From Spreadsheet Chasing to Real Mentorship

The Challenge: Problems That Fell Through the Cracks

Running supervision across multiple states meant running multiple sets of spreadsheets, one per location, with no single view of what was actually happening across the organization. That gap showed up in the worst way: problems went unnoticed until someone caught them by accident.

“These were frequently things that fell through the cracks, and were not caught until the trainee came forward, or the time was available to do a deep dive audit.”
— Hayley Palomares

A trainee with no hours logged. A supervisor falling behind on signing forms. None of it was visible until a trainee raised it themselves, or someone had a free afternoon to dig through records. For an organization managing supervisory relationships across state lines, that meant real compliance risk sitting quietly until someone happened to notice it.

What Changed With MentraTrack

One System Instead of Separate Spreadsheets Per Site

With everything in one place, Hayley can see performance and progress across every state her team operates in, without switching between tabs or reconciling separate files. That visibility changed more than her own workload. It let her expand her team more confidently, because she can oversee leaders across states and confirm policies are actually being followed, not just assume they are.

It also means concerns don't stay abstract. When the organization dashboard surfaces an at-risk supervisee by name, Hayley's team can reach out directly, whether that's getting forms signed, getting hours uploaded, or scheduling additional supervision, instead of waiting for someone to self-report or for the next audit to catch it.

“When seeing those by name, it can be much more streamlined to address concerns, rather than self-auditing”
— Hayley Palomares

Ratios That Actually Reflect Workload

Supervisor-to-trainee ratios aren't set once and left alone. Hayley's team weighs supervisor caseload, each trainee's current needs, and the time a supervisor actually has for meetings, assignment creation, and feedback, averaged weekly, to decide who's assigned where.

“MentraTrack has given us the visibility to better analyze these hours and the needs of the different supervisory relationships. It has allowed us to ensure that hours are reviewed and approved by supervisors in a timely manner, as well as support those supervisors who may need it.”
— Hayley Palomares

The system also flags supervisors who look overloaded and suggests redistributing trainees. In practice, the flag isn't always a perfect read, some flagged supervisors are connected to trainees without actively supervising them, so the raw number doesn't always match real workload. Even so, it's been a useful signal for who needs a follow-up conversation about approving hours more consistently.

Switching From Another Tracking System

Several of Hayley's trainees came to Magical Moments ABA having already tracked fieldwork hours somewhere else. The difference showed up fast.

“Trainees are overall very happy with the experience, especially those who have transitioned from spreadsheets or other tracking systems. The clarity they have into their hours has been life-changing for some, realizing they were meeting concentrated criteria, realizing they were closer to the end than they realized.”
— Hayley Palomares

The Entry-by-Entry Approval Flow

Fieldwork hours don't get approved in a lump sum at the end of the month. Every entry a trainee logs goes to their supervisor individually, before it counts toward their hours at all.

“MentraTrack has allowed us to catch errors in fieldwork tracking immediately upon submission. This allows us to give immediate feedback and address concerns before they compound into larger issues. The feature makes it easy for BCBAs to deliver feedback to the supervisee, and ensures that any mistakes are identified and corrected before they are signed off on. This keeps ratios correct and ensures documentation accurately reflects the fieldwork hours that were completed”
— Hayley Palomares

Reviewing one entry at a time instead of a whole month at once changes what supervisors catch, and when. The most common issue is hours logged as unrestricted when they should have been restricted, or the reverse, which affects whether they count toward BACB® requirements at all. When a supervisor catches it, the rejection feature sends that feedback back immediately instead of it surfacing during a month-end reconciliation.

“The rejection feature allows us to send the feedback immediately which is so helpful. Catching these small mistakes really helps us make sure that hours are tracked correctly, and that ratios are correct.”
— Hayley Palomares

Trainees have called out one detail in particular: being able to go back and add supporting files to an entry after it's submitted, without starting over.

From Auditing to Real Mentorship

The clearest shift Hayley described wasn't a feature. It was where her time actually goes now.

“Before Mentratrack, I spent so much of my time with supervisees reviewing hours and trackers, when now I can focus on providing feedback and focusing on meaningful skill building and clinical conversations.”
— Hayley Palomares

Her supervisors report the same shift.

“They are able to mentor more effectively, and spend so much more time during supervision meetings for skill review, rather than hour auditing”
— Hayley Palomares

That's the tradeoff every BCBA supervisor wants and rarely gets. MentraTrack didn't just save time. It gave that time back to the part of the job that actually develops trainees. Across a supervision team, that's not a small efficiency gain. Saved consistently, 5–7 hours a week adds up to roughly six to nine work weeks a year, handed back to actual supervision instead of spreadsheet reconciliation.

Documentation That Used To Be a Monthly Scramble

Automated BACB® monthly and final verification form generation turned a recurring paperwork burden into something close to automatic.

“I love this feature and it has made it SO much easier to get documentation completed.”
— Hayley Palomares

Layered with the Audit Readiness Report, which tracks signed versus missing forms down to a sign rate, Hayley's team now sends targeted reminders to the specific trainees or supervisors waiting on a signature, instead of guessing where the gaps are.

“Documentation is such a hard thing to audit, and the compliance reports have been life changing for catching gaps early.”
— Hayley Palomares

Seeing Skill Gaps Across the Organization

Individual trainee plans are one thing. Seeing patterns across an entire multi-state team is another. MentraTrack surfaces competency domains, quiz scores, and goal mastery at the organization level, not just per trainee, which changes what Hayley's team trains toward.

“Being able to look at competencies across the company, as well as quiz scores and goal mastery, has allowed us to plan content creation and training focus for organization wide initiatives such as study groups, group supervision opportunities, or article review clubs.”
— Hayley Palomares

What Hayley Would Tell Another ABA Organization

“MentraTrack is an all-in-one fieldwork supervision platform that takes the effort and stress out of compliant supervised fieldwork tracking, so supervisors can focus on what really matters: building the skills of their trainees. It takes the administrative burden out of fieldwork supervision and allows you to focus on the most important part of the process: providing meaningful, intentional supervision that helps develop confident and competent future BCBAs.”
— Hayley Palomares, Director of Staff Development, Magical Moments ABA