BCBA Fieldwork Hours Tracking: Restricted vs Unrestricted

BCBA fieldwork hours tracking has one requirement that sets it apart from other clinical logs: you must be able to separate restricted from unrestricted activities at any moment, because the two are counted differently and there are limits on how much restricted time can contribute. On top of that, your supervision is organized into supervisory periods, each with its own contact and observation expectations, and each needing verification while the supervisor who provided it is still reachable.

The numbers that govern all of this live in the current BACB fieldwork requirements handbook, and they have changed more than once. Rather than trusting a number you read somewhere, check the handbook edition that applies to your start date and set your tracker’s targets from it.

Restricted vs Unrestricted Activities

This is the split that trips up most trainees, usually because a single work day contains both and the boundary sits in the middle of an afternoon.

Category	Typical activities	What to watch for
Restricted	Direct implementation of a behavior plan, running discrete trial or NET sessions, delivering skill acquisition programs as the technician	Often the majority of an early trainee’s day, and subject to a cap as a share of total fieldwork
Unrestricted	Conducting assessments, writing and revising programs, graphing and analyzing data, parent and caregiver training, staff training and supervision, treatment team meetings, research activities	The category you need to grow deliberately; it rarely grows on its own
Not countable	Non-behavioral job duties, billing and scheduling, driving between clients in most cases, personal study for the exam	Log these separately or not at all, but never inside your fieldwork total

Classification is where the judgment sits. A one-hour session where you ran programs for 40 minutes and then met with a parent to teach a prompting procedure for 20 minutes is not one hour of anything; it is two entries. Split it.

The practical consequence is that if you log by shift rather than by activity, your restricted and unrestricted totals will both be wrong, and you will not find out until you try to complete a verification form. Our guide on direct vs indirect clinical hours covers the same splitting discipline across other professions.

What Each Fieldwork Entry Should Contain

Field	Example
Date	03/09
Fieldwork type	Concentrated
Activity type	Unrestricted
Description	Preference assessment, client K2, and graphing
Hours	1.25
Supervisor	M. Adeyemi, BCBA
Supervisory period	March 2026
Setting	Clinic

Two fields deserve emphasis. Supervisory period lets you total and verify by period, which is the unit the BACB actually works in. Fieldwork type matters because supervised fieldwork and concentrated supervised fieldwork are counted at different rates, and you will want to know which is which without reconstructing your schedule.

A Worked Example: Two Weeks of Entries

A trainee working at a clinic, splitting time between direct sessions and program work:

Date	Activity type	Description	Hours	Supervisor
03/02	Restricted	Client K2, skill acquisition session	2.5	M. Adeyemi
03/02	Unrestricted	Data graphing and session notes review	0.75	M. Adeyemi
03/03	Restricted	Client R7, NET session	3.0	M. Adeyemi
03/04	Unrestricted	Functional behavior assessment interview with caregiver	1.5	M. Adeyemi
03/04	Unrestricted	Draft behavior intervention plan	1.0	M. Adeyemi
03/05	Restricted	Client K2, session	2.5	M. Adeyemi
03/06	Unrestricted	Supervision meeting, group, case review	1.0	M. Adeyemi
03/09	Unrestricted	Preference assessment, client K2, and graphing	1.25	M. Adeyemi
03/10	Restricted	Client R7, session	3.0	M. Adeyemi
03/11	Unrestricted	RBT training, prompting and fading procedures	1.5	M. Adeyemi
03/12	Restricted	Client D4, session	2.0	M. Adeyemi
03/13	Unrestricted	Team meeting and treatment plan revision	1.25	M. Adeyemi
Total			21.25

Restricted: 13.0. Unrestricted: 8.25. That ratio is the number a trainee should be watching every single month, because a caseload that is all direct sessions quietly builds a pile of hours that cannot all be counted.

Logging Supervision Separately

Supervision contacts and observations with a client are their own record, and they are the part most likely to be missing when it is time to sign a verification form.

Keep a separate sheet with:

1. Date of each supervision contact
2. Format: individual or group, and group size if applicable
3. Duration
4. Whether it included observation with a client, and how long
5. Supervisor name and credential
6. Supervisory period it belongs to
7. Topics covered, one short line

Group supervision has its own rules about how much can count and how large the group can be, which is another reason to record the format and size rather than just “supervision, 1 hour.” Group vs individual supervision hours covers that distinction more broadly.

The Monthly Verification Routine

Treat the end of each supervisory period as a hard deadline, not a suggestion.

1. Filter your log to that period. Produce three numbers: total fieldwork hours, restricted hours, unrestricted hours.
2. Pull the supervision sheet for the same period. Count contacts and observation time.
3. Check them against the current handbook’s requirements for that period type before the meeting, not after.
4. Send your supervisor the totals and the underlying rows two or three days ahead. A supervisor who has seen the numbers signs faster.
5. Meet, review anything that looks off, and correct it in the log while both of you remember the month.
6. Complete and sign the monthly verification form for that period.
7. Save a scan or PDF of the signed form in the same folder as your log, named by period.

That last step matters more than it sounds. Trainees who keep signed monthly forms have a complete file if a supervisor changes jobs, moves out of state or stops responding. Trainees who planned to collect signatures at the end sometimes cannot. How to get clinical hours signed off walks through the sign-off meeting itself, and clinical supervision documentation requirements covers what the documentation should contain.

A Sample Trainee Week

Illustrative only, and shaped by the reality that most trainees are also employed as technicians:

Day	Morning	Afternoon	Restricted	Unrestricted
Mon	Two client sessions	Graphing, notes	4.5	1.0
Tue	Client session	Caregiver training	2.5	1.5
Wed	Client sessions	Program revisions	5.0	1.0
Thu	Assessment with supervisor	Supervision meeting	0	3.0
Fri	Client session	RBT training, team meeting	2.5	2.0
Week			14.5	8.5

If your weeks look more like 20 restricted and 3 unrestricted, that is the conversation to have with your supervisor now rather than next year. Ask to be included in assessments, to draft a plan under review, to run a caregiver training session, or to help supervise a newer technician. Those requests are far easier to make in month three than in month eighteen.

Setting Up the Tracker

You need categories you define yourself, targets per category, and a view that shows completion against each target. Our clinical hours tracker spreadsheet for Google Sheets is built that way: name your own categories on the Setup tab, including restricted, unrestricted and each supervision type, set a target for each, then log daily on the Hours Tracker tab and watch the dashboard fill in.

Keep the file in your own cloud storage rather than an employer account. Fieldwork often spans two or three employers, and losing access to a former employer’s drive in the middle of an application is a genuinely bad week.

For the broader licensure picture, how to track clinical hours for licensure covers what boards and certifying bodies commonly ask trainees to produce.

What Goes Wrong

• Logging shifts instead of activities. One row for an eight-hour day hides the split you are required to report.
• Assuming a number from a forum post. The requirements have changed; the current handbook governs.
• Counting drive time, billing or scheduling. Log it for your employer if you need to, but keep it out of the fieldwork total.
• Leaving the supervision log until the form is due. Reconstructing observation minutes is guesswork.
• Letting restricted hours run far ahead of the cap. The excess simply does not count, and the time is gone.

Before your next supervision meeting, run one filter: restricted hours as a share of your total so far. Write the percentage down. If it is climbing month over month, bring that number to the meeting and ask for one unrestricted responsibility you do not currently have.