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Logging hours FAQs

Sarada
  • Updated

Below, you'll find answers to the frequently asked questions we've seen about logging hours in Track Your Hours.

In this guide, we'll answer:

How do I indicate the status of hours that I enter into Track Your Hours?

Track Your Hours automatically assigns the appropriate status to your hours based on the dates you enter at Account & Billing > School & Status Information tab. 

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These statuses are:

  • Pre-degree
  • Post-degree 
  • Trainee
  • Trainee in practicum
  • Post-degree with application pending for intern registration
  • Registered intern

As long as you keep your information up to date, you can just log your hours and TYH will group your hours under the appropriate categories and subcategories, and will reflect the appropriate statuses on your forms. 

How do I log 45 minutes of client contact? (NY LCSW)

The LCSW requirements in New York state that 45 minutes of client contact are equal to one hour. If you provide 45 minutes of direct client contact, it should be logged as 1.0 (1 hour) in TYH.

What are personal psychotherapy hours?

Personal psychotherapy hours are the hours you spend in therapy with a licensed therapist (individual, group, or family).  

How do I log and report my personal psychotherapy hours?

Under the new experience requirements, personal psychotherapy hours cannot be claimed.  If you submit your application prior to 1/1/2021 and request to be evaluated under the old (pre-2016) requirements, you can claim personal psychotherapy hours. If you submit your application on or after 1/1/2021, you cannot claim personal psychotherapy hours.

CA MFT

The BBS allows you to claim up to 100 personal psychotherapy hours and they apply a 3:1 multiplier to these hours, which means that each hour logged counts as 3 hours, so you can get credit for 300 hours if you log 100. Track Your Hours tracks the personal psychotherapy hours, but the software doesn’t produce a formal report because the BBS doesn’t include them on the Experience Verification Form. 

When you fill out your BBS application, you’ll see a section where you’ll enter your personal psychotherapy hours and dates you received therapy, which you can copy directly from TYH. If you want to see a summary of the hours you’ve entered in Track Your Hours, you can run the summary report from the Forms tab. The last page(s) of the summary report include(s) a detailed listing of your personal psychotherapy hours.

When you enter 1 personal psychotherapy hour into TYH, your recorded total will increase by 1 and your valid total will increase by 3 because the software applies the 3:1 multiplier per BBS guidelines.  

Note: The personal psychotherapy hours are only counted in your Dashboard totals pre-2021. The hours aren’t counted in your Dashboard from 2021 on.

You may enter the hours on the exact days they were earned or in blocks. If you enter them in blocks, you’ll want to ensure that you enter the hours on a day that falls within the appropriate status you were in at the time the hours were earned. For example, if you earned 50 personal psychotherapy hours pre-degree and 100 hours post-degree, you’d need to enter the block of 50 hours on a date that’s before your graduation date, and the block of 100 hours on a date that’s after your graduation date. This is important because the personal psychotherapy hours count toward sub-category and category totals based on whether you’re pre- or post-degree.

To enter personal psychotherapy hours into Track Your Hours, navigate to the Personal Psych tab:

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Note: Personal psychotherapy hours are entered on the bottom of page one of the Marriage and Family Therapist Examination Eligibility Application. 

What are the guidelines for personal psychotherapy hours? (CA MFT)

Below are the guidelines for logging personal psychotherapy hours as an MFT in California:

  • You can begin to log personal psychotherapy hours from the date you first enroll in your degree program
  • You aren’t required to log supervision in a week in order to claim personal psychotherapy hours
  • The therapist must be licensed
    • The two year license requirement applicable to supervisors isn’t applicable to these hours
  • You may not receive psychotherapy from your own supervisor
  • The 6 year rule is applied to these hours
    • Personal psychotherapy hours earned more than 6 years prior to the date you submit your application to the BBS don’t count

Note: These hours are entirely optional, but act as a way for you to earn additional hours. 

When can I begin counting hours towards the LPCC requirements? (CA LPCC)

Unlike LMFT applicants, LPCC applicants can’t count pre-degree hours toward licensure. An applicant can count post-degree hours completed before they receive their associate registration number if they applied for associate registration within 90 days of their graduation date. 

If their associate registration application was submitted more than 90 days after graduation, the hours earned between the graduation date and receipt of the associate registration number can’t be counted toward licensure. This is known as the 90-day rule, and there are no exceptions to this requirement.

When can I begin counting hours towards the LCSW requirements? (CA ASW)

You can only count hours completed after you receive your associate registration number toward your LCSW licensure. There are no exceptions to this requirement.

How do I log individual/group psychotherapy hours? (CA ASW)

Consistent with the BBS weekly log and Experience Verification form, individual and group psychotherapy hours are a subset of the Clinical Psychosocial Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment category in Track Your Hours. You cannot enter psychotherapy hours until you have first entered Clinical Psychosocial Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment hours. When you enter hours in the individual and group psychotherapy row you’re not adding hours to your total, you’re actually indicating how many hours out of your total Clinical Psychosocial Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment hours were individual or group psychotherapy.  

To enter individual or group psychotherapy hours, first enter the number of Clinical Psychosocial Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment hours, including individual and group therapy hours. This total is entered on the first row (6 hours have been entered in the example below). Next, on the second row you indicate how many of these hours were individual or group therapy (2 hours have been entered in the example below). The example below would increase your recorded total hours by 6 (you have logged 6 hours and indicated that 2 of the hours were individual or group therapy).  

It’s very important for you to enter the hours in this manner to avoid double counting your psychotherapy hours. The rows on the TYH form are designed to precisely match the way the hours are reported on the weekly log and Experience Verification Form.      

Why do my weekly logs have blank columns?

The forms produced by Track Your Hours are designed to match the expectations of the BBS. The BBS expects that a new page start in your weekly logs whenever either of the following occurs: 

  • Your status changes
  • A new calendar year begins

Track Your Hours automatically groups your hours by status and year, so if you notice that a new weekly log begins, even though the previous log’s columns weren’t entirely complete, it’s because your status changed or the calendar year has ended.  

What is the restriction on logging indirect hours? (NY LMHC)

According to NYSED regulations: "When an applicant completes less than 3,000 hours in a setting, at least one-half of the hours must be direct; the remainder may be indirect. It’s not acceptable to complete direct and indirect activities in different settings under different supervisors and attempt to combine these hours to meet the experience requirement."

Track Your Hours monitors this ratio for you. To see whether you’re currently meeting the 50% requirement for each of your sites, click the Alerts tab:

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How do I log partial hours? (NY LCSW)

Partial hours should be entered as decimals:

  • 15 mins: 0.25
  • 30 mins: 0.5
  • 45 mins: 0.75
  • 60 mins: 1

Note: Per the NY LCSW regulations, 45 minutes of client contact is equivalent to 1 hour. This means that you should log 45 minutes of client contact as 1.0 in Track Your Hours

Can I track hours for both MFT and LPCC?

There isn’t a way to track both MFT and LPCC hours in one TYH account. Since there are guidelines that need to be followed and specific forms that need to be generated, you’ll want to create a free, second TYH account to track your MFT and LPCC hours separately. 

If you’d like to create a free second TYH account, submit a help request so we can assist you further.

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