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The supervision contract is usually the least examined document in a trainee’s fieldwork. It arrives as onboarding paperwork, it gets signed on the first day alongside everything else, and it is not opened again until something goes wrong.
It is also the document the BACB asks for first in an audit, the one the contested-fieldwork process is built on, and the only place where the conditions for refusing to sign your monthly forms are written down in advance. It is worth reading before you sign it rather than afterwards.
It comes before anything else
The rule is short: before supervision may begin, the trainee and supervisor must develop and sign a written contract, at the outset of the supervisory relationship. Not in the first month, not once hours start adding up. Before.
Two checks belong in the same week, because both are about whether your supervisor can supervise you at all.
The 8-hour training, and its date. Every supervisor must complete an 8-hour supervision training and upload the certificate to their BACB account before signing a supervision contract. The Handbook tells trainees to confirm the date it was completed before signing, and says you can verify it yourself by looking your supervisor up in the BACB Certificant Registry.
Their certification status. A supervisor must be an active BCBA with no current disciplinary sanctions who has been certified for at least one year, or one certified for less than a year who is receiving monthly consultation from a qualified consulting supervisor. There is also a relationship rule: your supervisor may not be related to you, subordinate to you, employed by you, or in a multiple relationship with you during the fieldwork period. Sharing an employer is fine. Paying them for supervision does not count as employing them.
These are the cheapest checks in your whole fieldwork. They take ten minutes in the registry, and they are the difference between hours that count and hours that do not. A supervisor who signed your contract before completing the training is a problem you want to find in week one, not in an audit.
What the BACB says the contract should contain
Six things, taken straight from the Handbook:
Including the supervisor’s completion of the 8-hour supervision training, and adherence by everyone to the fieldwork requirements.
Not a generic list. A description of the appropriate activities and objectives for this trainee.
The clause worth reading twice. More on it below.
Including proper termination of the relationship, so that ending it is a process rather than an argument.
A statement requiring you to obtain it. This is the clause that matters when your supervisor is outside the organization you work for.
The retention statement says the trainee and supervisor will keep the contract and supervision documentation for at least seven years from the final supervision meeting, and provide all documentation to the BACB if requested.
If several supervisors at one organization are involved, a single contract may cover them, but it has to set out each supervisor’s roles, responsibilities and expectations, including how the documentation and forms will be completed. Everyone signs it.
The clause nobody negotiates
Read the third item again:
“the objective and measurable circumstances under which the supervisor(s) will not sign the trainee’s M-FVF and F-FVF”
BCBA Handbook, BACBThe BACB requires your contract to state, in advance and in measurable terms, when your supervisor will refuse to sign. Most contracts handle this in a sentence so vague it decides nothing, which suits nobody. A trainee cannot tell whether they are at risk, and a supervisor who does refuse has nothing written to point at.
“Objective and measurable” is doing real work in that sentence. A condition you could argue about is not measurable. Something like “forms are signed when the month’s documentation is complete and submitted within five days of month end” is checkable by either party. “Signed when the supervisor is satisfied with progress” is not, and it hands one side an unreviewable veto.
This is also where the contract meets the contested-fieldwork process. If a supervisor later refuses to sign your final form even though the contract terms were met, the BACB’s Contested Fieldwork Form is the route, and it asks for the signed supervision contract along with your signed monthly forms. A contract with measurable conditions is what lets you show the terms were met. A vague one leaves you arguing about interpretation. Note that the contested route covers the final form only, never monthly forms, which is covered in keeping your own fieldwork records.
What to ask for before you sign
None of this requires a confrontation. Asked at the start, in the week when everyone is still setting expectations, these are ordinary questions.
- Ask when the 8-hour training was completed, and check the registry yourself.
- Ask for the signing conditions to be written in terms you could both check against a calendar or a record, rather than a judgement of your progress.
- Ask what happens if you meet them and a signature still does not arrive, and have that written down too.
- If your supervisor is outside your workplace, sort the written employer permission before day one rather than after.
- If there are several supervisors, ask which one signs, and get that in the contract.
- Leave with your own signed copy, that day.
The BACB publishes a sample supervision contract you can compare yours against. It is a starting point rather than a compliant document on its own: the Handbook is clear that the contract has to meet the requirements, whatever template it started from.
Changes have to be written and signed
Fieldwork rarely finishes the way it started. Supervisors change, caseloads change, schedules change. The Handbook allows for that: the original contract may be amended throughout the supervisory relationship, but each amendment must be signed and dated by all relevant parties.
So a change agreed in a supervision meeting is not an amendment until it is written down and signed. If your supervision structure changes and the contract does not, the document an audit reads will describe an arrangement you were not actually working under.
Keep it for seven years
The retention clause is in the contract because the obligation is yours as well as your supervisor’s. Both of you keep a copy for at least seven years from the final supervision meeting, and provide documentation to the BACB on request. That clock outlasts most jobs, which is the argument for keeping your copy somewhere that is not your employer’s system.
A supervisor may also be held to their side of it. The Handbook notes that a Notice of Alleged Violation may be submitted against a supervisor who does not provide supervision in accordance with the requirements.
How FieldworkABA helps
FieldworkABA is a BCBA fieldwork tracker, and it holds the records the contract commits you to keeping: every month’s hours, the signed verification forms, and daily logs, all downloadable as one record package from the Records Archive. The contract itself is a document you sign once and store, so keep it with that package rather than only in a work account, and check that your supervision structure in the app matches what the contract actually says.
Keep the records your contract commits you to
Log your hours once and FieldworkABA keeps the months, the signed forms and the logs together, ready to download whenever you need them.
Start Free Keeping your own recordsCommon questions
Can I start accruing fieldwork before the contract is signed?
How do I check my supervisor is qualified before I sign?
Can my employer be my supervisor?
Can the contract be changed later?
Sources
- BCBA Handbook, BACB, updated 06/2026. Supervisor Qualifications and Supervision Contract.
- Sample Supervision Contract, BACB.
- BACB Certificant Registry, BACB.
