How ACADA Works

Where the learning happens

The knowledge is ours. The hours are theirs.

ACADA writes the curriculum, publishes the standard, and issues the credential. The hands-on work happens inside an ACADA member business, on real appointments, beside people who groom for a living. The business deploys the ACADA standard inside its own salon. An Approved Signatory reviews the apprentice's practical work and signs it, and ACADA records the curriculum behind it. That is the apprenticeship structure, and it is how this trade has always actually been learned.

Entering

Every member enters through an ACADA member business, as an owner, a manager, an employee, or a contractor. The business mints an invitation code, the person redeems it, and the business confirms the connection from its team page. One membership covers five people. Additional seats are $99 a year, and a seat holds while an invitation is pending.

Working alone? You form your own ACADA business and enter the same way. Nobody arrives at ACADA without a business behind them, even when that business is their own.

The sign-off

Practical work is signed by the business owner or manager, never by a peer. Each signed item records what was done, who signed it, their title, their business and the date. When the business no longer exists, the item reads Signer: Verified Member Business.

One photo is the minimum evidence for an item. Practice runs on a model count. A photo or a video that a business also wants to showcase is showcase material, and showcase material is never the evidence.

Sign-offs are permanent. ACADA does not withdraw a citation because a business and a practitioner parted ways, and ACADA does not build a way to. The two exceptions are an item that never happened, which is revoked for invalidity, and a legal requirement.

The floor

PET-01, the Generalist Track, is the safety floor. No practical item counts in any other Track until every PET-01 practical is complete. The Generalist credential is a working credential from the day it is issued, so a member can be listed and take clients while the Core Tracks are still ahead of them.

What you leave with

A credential number that is yours for life, a public profile that records every signed item, and the ability to move to another member business or to your own at any time. When you leave a business, your profile becomes a Solo Practitioner profile and keeps every signed item on it.

What ACADA does

ACADA manages apprenticeship programs, provides member services, documents pets in PortaPet, and tracks careers. We record what a member has completed inside those programs. We do not inspect garages and we do not police what anybody does outside a membership. That boundary is the point of the credential.

The craft is learned at work.

Six steps from the shop floor to a portable credential.