BCBA Fieldwork Tracker: a simple system for 1,500/2,000 hours

Tracking BCBA fieldwork is the kind of project that looks easy in month 1 and terrifying in month 14. You're juggling two hour categories, two supervision cadences, and a percentage requirement — across roughly two years of work.

Here's a system that holds up.

The two pathways at a glance

• Supervised Fieldwork: 2,000 hours total.
• Concentrated Supervised Fieldwork: 1,500 hours total, with more intensive supervision.

Both pathways require a minimum of 20 hours/month and a maximum of about 130 hours/month of fieldwork.

The two types of fieldwork hours

Every fieldwork hour falls into one of two buckets — and you'll be reporting both separately:

• Restricted (direct client contact): 1:1 sessions, running programs, direct intervention. Capped at 40% of your monthly fieldwork.
• Unrestricted: assessment, treatment planning, case management, BST training, supervising others. Must be at least 60%.

Translation: if you log 100 hours in a month, at most 40 can be direct 1:1.

Supervision contacts and percentages

• Supervised Fieldwork: at least 5% of monthly hours supervised, across at least 4 contacts per month.
• Concentrated: at least 10% of monthly hours supervised, across at least 6 contacts per month.
• At least half of supervision contacts must be individual (not group).
• At least one contact per month must involve observation of you with a client.

The system that actually works

1. Log the same day. Every fieldwork block, tagged restricted vs. unrestricted, the day it happens.
2. Log every supervision contact with: date, individual vs. group, direct observation yes/no, duration.
3. Weekly self-check on three numbers: total hours this month, restricted %, supervision %.
4. Monthly export for your supervisor to review and sign — this becomes the source of truth if anyone audits.

Common ways people lose hours

• Logging from memory at the end of the month — entries get vague or skipped.
• Not separating restricted vs. unrestricted at entry time.
• Not tracking whether a supervision contact was individual or group.
• Switching tools mid-fieldwork and not migrating older entries.

How HoursNest handles this

HoursNest lets you tag every hour as restricted vs. unrestricted, log supervision contacts with individual/group/observation flags, and shows live progress toward the 1,500 or 2,000 total. Reports export as PDF or CSV for your supervisor to sign.

Related: The RBT 5% Supervision Rule, Explained — useful background if you're also supervising RBTs.

This article is general information and may not reflect the latest BACB requirements. Always check the current BCBA Handbook.