Believe it or Not, Ad-Free Fieldwork Tracking Actually Exists

Ripley opened the door. We built the house.

Ripley Fieldwork Tracker deserves credit. Before Ripley, most fieldwork candidates tracked their hours on spreadsheets, paper logs, or some combination of both that inevitably fell apart three months in. Ripley proved that digital tracking was better. It gave candidates a centralized place to log hours, generate summaries, and keep their fieldwork organized. That mattered.

We respect that history. Ripley has been around the longest, claims over 60,000 users, and pioneered the idea that fieldwork tracking should live online. That is real.

But the door has been open for a while now, and the field has changed. Candidates today need more than basic hour logging. They need real-time compliance validation, full data ownership, modern UX, and a tool that does not show them advertisements while they are trying to document their professional work. That is why we built ABA Fieldwork Tracker.

The ads problem

This is the biggest pain point, and it is the one candidates talk about the most. Ripley's free tier is ad-supported. If you want an ad-free experience, you pay $4.95 per month. We understand why this model exists. Building and maintaining software costs money, and Ripley has been doing it for years.

But think about what your fieldwork tracker actually holds. Months or years of professional data. The foundation of your certification. The record of thousands of hours of clinical work. The idea that you should watch advertisements while logging clinical hours, or pay a monthly subscription just to avoid them, feels fundamentally wrong.

ABA Fieldwork Tracker is free with zero ads. Not a freemium model. Not an ad-supported model with a paid upgrade. Free. We believe a fieldwork tracker should earn your loyalty through quality, not hold you hostage with advertisements. If you are documenting supervised fieldwork hours at 10 PM after a long clinic day, the last thing you need is a banner ad for something you do not care about.

Data ownership: yours vs. theirs

Ripley lets you download forms and documents. That is a start. But can you export your complete raw fieldwork data in a format you can take anywhere? Every hour, every category, every note, every supervision session? Data portability matters because your fieldwork data is the record of thousands of hours of professional work.

If you ever want to switch tools, verify your records independently, or simply have a backup that lives on your own computer, you need full export capability. Not just generated forms. The actual data.

ABA Fieldwork Tracker lets you download everything. PDF reports, monthly summaries, your complete hour log. Your data is always yours. We are not in the business of holding your professional records behind a login wall with no exit.

Real-time compliance vs. basic logging

Ripley tracks hours and generates summaries. ABA Fieldwork Tracker validates every hour against every compliance rule for your specific certification pathway in real time. That is a fundamental difference.

Logging hours is necessary. Knowing whether those hours put you in compliance is essential. Your supervision percentage, unrestricted ratio, monthly cap status, group supervision limits. All checked automatically, every time you log an hour, displayed on a color-coded compliance dashboard. Green means you are on track. Red means something needs attention. No manual calculations. No end-of-month surprises.

The compliance engine covers every rule the BACB enforces: supervision percentage minimums, group supervision caps, monthly hour caps and minimums, observation requirements, supervision contacts (for pre-2027 candidates), and unrestricted hour ratios. All calculated in real time. All specific to your pathway. All visible at a glance.

This is not a nice-to-have feature. It is the difference between discovering a compliance problem in real time (when you can fix it) and discovering it three months later (when fixing it costs you hundreds of additional hours). If you have ever read about the most common fieldwork compliance mistakes, you know they all share the same root cause: invisible problems caught too late.

Modern UX: built for today, not yesterday

Ripley was built years ago and has evolved incrementally. The interface is functional, but it reflects the era it was designed in. Users report that bulk data entry is slow and inefficient, particularly for candidates who need to backlog hours.

ABA Fieldwork Tracker was engineered from scratch with modern UI patterns, a purpose-built hour entry form designed to minimize taps and maximize accuracy, and a responsive design that works beautifully on mobile. We spent days perfecting the hour entry experience because we believe the tool you use every day should feel effortless, not like a chore.

Small details add up. The achievement system that celebrates your milestones with 35+ achievements across Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers. The compliance cards that give you instant visual feedback with color-coded gauges. The dashboard that shows you exactly where you stand at a glance. Light and dark themes that switch instantly. A sidebar that collapses on mobile so you get the full screen for what matters.

A fieldwork tracker is a tool you interact with multiple times a week for one to two years. The experience of using it matters more than most people realize until they have used something better.

All 8 pathways, both standards

ABA Fieldwork Tracker supports every BACB certification pathway out of the box: BCBA and BCaBA, 2022 and 2027 standards, supervised and concentrated fieldwork. That is 8 distinct pathways, each with their own hour requirements, compliance thresholds, and validation rules.

You select your pathway during setup and every compliance rule is configured automatically. BCBA supervised fieldwork under 2022 standards? 2,000 total hours, 5% supervision minimum, 60% unrestricted ratio, 130-hour monthly cap, 4 supervision contacts per month. BCBA concentrated fieldwork under 2027 standards? 1,500 total hours, 7.5% supervision minimum, 60% unrestricted ratio, 160-hour monthly cap, no contact requirement but 90-minute observation minimum. Every detail, handled for you.

Ripley recently added 2027 support, which is great. But pathway-specific compliance validation goes beyond just supporting a standard. It means every threshold, every cap, every percentage minimum is calculated against your specific pathway in real time. Not a generic set of rules. Your rules.

RBT support: because RBTs deserve a real tracking tool too

Ripley is built for BCBA and BCaBA candidates. That covers a significant portion of the market, but it leaves out RBTs entirely. ABA Fieldwork Tracker also supports RBTs with dedicated hour tracking for the 40-hour requirement, supervisor connection, and PDF report generation.

RBTs are the backbone of ABA service delivery. They deserve a real tracking tool, not a spreadsheet. If you are an RBT completing your fieldwork, or a supervisor overseeing RBT candidates alongside your BCBA trainees, ABA Fieldwork Tracker handles both. One platform, every credential level. Read more about RBT fieldwork tracking and what it involves.

Side-by-side comparison

Here is how the two platforms stack up across the features that matter most to fieldwork candidates:

Ripley opened the door. We built the house.

Ripley proved that candidates want digital fieldwork tracking. That was a meaningful contribution to the field. ABA Fieldwork Tracker proves that candidates deserve better.

No ads. No paywalls. No data lock-in. Just the best fieldwork tracking tool we can build, validated against every BACB compliance rule, free for everyone. Whether you are a BCBA candidate logging unrestricted activities, a BCaBA candidate tracking concentrated fieldwork, or an RBT working toward your 40 hours, we built this for you.

If you are currently using Ripley and wondering whether there is something better out there, the answer is yes. Register for free and see the difference a modern, compliance-first fieldwork tracker makes. No credit card. No ads. No catch.

Not sure which tool is right for you? Read our guide on choosing a fieldwork tracker for a broader look at what to consider.