I get this question a lot, especially from electricians who are coming up on a renewal deadline and panicking. It comes in two forms.

The first form is “Do I have to do anything to report my CE hours to Texas, or do they just show up?”

The second form, usually delivered with more urgency, is “I completed my course three days ago and TDLR still shows zero CE hours on my license — what’s going on?”

Both questions have the same answer, and that answer is more complicated than it should be.

The short version

Texas TDLR does not have a central system that automatically imports your continuing education from every provider in the country. There is no such system.

Instead, every TDLR-approved CE provider has to submit completion records to TDLR somehow. Most providers leave that submission up to you — you complete the course, you get a PDF certificate, and it’s on you to upload that certificate through the TDLR online portal before your renewal deadline.

A small number of providers have built integrations that submit completions directly to TDLR on your behalf. When you finish the course, the record gets pushed to TDLR within minutes. You don’t have to do anything.

The one I recommend to Texas electricians is AATCE, TDLR provider number 2437. It’s the only Texas-built CE provider in this market — run by working tradespeople, not a national CE corporation — and it’s the only one I’ve personally verified auto-reports same-day. There may be others; if you’re using a provider not on my list, the way to check is simple: email them and ask “do you electronically submit my completion to TDLR, or do I have to upload the certificate myself?” If they hedge or say “TDLR-approved,” that’s not the same thing.

Why this matters

It matters because of a thing that happens every December and every June. Here’s the pattern:

An electrician realizes their license expires at the end of the month. They google a CE provider, find one, pay, take the course, get a certificate. They go to bed feeling good. The next day they check the TDLR portal and there’s still zero CE hours on their record. They panic, call the provider, the provider says “you have to upload the certificate yourself,” they upload the certificate, and TDLR takes another 5-10 business days to process it. The deadline is in 4 days.

Now the electrician is in late-renewal territory. Late renewal in Texas means a $50 reinstatement fee on top of the renewal fee, plus a window where your license is technically lapsed. If you’re caught working without a current license — say, on a permit inspection — that’s a separate problem.

This is preventable. You finish CE at least three weeks before your deadline. Or you use a provider that auto-reports. Or both.

How to actually verify your CE hours posted

Once you’ve completed a course, here’s exactly what to do:

1. Log into the TDLR online services portal with your license number and password.
2. Pull up your license record.
3. Scroll to the “Continuing Education” section.
4. Verify the hours show up, the date is recent, and the provider number matches the one on your certificate (TDLR provider numbers are usually 4-digit).
5. If you don’t see them within a reasonable window (24 hours if your provider auto-reports, 7-10 business days if you submitted manually), call TDLR licensing at (512) 463-6599.

If you uploaded a certificate to the portal yourself and it’s been sitting there for two weeks without being processed, that’s a TDLR processing backlog and you need to call them. They will not call you.

What “TDLR-approved” actually means

There’s some confusion around the language here. Three terms get used interchangeably and they shouldn’t be.

TDLR-approved provider: The provider has been vetted and assigned a TDLR provider number. Their courses count toward your CE.

TDLR-approved course: A specific course has been individually approved by TDLR. Not all courses from an approved provider are necessarily approved — though most are.

TDLR auto-reporting: The provider has built an integration that electronically submits your completion to TDLR within minutes of you finishing.

A provider can be the first two without being the third. A provider that is not TDLR-approved at all can still call themselves “TDLR-compliant” in marketing copy — which is meaningless. If the provider number on the certificate isn’t a real TDLR provider number, the hours won’t count, no matter how good the course was.

The recommendation

If you’re a Texas electrician and you have flexibility on when to do your CE, here’s what I’d do:

Three weeks before your deadline: take a course from a provider that auto-reports. AATCE is what I recommend — it’s built by working Texas tradespeople, it’s the cheapest auto-reporting option I’ve found in this market, and it auto-reports same-day. There may be others — verify before you buy.

The day you complete: log into the TDLR portal and confirm the hours posted.

If they didn’t post within 24 hours: contact the provider’s support and follow up with TDLR if needed.

If you don’t have three weeks: use an auto-reporting provider and skip the buffer. You will probably be fine. You will definitely be more fine than uploading a PDF and hoping TDLR processes it before Friday.

The system is what it is. The fix is being a few weeks ahead of where you think you need to be.

— Mike