Recording Client Contact

Clinical Hours Logbook

The example hours logbook provided here is a simplified version of one I long used in my own practice to record clinical contact hours. It's designed for Microsoft Excel, but it can be converted for use in other spreadsheets such as Lotus 123 -- in that case, some of the formatting niceties may be lost, but the functionality will remain. Likewise, although the screen images shown here illustrate the logbook in use on a Macintosh under OS X, the spreadsheet works exactly the same under Windows, with only slight differences in appearance.

To use the logbook, all that is required is to fill in some identifier for each client -- a number, letter, or some other designator -- and then record the dates each client attends. Monthly and yearly totals are generated automatically by counting the number of recorded attendance dates. An extra sheet is included for tallying hours spent in supervision. The spreadsheet can be edited easily to add or subtract columns as needed, but for convenience several current versions are included here, covering different sections of the year, as well as some older versions:

• Financial year April 2007 - March 2008
• Calendar year 2007
• Academic year September 2007 - August 2008
• All of the above (2007-08) together in one .zip file
• Older versions:
  • Financial year April 2006 - March 2007
  • Calendar year 2006
  • Academic year September 2006 - August 2007
  • All of the above (2006-07) together in one .zip file
  • Financial year April 2005 - March 2006
  • Calendar year 2005
  • Academic year September 2005 - August 2006
  • All of the above (2005-06) together in one .zip file
  • Financial year April 2004 - March 2005
  • Calendar year 2004
  • Academic year September 2004 - August 2005
  • Financial year April 2003 - March 2004
  • Calendar year 2003
  • Academic year September 2003-August 2004
  • Academic year September 2002-August 2003

Each includes columns reflecting the correct number of partial weeks per month. (Most months have 5 partial weeks, some have 6, and occasionally February has exactly 4.) For practitioners who see some or all clients more than once per week, additional columns can easily be inserted to accommodate the additional sessions each month. There is also a separate file which contains dummy client attendance data, just to illustrate the spreadsheet at work.

The instructions below explain the features of the spreadsheet, including the last four columns, which are entirely optional and can be used to distinguish the attendance records of clients who finish after an agreed period of counselling from those who finish abruptly.

Special Logbook for Online Practitioners Recording Words Exchanged

More online practitioners are now recognizing the value of tracking client contact in terms of the volume of words exchanged (since asynchronous online counselling rarely works on the set schedules common to face-to-face practice). So, we're now including a special version of the logbook for doing exactly that, based upon the one I've used in my own practice to log over 1 million words of individual online counselling:

• Calendar year 2007, online therapist version

This version replaces the counting of dates with the counting of word totals: just enter the total word count for emails exchanged with each client in a given week, and the spreadsheet automatically tracks your monthly and yearly totals exchanged. For this version, I've also added a sheet to track exchanges with my supervisees, rather than a second sheet for a second counselling location.

Online practitioners curious about the ethical quicksand of reporting online therapy experience in terms of years rather than a quantitative measure like word counts might be interested in our article called 'How Much Online Therapy Really Goes On?'. (Not too surprisingly, describing their online experience in years is very popular amongst those 'old timers' in the field who have spent many years doing not very much actual online therapy.)

Using the Clinical Hours Logbook

Only the white column identifying individual clients, together with the yellow columns showing attendance, need to be completed. Everything else happens automatically.

In the sample data file, client numbers are shown using the YYYYMMDD-X method, where a client is identified using the year, month and date of their first visit, together with an additional digit used to distinguish between multiple clients each first seen on the same date. However, this could just as easily be any other numerical or alphabetic identifier -- the spreadsheet does not care.

The small arrows which appear to the right of the label at the top of each column provide a pop-up menu which can be used to sort the relevant column or to filter it so that only rows with certain data show up. For instance, clients might be sorted numerically or alphabetically, and monthly total columns could be filtered to show only those clients who have attended at least one session.

For each client, attendance is indicated for each of the 4, 5, or 6 weeks of the month, using any numerical or date format recognized by Excel to indicate the client has attended. It is important that attendance is indicated with a full date or a number, because only cells containing numerical values or full dates are included in the automatic attendance tallies. So either a number like '13' or a date like '13/01/2007' or '13-Jan' will be counted. Alphabetic entries, such as 'CX' to indicate 'Cancellation', 'DNA' to indicate 'Did Not Attend', etc. are deliberately ignored. The purple column shown here automatically counts the total number of sessions for each client in January by counting every entry in that client's row which is a date or a number and not something else. The total of all clients for a given month is also shown at the bottom of the monthly totals column. Again, the purple columns do not require any editing: the correct numbers will appear there automatically as attendance dates are entered for each client.

At the far right of the logbook, the total client attendance numbers from each month are summed to show the total number of sessions for each client throughout the whole year. Again, these numbers are totalled at the bottom of this column, indicating the total number of sessions with all clients through the entire year. As with the other totals columns, nothing needs to be done to the entries, and the correct numbers will appear automatically as client attendance dates are recorded.

Beyond the column showing year totals, the logbook includes a further set of four columns which are entirely optional but which might be useful for some practitioners. These columns can be used to distinguish the lengths of time spent with clients who have a 'positive' finish (mutually agreed with the counsellor) from the lengths of time spent with clients who have a 'negative' finish (e.g., just stopping their counselling abruptly).

To use these columns, simply indicate the date when a given client either finishes 'positively' or 'negatively' in the columns headed 'Finish +' or 'Finish -'. If a finish date is indicated, one of the other two columns, '+ Weeks' or '- Weeks', will automatically show the total number of visits recorded for that client. Until an entry is made showing a finish date for a given client, the corresponding cells in the weeks columns remain at zero. In the example shown above, two clients finished 'positively' after 5 weeks and one after just one session, while one client finished 'negatively' after a single session and one after 6. These columns also total automatically at the bottom, so the average time spent with clients concluding their counselling with a given type of finish can be found by dividing the total number at the bottom of a 'Finish' column by the number found at the bottom of the corresponding 'Weeks' column. These optional columns can be completely ignored without having any effect on the operation of the rest of the logbook.

Finally, when any part of the spreadsheet has become full vertically and a new row is required to add a new client or record additional supervision hours, just start typing the new information in the cell above the CounsellingResource.com logo, where the row is labelled with an asterisk rather than a number, and a new row will automatically be created. All the new cells created in this new row will automatically acquire the right links and references to allow the mathematical operations to continue as before.

Last but not least, the logbook presently includes two identical sheets, one for each of two different counselling locations. If only one location is required, this extra sheet can simply be deleted, while if additional locations are required, the existing sheets can just be duplicated and kept within the same overall logbook.