SME and are thinking about recruiting a new apprentice, please get in touch to find out how we can support you with setting up your apprenticeship service account, as well as apprenticeship recruitment and training.