For ABA clinic directors and BCBAs
ABA scheduling software for sessions and staff, without the billing suite
ABA scheduling software, as this page means it, puts each client's weekly sessions on a therapist and keeps them there — the same RBT at the same times, a BCBA's sessions beside them, cancellations and no-shows recorded, the payer's authorized hours against what is actually scheduled — and builds the staff week behind it: who is in the clinic, with certifications that block when they lapse. It is not a practice-management suite. There is no insurance billing, no session data collection and no claims; it is the scheduling half, priced per location, and it sits beside whatever you bill from.
From $99/month per location · No sales call · No card to start
At a glance
- ABA scheduling software, as this page means it, schedules the sessions and the staff: each client's weekly sessions on a therapist, and who is in the clinic on which hours.
- It is not a practice-management suite. No insurance billing, no session data collection, no claims; keep yours for that, and put the schedule beside it.
- A client's weekly pattern (days, time, duration, role, preferred therapist) becomes sessions for up to three months, kept on the same person; cancellations carry a reason and a session nobody clocked into is flagged missed.
- Authorized hours per week live on the client record and the page shows what is scheduled against them. The number is yours to type; it is never fetched from a payer.
- RBT, BCBA and BCaBA certification are in the library with the BACB's cycles; a lapsed one blocks assignment, and every person is screened against the federal exclusion list.
- $99/month for one location and up to 30 staff; sessions are on Pro at $149, and in every trial.
Does it schedule client sessions, or only staff?
Both, and they are two different screens because they are two different questions. A session is a client's; a shift is the building's.
A client record holds the weekly pattern: the days, the start time, the duration, the role (RBT, BCBA), a preferred therapist, the dates it runs between. Generating the schedule turns patterns into sessions for up to three months at a time, and puts the preferred therapist on each one where the rules allow — the right certification, no double-booking, not excluded from this client, no approved time off. Continuity is counted, so the person who has been seeing the child keeps seeing the child. A cancellation carries its reason; a session nobody clocked into is flagged missed fifteen minutes after it should have started; an exclusion keeps a therapist off a client for good, and nobody can override it.
Each pattern says where it happens — the clinic, or the client's home — so a child can have clinic sessions on weekdays and a home session on Saturday. A session at the clinic keeps the clinic's clock and its clock-in fence, and two sessions in the same building are no drive apart; a home session uses the family's address, and the therapist clocks in from the doorstep with the phone's own location. Hours clocked on sessions flow to the same payroll export as everything else.
The staff week is the other screen: who is in the building on which hours, with Plan a week building a clinic week in one step or from one sentence, and a suggested person on every shift for you to approve.
How do authorized hours and supervision show up?
As numbers on the client record, measured against the board, never as a claim.
Type the payer's authorization — twenty hours a week — on the client record, and the record shows what is scheduled this week against it: 18 of 20 hours, with the shortfall or the overrun named. The number is yours; MedAligna never fetches an authorization from a payer and never bills against one. What it does is make the gap visible on the day it can still be closed, which is the week before, not the remittance after.
Beside it, the month's BCBA hours on that client next to the RBT hours, as a share. It is labelled for what it is — a share on one client, not a supervision record, because the BACB counts supervision per technician across every client they see — and it is there so the five-per-cent conversation happens before the month ends.
What stops a lapsed RBT certification or an excluded person reaching a session?
A date on a record, and a screen that refuses in words.
RBT, BCBA and BCaBA certification, the state behavior-analyst licence and Safety-Care are in the library with the BACB's own cycles, so the renewal date is on the person's record on day one. Make the RBT role require the RBT certification and a lapsed one blocks the person from every RBT shift and session until the renewal is recorded — the schedule says which credential and when, rather than silently skipping them. The dashboard counts the ones expiring and warns ahead.
Every person on the roster is screened against the federal exclusion list, which matters more in ABA than almost anywhere, because Medicaid is the payer. An excluded person cannot be scheduled, and the screening result stays with the record for the audit that asks.
Which weeks does an ABA clinic actually struggle with?
Twenty-seven people, a spreadsheet, and Monday
The clinic director keeps who-is-in-when in a spreadsheet beside the session calendar. A technician calls in sick and two people spend the morning working out who else is certified and not already at forty hours.
Paste the roster once. The week shows who is in and who is not; an open shift goes to the people who can take it, and the one who claims it is checked for certification and hours before the claim lands.
After-school hours
Most sessions run 3 to 7 because clients are at school. The morning team and the afternoon team overlap by an hour and nobody has written down which technicians are on which block.
Two shifts on the same days: Clinic 08:00–15:00 and Afternoon 14:00–19:00. Each has its own headcount per role, and the schedule says who is on which, every day.
An RBT certification lapses mid-month
The BACB renewal date sits in a folder. The technician keeps running sessions for three weeks past it, and the audit finds it before anybody in the clinic does.
The expiry date is on the person's record. The schedule warns before it, and after it the person cannot be put on a shift until the renewal is recorded — the grid says why, in words.
Supervision hours and overtime
A BCBA supervising twelve technicians is on the floor every afternoon and in sessions every morning, and nobody notices the week has reached fifty-one hours until payroll.
Hours are counted as the week is built, against the practice's cap and the person's own contract. The warning fires while the shift is still a decision, not on the timesheet.
How to choose ABA scheduling software
Eight questions worth asking any vendor in this category, including us. The first one is the one most pages in this category never answer, because they are selling the suite.
01Is this session scheduling, staff scheduling, or practice management?
Almost everything called 'ABA scheduling software' is a practice-management suite: it schedules sessions because it bills them, and you buy the billing, the data collection and the authorizations with it. Scheduling alone is a different purchase, and most pages in the category never say which one they are.
Where MedAligna lands: Scheduling, both halves. Sessions: a client, a weekly pattern, the therapist on it, cancellations and no-shows, authorized hours against what is scheduled. Staff: who is in the clinic on which hours, with certifications that block. Not billing, not data collection, not claims — keep your suite for that, or do not buy one yet.
02Can it express a clinic week without a hospital's shift patterns?
Many staff schedulers were built for 24/7 units and offer twelve-hour days and nights. An ABA clinic opens at eight, closes at six, and runs an after-school block. If the tool cannot say that in one step, the director is back in the spreadsheet.
Where MedAligna lands: Plan a week asks for your own hours: name the shift, set the open and close times, tick the days. Describe it in a sentence if you prefer — 'open 8 to 6 weekdays, two BCBAs and eight RBTs, Saturdays 9 to 1' — and the form fills in for you to check before anything is created.
03What happens when a certification lapses?
RBT certification renews every year and BCBA certification on its own cycle, and a technician working past the date is a finding on a Medicaid audit. A reminder email is not a control; a block is.
Where MedAligna lands: A credential recorded with an expiry date blocks assignment after that date, and the schedule says so when somebody tries. Expiring credentials are counted on the dashboard and warned about ahead of time.
04Does it screen against the federal exclusion list?
Medicaid is the payer for most ABA. Employing an excluded individual is a civil monetary penalty per claim they touch, and the OIG list changes monthly.
Where MedAligna lands: Yes, for every person on the roster. An excluded person cannot be scheduled, and the screening result is kept with the record.
05Can part-time technicians and their hours be honoured?
Technician turnover is the sector's defining problem, and part-time contracts are how clinics hold onto people with other commitments. A tool that only understands full-time quietly books them past what they agreed.
Where MedAligna lands: Hours are checked against the individual's own weekly contract and the practice's cap, whichever is tighter. Staff state their availability themselves, and the schedule respects it.
06What do staff see, and do they need to install anything?
Technicians are young, mobile and gone in eighteen months on average. If the schedule needs a login ritual or a desktop, it lives in the group chat instead.
Where MedAligna lands: Their own week on their phone, as a web app that installs from the browser, with a calendar feed for Google or Apple. They swap, claim open shifts and request time off from it; you approve from yours.
07Who sets it up, and how long does it take?
An ABA clinic has a director, not an IT department. If setup needs a kick-off call, it will not happen this month.
Where MedAligna lands: You do, in an afternoon. Paste the roster, name the roles, set your hours, publish. The trial is the full product, so the week you build while evaluating is the week you keep.
08What does it cost for a single clinic?
ABA margins are set by payers. A per-user price that grows with every technician hired is a tax on the thing you are trying to do.
Where MedAligna lands: $99 per month for one location and up to 30 staff, $149 for up to 75. Priced per location, not per person. No card for the trial.
What is a session, an RBT, or an authorization here?
- Staff scheduling vs session scheduling
- Staff scheduling decides who is in the clinic on Tuesday. Session scheduling decides which client sees which therapist at 3pm against an authorization. Both get called ABA scheduling software; they are different products and most practices need both.
- RBT
- Registered Behavior Technician: the paraprofessional who delivers most ABA sessions, certified by the BACB, renewed annually, and required to work under a BCBA's supervision.
- BCBA
- Board Certified Behavior Analyst: the clinician who assesses, writes the treatment plan and supervises the technicians. On a staff schedule, a role with its own headcount per shift.
- Session
- One client, one therapist, one block of time — 15:00 to 16:30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday with this RBT. In MedAligna a session is a visit: it belongs to the client, it is generated from the client's weekly pattern, it carries a status (scheduled, in progress, completed, missed, cancelled) and the same therapist is kept on it where the rules allow.
- Authorized hours
- The number of hours per week the payer has approved for a client. Typed on the client record and shown against what is actually scheduled that week. MedAligna never fetches it from a payer and never bills against it.
- Shift (in a clinic)
- One block of hours on one day for one role — Clinic 08:00–18:00 for an RBT. A clinic week is one shift per open day per role, plus any second block it runs, such as an after-school or Saturday shift.
- Exclusion screening
- Checking every person on the roster against the OIG List of Excluded Individuals and Entities. An excluded person cannot be paid for by a federal health programme, and a Medicaid-funded practice employing one is penalised per claim.
Questions people actually ask
- Does it schedule client sessions?
- Yes. A client record carries a weekly pattern — days, time, duration, role, preferred therapist — and the schedule generates sessions from it for up to three months, keeping the same therapist by continuity. Cancellations carry a reason, a missed session is flagged, and an exclusion keeps a therapist off a client for good. What it does not do is bill them, collect session data or hold the authorization from the payer: that is your practice-management suite, and this sits beside it.
- Is this a replacement for a practice-management suite?
- No. A suite bills, collects data and tracks authorizations with payers, and schedules sessions because it has to. MedAligna is the scheduling half — sessions and the staff week — bought on its own, with published pricing and a trial that needs no card. A practice that already bills from a suite keeps it; one that does not have one yet gets a working schedule this afternoon without buying the rest.
- How does an ABA clinic set up its week?
- Name your roles (RBT, BCBA, front desk — job titles, not session types), paste your roster, and on Plan a week choose your own hours: open and close times, the days you are open, how many of each role are on at once. Or describe the week in a sentence and the form fills in for you to check. Then add each client's weekly session pattern under Clients and generate the sessions. Nothing is created until you have seen the exact count.
- What happens when an RBT's certification lapses?
- If the certification is recorded with its expiry date, the person cannot be put on a shift or a session after that date until the renewal is recorded, and the schedule says why. RBT, BCBA and BCaBA certification are in the library with the BACB's renewal cycles. Expiring credentials are counted on the dashboard and warned about ahead of time.
- Does it track authorized hours?
- It shows them. You type the payer's weekly authorization on the client record and the page shows what is scheduled this week against it. It never fetches the authorization from a payer and never bills against it; the point is to see the gap while there is still a week to fill it.
- Can technicians swap shifts and request time off themselves?
- Yes, from their own phone: they see their week and their sessions, propose a swap with a colleague, claim an open shift and request time off. You approve from yours, and every swap and claim is checked against certification, hours and rest before it lands.
- What does it cost for one ABA clinic?
- $99 per month for one location with up to 30 staff. Client sessions are on Pro, $149 for up to 75 staff. Per location, not per technician, so hiring does not raise the bill. Fourteen-day trial with every feature, including sessions, and no card.
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Have next week's sessions and the clinic schedule out this afternoon
Paste your roster, add your clients' weekly patterns, generate, publish. No demo, no contract, nobody calling you.