Applicants for LPC licensure in Texas can use Track Your Hours to log experience and supervision hours. If your recorded hours don’t meet your license requirements, you’ll be notified by alerts generated in your account.
You can review alerts and edit your recorded hours to ensure that the hours you submit with your application are aligned with the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council’s expectations.
Note: To learn more about BHEC’s experience requirements, see the Texas Administrative Code.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
- Before you start logging hours
- Logging your hours
- Editing or deleting your hours
- Understanding recorded vs. valid hours
- Explaining alerts for Texas LPC requirements
- Reviewing your alerts
- FAQs
Before you start logging hours
Applicants for LPC licensure can start claiming experience hours after they’ve completed their practicum, received their master's degree, and been issued an LPC Associate license. You must have an LPC Associate license to practice counseling in Texas. Any hours completed before you receive this provisional license won’t count toward your experience requirements.
LPC Associate licenses expire 60 months, or 5 years, from the date of issuance. An LPC Associate who doesn’t complete the required experience hours during this 60-month period must restart the licensure process.
For more information, see the BHEC’s guide to Applying for a License.
Logging your hours
After adding your site(s) and supervisor(s), you can start logging your hours in your Track Your Hours account. To do this:
- Navigate to the Hours page
- Click Add hours
- Select a site and supervisor
- Enter your experience hours
- Enter your supervision hours
- Scroll down to enter any additional information in the optional Notes section
- Click Save
- If you’d like to log hours under a different site and supervisor, click Save and add more
Important: Don’t record protected health information (PHI) or personal identifiable information (PII) in Track Your Hours. We recommend using an EHR to store client information and clinical documentation.
Editing or deleting your hours
Important: Before you make changes to your recorded hours, keep in mind that there’s no way to recover deleted data.
To edit or delete your recorded hours:
- Navigate to the Hours page
- Select the day you’d like to make changes to
- Edit or delete the number you previously entered, as needed
- Click Save
Understanding recorded vs. valid hours
Recorded hours are all of the hours you log in Track Your Hours. Track Your Hours doesn’t make any adjustments to your recorded hours.
Valid hours are calculated by comparing your recorded hours against your state’s license requirements, and subtracting any hours that are invalid based on these requirements.
To see your total recorded hours for a given week:
- Navigate to the Hours page
- Check the Total recorded column
To view your valid hours:
- Navigate to the Progress page
- Click View details next to the category you’d like to view
- Compare your valid hours against your required hours
Note: License regulations are complex. Track Your Hours provides you with an estimate of your valid hours, or the total number of hours you’ll be able to claim when you submit your application.
Explaining alerts for Texas LPC requirements
The following alerts will appear in your Track Your Hours account, based on the hours you log each month:
Alert | BHEC requirement | What it means |
Supervision reminder Don't forget to log at least 4 hours of supervision for [MONTH]. Your month of supervision will not be counted without the required hours. |
A minimum of 4 direct supervision hours per month. | This alert will populate if you haven’t logged at least 4 supervision hours by the 25th of the month. This alert is meant to call attention to the missing supervision with enough time left in the month to address it. |
Missing monthly supervision You did not log at least 4 hours of supervision in [MONTH]. Your month of supervision will not be counted without the required hours. |
A minimum of 4 direct supervision hours per month. | This alert will populate if you’ve logged less than 4 supervision hours by month’s end. This month won’t count toward your months of supervision requirement. |
Individual supervision needed Less than 50% of your total supervision is from individual supervision. Log more individual supervision hours. |
No more than 50% of the total supervision hours can be received in group supervision. | This alert will populate if your group supervision hours make up more than 50% of your total supervision hours. This alert will only populate if you've logged 2,500 or more experience hours. |
Note: For more information, see Understanding your requirements.
Reviewing your alerts
As you log hours, Track Your Hours will alert you if you aren’t meeting a certain requirement. To view your alerts:
- Navigate to the Hours page
- Select the alerts icon in the top right
You'll see new, Unread alerts above your Read alerts:
FAQs
- Can I log hours as weekly totals instead of daily?
- Can I log partial hours?
- How can I review my previous notes?
Can I log hours as weekly totals instead of daily?
The Supervised Experience Documentation Form totals all hours logged under each supervisor, and the Supervision Log totals all hours logged under each supervisor by week. Since neither form displays the exact day an hour was logged under, you can log your hours as weekly totals.
We recommend that you log your first and last hours at a site on the exact date they were earned. This will ensure that your forms correctly reflect your start and end date(s). All other hours can be logged weekly.
For example, if you gained experience on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, instead of logging your hours in each day’s column, you can enter the combined hours for each category under Sunday.
Can I log partial hours?
You can log increments of an hour in decimals. For example:
- 15 minutes = .25
- 20 minutes = .33
- 30 minutes = .5
- 40 minutes = .66
- 45 minutes = .75
- 60 minutes = 1
How can I review my previous notes?
You can view past notes that you logged with your hours by generating a Notes report. To do this:
- Navigate to the Forms page
- Select Notes report
- Select the Supervisor and site you want to view notes for
- Specify a date range
- Click Download PDF
For more information, see Generating forms and submitting your application to the Texas state licensing board.
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