Restricted vs unrestricted BCBA fieldwork hours: where supervision time lands

Table of contents

Before the split: does the hour count at all?
Two questions, not one
Where each hour lands
The same task can land either way
What that looks like in a real log
The same month, counted three ways
Seeing what you have left
Common questions

Supervision time is still fieldwork time. It should count toward your supervision requirement and toward your restricted or unrestricted split at the same time, from one entry, without a second tally on the side.

If you have ever finished a month, looked at your unrestricted percentage and thought “that cannot be right,” the cause is usually the same. Your tracker is answering one question about each hour when the BACB asks two. Here is how the two questions work, why group supervision is where most tools break, and what the correct number looks like.

Before the split: does the hour count at all?

Restricted and unrestricted is a question about hours that are already fieldwork. Two things decide that first, and an activity failing either one is not a restricted hour. It is not an hour.

Is it behavior analysis? The Handbook lists what does not count, and the thread running through the list is that the activity is not behavior-analytic: non-behavior-analytic assessments, paperwork, administration and billing, interventions not based in behavior analysis, and meetings with little or no behavior-analytic content.

Is it tied to a specific client’s programming? The Handbook opens its acceptable activities section with one sentence: “All fieldwork hours must be related to specific client programming.” This is why researching the literature for a current client’s program counts while general reading does not, and why role-playing procedures that are not client related is on the excluded list.

The full list of what never counts as fieldwork, however useful it is professionally:

attending professional conferences, workshops, or university courses
completing didactic-course assignments and quizzes
attending meetings with little or no behavior-analytic content
providing interventions that are not based in behavior analysis
performing non-behavior-analytic administrative activities
participating in non-behavior-analytic trainings related to service delivery, with crisis management, CPR and billing systems given as the examples
completing non-behavior-analytic assessments, paperwork, documentation, billing, or anything else not directly related to behavior analysis
listening to podcasts
role-playing behavior-analytic procedures that are not client related

Two of those are worth a second look. Insurance work, funding calls and crisis training are the things practising BCBAs most often wish they had learned earlier, and they sit under non-behavior-analytic service-delivery training. Worth doing, not fieldwork hours. And the documentation line is qualified: it excludes non-behavior-analytic paperwork, not every document a behavior analyst writes.

Where the requirements leave room for judgement, the judgement is your supervisor’s:

“Because every trainee’s goals are unique, and we cannot possibly know or anticipate all of the situational variables, populations, and settings in which they may be working, we cannot provide guidance beyond our certification requirements. However, your supervisors should review these requirements closely to determine whether the activities are in line with all of the requirements and best support the clients’ needs and trainees’ goals.”

BCBA Handbook, BACB

So two supervisors can reach different conclusions about the same activity without either being wrong. The one that counts is the responsible supervisor who signs your monthly form.

Two questions, not one

Every hour that clears those two gates is then classified twice, and the two answers are independent of each other.

Who was there, and were they supervising? You on your own, you with your supervisor one to one, or you in a supervision group. This decides whether the hour counts toward your supervision percentage.

What were you doing? Restricted activity means delivering therapeutic and instructional procedures to a client. Unrestricted activity is the behavior-analytic work a BCBA does beyond that: assessment, analysis, planning, program design, training, and feedback. This decides which side of your 60/40 split the hour falls on.

A tracker that collapses these into a single list forces a wrong answer somewhere. Group supervision is where it usually shows up, because one group session can be spent on either kind of work.

Where each hour lands

Restricted activity

Unrestricted activity

On your ownIndependent hours

Direct therapyRunning acquisition programs with a client and collecting trial-by-trial data.

Analysis and planningGraphing a client’s data, revising targets, writing the behavior plan, preparing caregiver training.

One to oneIndividual supervision

Feedback during a sessionYour supervisor watches you work with the client and gives feedback in the moment.

Program reviewReviewing data together, receiving feedback, planning the next phase.

In a groupGroup supervision

Implementing with a clientTwo trainees implement a behavior plan with a client while the supervisor oversees both.

Case discussionPresenting a client case, analyzing a client’s data together, discussing a video of an RBT with a client.

Examples follow the BACB’s Fieldwork Checklist and Tip Sheet scenarios. If your supervisor only watches without giving feedback, the time is independent, not supervised.

One entry, both totals. You log the hour once and pick the category. That single entry raises your supervised total and the correct side of your restricted and unrestricted split at the same time. The same hour appears in both figures, and that is not double counting, because they answer different questions.

Looking for unrestricted work you can start? See 32 unrestricted activity ideas, each with how to ask for it and a model log entry.

The same task can land either way

Nothing is unrestricted because of what it looks like. It is unrestricted because of what it is for, which is why a blanket rule such as “notes never count” falls apart on contact with a real month. The Handbook makes the point with data collection:

“This restriction does not necessarily refer to all time spent working with clients. For example, data collection could be a restricted activity if a trainee collects data solely as part of a client’s treatment program.”

BCBA Handbook, BACB

Same client, same clipboard, same hour. Collected to run the program, it is restricted. Collected to answer a question about what the client needs next, it is unrestricted.

A worked example that comes up often. A trainee plans to review the RBT session notes on their team for vague wording, practise rewriting some of those statements to sharpen their own writing, then build a training document with examples and deliver feedback so the RBTs write more objective, measurable notes. Split into its parts, one plan has three different answers:

Building and delivering the training document is unrestricted. “Training staff and caregivers on behavior-analytic programs or content” is one of the Handbook’s own examples, and the Tip Sheet marks a trainee running training for RBTs on a client’s behavior plan the same way.
Reviewing the notes in order to give that feedback is the same activity, as long as the notes belong to clients whose programming the trainee is involved in. Writing objective, observable, measurable descriptions of behavior is behavior-analytic content, not clerical work.
The practice rewrites that will never be used are the weak part, and not because they are beneath a BCBA. They are the piece with no client attached to it, which is the second gate above.

Notice that the objection is not the one usually raised in these conversations. Arguments about whether something is “BCBA-level work” are really about the second of the two questions above. The activity that quietly fails is the one that lost its client.

What that looks like in a real log

This is the monthly activity log in FieldworkABA. Independent hours are split into restricted and unrestricted, and supervised hours are split four ways: individual and group, each restricted and unrestricted. Look at July 15 and July 22, two group sessions in the same month that land on opposite sides.

Monthly activity log showing columns for Independent Restricted and Unrestricted, and Supervised split into Individual Restricted, Individual Unrestricted, Group Restricted and Group Unrestricted, with a totals row. — A month of fieldwork in FieldworkABA, from a demonstration account. The totals row carries all six categories separately: 28.00 independent restricted, 18.00 independent unrestricted, 1.50 individual restricted, 4.00 individual unrestricted, 1.00 group restricted, and 1.50 group unrestricted.

The same month, counted three ways

That month holds 54.00 hours, of which 2.50 were group supervision: 1.50 on case discussion and 1.00 on implementation with a client. How a tracker handles those 2.50 hours changes the number that has to reach 60 percent.

Reads too low

Group time never reaches the unrestricted total

40.74%22.00 unrestricted hours

The 1.50 hours of case discussion go missing from the split, so you look further from the target than you are.

Reads too high

All group time filed as unrestricted

45.37%24.50 unrestricted hours

The hour of implementation is counted as unrestricted when it was restricted work. The number flatters you and will not hold up if the record is reviewed.

Correct

Group time split into restricted and unrestricted

43.52%23.50 unrestricted hours

1.50 hours unrestricted and 1.00 hour restricted, both still counted as supervised. This is what FieldworkABA shows.

A few points either way looks small in one month. Across a full 2,000-hour record it is the difference between finishing on target and finding out late that you are not, and the Handbook describes no way to remove hours later to fix the ratio. See the 60% unrestricted rule for how to work out where you stand.

Seeing what you have left

The Total hours page answers the question you actually have: total hours against your goal, your restricted and unrestricted split against the 60 percent requirement, and your supervision percentage, all from the entries you already logged.

Three summary charts: total hours completed against the 2,000 hour goal, restricted versus unrestricted hours with the 60 percent requirement, and supervised hours as a percentage. — The unrestricted card states the requirement, flags when you are below it, and notes that the judgement is made on actual clock hours rather than weighted hours.

Underneath, every month is listed with its own totals, so you can see which months pulled your ratio down and by how much.

Month by month table listing total hours, independent, supervised, supervision percentage, restricted, unrestricted and unrestricted percentage for each month, with unweighted and weighted totals. — Each month with its own supervision and unrestricted percentages, plus unweighted and weighted totals. Every figure opens to the entries behind it.

Common questions

Does supervision time count as unrestricted hours?

It depends on what you were doing, not on the fact that a supervisor was there. Program review, data analysis, feedback and planning are unrestricted activity, and they count toward your unrestricted total as well as your supervision requirement. If your supervisor watches you deliver direct implementation and gives feedback in the moment, that time is supervised and restricted. If they only watch, it is independent, restricted time that also counts as observation.

Is group supervision restricted or unrestricted?

Either, depending on how the session is spent. Presenting a client case, analyzing a client's data together, or discussing a video of an RBT working with a client is unrestricted. Implementing a behavior plan with a client while the supervisor oversees the group is restricted. One group session can contain both, which is why group supervision needs to be logged on both axes.

Why does my unrestricted percentage look wrong?

The most common cause is a tracker with only one group supervision field. If group time never reaches the unrestricted total, your percentage reads lower than it is. If all group time is filed as unrestricted, it reads higher than it is. Both make the number unreliable, and people usually end up keeping a second tally by hand.

Am I double counting if an hour is both supervised and unrestricted?

No. Supervised and unrestricted answer two different questions about the same hour. One hour of individual supervision spent on program review is one hour of fieldwork, counted once, that is both supervised and unrestricted.

What percentage of my hours must be unrestricted?

At least 60 percent of your total BCBA fieldwork hours, under both the current and the 2027 requirements. For BCaBA the minimum is 40 percent. The requirement is measured on actual clock hours, not on weighted hours, and it applies to your total, not to each month.

Can the BACB tell me whether an activity counts?

No. The Handbook says the BACB cannot provide guidance beyond its certification requirements, and that supervisors should review those requirements to decide whether an activity is in line with them. The answer that matters is the one from the responsible supervisor who signs your monthly form.

Two BCBAs gave me opposite answers about the same activity. Who is right?

Both can be, because the judgement is theirs to make. Rather than arguing the label, describe the activity the way the requirements are written: the client programming it relates to, the behavior-analytic purpose, and what will exist at the end of it.

See it with your own hours

FieldworkABA is a BCBA fieldwork tracker that splits every entry into restricted and unrestricted time, for independent and supervised hours alike, so your percentage is right without a second tally.

Start Free Bring your hours over

Sources

BCBA Handbook, BACB, updated 06/2026.
Fieldwork Checklist and Tip Sheet, BACB, updated 06/2026.
Commonly Asked Questions About BACB Supervised Fieldwork Requirements, BACB.