How to Track LPCC Supervised Hours in California: A Step-by-Step BBS Guide

How LPCC Hours Differ from LMFT and LCSW

The LPCC licensure path shares its 3,000-hour total with LMFT, but the internal structure diverges in important ways. Understanding these differences is essential if you are comparing license tracks or considering dual licensure.

No pre-degree hours. Like LCSW but unlike LMFT, LPCC does not allow any pre-degree hours. Every one of your 3,000 hours must be earned after your master's degree has been conferred and you have registered as an APCC. LMFT, by contrast, allows up to 1,300 pre-degree trainee hours. This means APCCs typically start their post-graduation clock with zero hours, while AMFTs may already have hundreds logged from practicum and fieldwork during their program.

No specialty subset. LMFT requires 500 hours of couples-family-child (CFC) counseling within the 1,750 direct clinical hours. LCSW requires 750 hours of psychotherapy within 3,200 total. LPCC has no specialty sub-minimum at all. Your 1,750 direct clinical hours can be any combination of individual, group, couples, or family counseling without a mandated distribution. This makes LPCC tracking simpler in one sense, though the couples-and-family restriction (discussed below) adds a separate layer of complexity.

Same 1,750 direct clinical minimum as LMFT. Despite the structural differences, both LPCC and LMFT require at least 1,750 direct clinical hours. The LCSW path requires more: 2,000 direct clinical hours out of 3,200 total. The non-clinical cap for LPCC is 1,250 (matching LMFT), while LCSW caps non-clinical at 1,000.

Couples and family therapy is restricted post-licensure. This is the biggest structural surprise for many candidates. A standard LPCC license does not authorize you to assess or treat couples or families. You need a separate BBS authorization, which requires additional coursework and supervised experience. LMFT and LCSW both include couples and family therapy as part of the core license scope.

For a deeper comparison between LMFT and LCSW specifically, see our LMFT vs. LCSW California guide.

What You Need to Track Every Week

Consistent weekly tracking is the foundation of a clean BBS submission. Every week you work, you need to record the following data points for each work setting:

• Direct clinical hours: Assessment, diagnosis, treatment planning, and psychotherapy with individuals, groups, couples, or families. These count toward your 1,750 minimum.
• Non-clinical hours: Workshops, trainings, consultation, case conferences, community outreach, research, and administrative tasks that advance your professional competence. Capped at 1,250 total.
• Supervision units received: Individual or triadic supervision (counted as 1 unit per hour) and group supervision (counted as 0.5 units per hour). You need at least 1 unit per week per work setting, with an additional unit triggered if you log more than 10 direct clinical hours in a week at any setting.
• Work setting: The site where hours were earned. Community mental health centers, private practices, schools, hospitals, and other approved settings each need their own tracking column.
• Supervisor: The licensed professional supervising your work at that setting. Different supervisors at the same site require separate forms.

You need one Form 37A-638 per supervisor per site. If you work at two community agencies under different supervisors, you maintain two separate weekly logs. If you switch supervisors at the same site mid-year, you close one form and open another.

For the full supervision ratio rules, including weekly caps and the two-tier system, see our BBS Supervision Requirements guide.

The 1,750-Hour Direct Clinical Requirement

At least 1,750 of your 3,000 hours must be direct clinical counseling. The BBS defines direct clinical hours as face-to-face counseling and psychotherapy services, including:

• Individual counseling and psychotherapy
• Group counseling and psychotherapy
• Couples counseling (if authorized or under supervision for authorization)
• Family therapy (same authorization caveat as couples)
• Crisis intervention and assessment
• Clinical intake interviews and diagnostic evaluations
• Treatment planning sessions conducted with the client present

No mandatory subset. Unlike LMFT, which requires 500 of the 1,750 direct hours to be specifically in couples, family, and child therapy, LPCC has no specialty carve-out within the direct clinical bucket. Your 1,750 can be entirely individual counseling, entirely group work, or any mix. This makes tracking simpler because you do not need to monitor progress toward a subset goal. You are tracking one number: total direct clinical hours toward 1,750.

That said, if you plan to pursue the couples-and-family authorization (discussed in the next section), you will want to track those hours separately even though the BBS does not require it for the base LPCC license. Planning ahead saves you from retroactively sorting through years of logs.

For a detailed breakdown of LMFT's 3,000-hour structure including the 500-hour CFC requirement, see our LMFT Hours Requirements guide.

The Couples and Family Therapy Restriction

This is the single most important structural difference between LPCC and the other two California therapy licenses. A standard LPCC license does not authorize you to assess or treat couples or families. If a client presents as a couple or a family unit, you cannot take the case under your base LPCC license.

To gain couples-and-family authorization, you must complete three additional requirements:

1. Additional graduate coursework in marriage, family, and child counseling topics. Many LPCC programs now include these courses, but not all. Check your program's curriculum against the BBS requirements before assuming coverage.
2. Supervised clinical experience specifically in couples and family counseling. This experience must be documented and verified by your supervisor.
3. A separate BBS application for the couples-and-family therapy authorization. This is not automatic with your LPCC license; it is an add-on that requires its own review and approval.

Career planning implication: If couples or family therapy is central to your intended practice, factor the authorization timeline into your planning. Some APCCs choose to pursue both LPCC and LMFT simultaneously to ensure they have couples-and-family scope from day one of licensure (since LMFT includes it in the core license). Others complete the LPCC authorization concurrently with their hour accumulation. Either way, this is not something to discover after you have 3,000 hours logged.

The LMFT and LCSW licenses both include couples and family therapy within their core scope of practice. For a comparison of all three license paths, see our LMFT vs. LCSW California guide.

Form 37A-638 for APCCs

APCCs use BBS Form 37A-638 (APCC Weekly Summary of Experience Hours) to document supervised experience. This is the APCC-specific weekly log form, distinct from the 37A-525 used by AMFTs and the 37A-638 version used by ASWs. While the form number is shared with ASWs, the APCC version has a different column structure tailored to LPCC hour categories.

The APCC version of Form 37A-638 breaks hours into two main columns:

• Direct clinical counseling: Assessment, diagnosis, treatment planning, and psychotherapy. No psychotherapy sub-column (unlike the ASW version, which separates psychotherapy from other clinical services).
• Non-clinical: Workshops, trainings, consultation, community work, and other professional development activities.

Each weekly row also records supervision received (individual/triadic and group) and the work setting. Your supervisor reviews each entry and signs the form. You need a separate 37A-638 for each supervisor at each site where you work.

When submitting your experience verification to the BBS, each completed 37A-638 is accompanied by an Experience Verification form signed by your supervisor confirming the total hours across the employment period. Keep your weekly logs organized by supervisor and site to make this final compilation straightforward.

HourJourney auto-fills the 37A-638 based on your logged hours, matching each entry to the correct supervisor-site combination and formatting the output to match BBS field requirements.

The 90-Day Rule for APCCs

The 90-day registration rule applies to APCCs the same way it applies to AMFTs and ASWs. If you submit your APCC registration application to the BBS within 90 calendar days of your degree conferral date, any supervised hours you earn between graduation and the date your registration number is issued can count toward your 3,000.

This is particularly important for APCCs because there are no pre-degree hours to fall back on. If you miss the 90-day window, you lose every hour earned between graduation and registration issuance. Those weeks are gone permanently. For an AMFT who already has 1,000 pre-degree hours, a few lost weeks is a minor setback. For an APCC starting from zero, it can mean months of unrecoverable time.

The same Live Scan fingerprinting requirement applies: you must complete a Live Scan before the BBS will process your application. Schedule your Live Scan appointment before graduation so it does not eat into your 90-day window.

For a detailed walkthrough of the 90-day rule, including common mistakes and how to protect your hours, see our 90-Day Rule for AMFTs guide (the same rule applies to APCCs and ASWs).

Dual Licensure: LMFT and LPCC

A growing number of California graduates register as both AMFT and APCC simultaneously to pursue dual licensure. If your master's program qualifies for both license tracks (many counseling psychology and MFT programs do), this is a viable strategy with real advantages.

Hours can count toward both licenses simultaneously. As long as both your AMFT and APCC registrations are active during the same week, the hours you earn that week can be applied to both license tracks. You do not need to earn 3,000 hours for LMFT and a separate 3,000 for LPCC. The same clinical work satisfies both, provided it is properly documented on both sets of forms.

Separate forms are required. Even though the hours overlap, you must maintain a 37A-525 (AMFT weekly log) and a 37A-638 (APCC weekly log) for each supervisor at each site. Each form must be independently signed by your supervisor. This doubles your paperwork, but not your clinical time.

Different sub-requirements still apply. You must satisfy the LMFT's 500-hour CFC requirement and the LPCC's structural rules independently. A week that counts toward your LMFT CFC hours also counts as direct clinical for LPCC, but the reverse is not necessarily true: individual counseling counts as direct clinical for both, but does not satisfy the LMFT's CFC subset.

Two exams. LMFT requires the California Clinical Exam. LPCC requires the NCMHCE (a national exam). You will need to prepare for and pass both. Many dual-track candidates take the exams in sequence rather than simultaneously.

The dual-licensure strategy is especially attractive if you want the couples-and-family authorization from LMFT on day one while also holding an LPCC for broader individual counseling scope and potential out-of-state portability (LPCC has better interstate reciprocity than LMFT in many states).

How HourJourney Tracks APCC Hours

HourJourney is purpose-built for California pre-licensed therapists, including APCCs tracking toward LPCC. Here is what the app handles for you:

• 40-hour weekly cap enforcement: The app flags any week where your total experience hours exceed 40 across all work settings, preventing you from submitting hours the BBS will reject.
• 1,750 direct clinical tracking: Your dashboard shows real-time progress toward the 1,750 direct clinical minimum, separate from your overall 3,000-hour total. You always know exactly where you stand.
• Supervision ratio validation: HourJourney applies the BBS two-tier supervision ratio automatically. If you log more than 10 direct clinical hours in a week, the app verifies you have the required additional supervision unit and warns you if you do not.
• 37A-638 PDF export: When you are ready to compile your experience verification, HourJourney auto-fills Form 37A-638 based on your logged hours, matched to the correct supervisor and site. No manual transcription from spreadsheets.
• 104-week tracking: The app counts your supervised weeks independently from your hours, including the 52-week individual/triadic supervision requirement, so you can see both metrics on your dashboard.
• Dual AMFT/APCC support: If you are pursuing dual licensure, HourJourney tracks your progress toward both license tracks from the same logged entries, showing you where each license stands relative to its specific requirements.

Start your free trial and import your existing hours, or begin fresh with your first weekly log entry. The app handles LMFT, LPCC, and LCSW tracking for California associates.

BBS Disclaimer: This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. Hour requirements, supervision rules, and BBS policies are subject to change. Always verify current requirements directly with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences before making licensure decisions. HourJourney is not affiliated with or endorsed by the BBS.

Source: BBS APCC FAQ revised February 2025, BBS LPCC Experience Verification Chart, California Business and Professions Code Sections 4999.42–4999.69.