How to write an AHPRA-compliant logbook entry (with examples)

Your logbook is the single piece of evidence that proves your 5+1 internship actually happened the way you say it did. Ahpra can request it at any point, your supervisor signs off on it regularly, and a period of practice can be discounted if the entries behind it are vague, mislabelled, or reconstructed from memory months later. Getting each entry right is therefore worth a bit of care.

The good news is that a compliant entry follows a predictable shape. Once you know the fields every entry needs and have seen a worked example for each section, writing them becomes a two-minute habit rather than a dreaded end-of-week catch-up. This guide walks through how to write an Ahpra logbook entry for the provisional psychologist (LBPP-76) logbook, with concrete examples for Sections A, B and C, a reusable template you can copy, and the mistakes that most often fail an audit.

A note on accuracy: requirements change. The December 2025 guideline update revised the competencies and logbook forms, so always confirm the exact fields and thresholds against the current Ahpra guidelines and your own logbook version before relying on anything here.

What makes a logbook entry “Ahpra-compliant”

An entry isn’t compliant because it exists — it’s compliant because it captures enough detail for an auditor, or your supervisor, to understand what you did and confirm it counts toward the right requirement. Whatever the section, a solid entry records the same core fields:

• Date — the actual date the activity took place (not the date you wrote it up).
• Hours — the time spent, logged honestly and to a sensible precision.
• Section and activity type — Section A (practice), B (education & training), or C (supervision), and the specific activity within it.
• Contact type (Section A only) — whether the time was direct client contact or a client-related activity. This distinction is the one auditors scrutinise most, because only direct client contact counts toward your 500-hour minimum.
• A brief, specific description — enough that someone who wasn’t there understands what you did, without any identifying client details.
• Reflection linked to the competencies — what you learned or would do differently, tied to the eight threshold competencies.
• Sign-off — signed by you, and sighted and signed by your principal supervisor regularly (usually weekly or fortnightly).

The LBPP-76 logbook is split into three sections that map onto the three internship components: Section A — psychological practice (1,500 hours total, including a minimum of 500 hours of direct client contact), Section B — education and training (60 hours), and Section C — supervision (80 hours, at least 50 of them individual with your principal supervisor). Every entry lands in one of these three.

Keep client details out of your logbook

Before the worked examples, one rule that underpins all of them: your logbook is a professional record, not a clinical file — and it can be read by your supervisor and, if Ahpra requests it, by the Board. So it should contain no identifying client information. Never record a client’s name, date of birth, address, or anything else that could identify them.

Use a consistent de-identified code or initials instead — for example, “Client A12” — so you can still track the same client across multiple entries and show ongoing work without naming them. Describe the presentation and what you did (“adult, generalised anxiety”), not the person.

This isn’t optional: keeping identifying details out of the logbook is part of your privacy obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 and the APS Code of Ethics. A good habit is to write every entry as though a stranger will read it — because one day, one might.

Section A — psychological practice

Section A is where most of your hours live, and where the direct-versus-client-related distinction matters. Log the two as separate entries even when they relate to the same client, because they count toward different totals.

Worked example — direct client contact

Notice what the description does not contain: no name, no date of birth, no identifying circumstance. “Adult anxiety presentation” is enough. The reflection is short but names a competency and states a change for next time.

Worked example — client-related activity

Report writing, scoring assessments, case consultation, and record keeping are all genuine internship hours — but they are client-related, not direct contact. Logging them as direct is one of the fastest ways to overstate your 500-hour total and trigger questions in an audit.

Section B — education and training

Section B records your professional development: workshops, seminars, conferences, short courses, and approved reading. Attach the evidence (a certificate or attendance record) and write a reflection rather than just a title.

Worked example — a PD workshop

A Section B entry that reads only “trauma workshop — 6 hours” is technically a record but a weak one. The reflection is what shows Ahpra the training changed your practice, and it’s what your supervisor draws on during progress reviews.

Section C — supervision

Section C records each supervision session: who supervised you, the format, what was discussed, and the feedback or actions arising. Keep an eye on the running totals here — you need at least 50 of your 80 supervision hours to be individual sessions with your principal supervisor.

Worked example — individual supervision

Because Ahpra expects roughly one hour of supervision for every 18 hours of practice (the 1:18 ratio), it helps to glance at your practice-to-supervision balance each time you log a Section C entry, rather than discovering a shortfall at the end. For the full picture of how the three sections fit together, see the 5+1 internship pathway explained.

Writing good reflections

Reflection is the field interns rush, and it’s the one that most distinguishes a logbook that reads like genuine developing practice from one that reads like a timesheet. A useful reflection does three small things: names what happened, ties it to one of the eight threshold competencies, and states what you’ll do differently.

A weak reflection: “Good session, went well.”

A strong reflection: “Client disengaged when I moved to exposure too quickly; I returned to rapport-building and the session recovered. This links to the communication and interpersonal relationships competency — next time I’ll check readiness explicitly before escalating the task.”

You don’t need a paragraph on every entry. One or two specific sentences that connect the activity to a competency and to your next step is enough, and it makes your six-monthly progress reviews far easier to write because the material is already there.

Common mistakes that fail an audit (or annoy your supervisor)

Most logbook problems aren’t dishonesty — they’re habits that quietly erode the record’s credibility:

• Vague descriptions. “Saw client, did therapy” tells an auditor nothing. Name the activity, the presentation type, and the approach, without identifying the client.
• Batching hours. Logging “12 hours of practice” against a single date to cover a whole week is a red flag. Enter activities on the dates they happened.
• Mislabelling direct vs client-related. Report writing, scoring, and consultation are client-related, not direct contact. Inflating the direct-contact column is the error auditors look for first.
• Reconstructing after the fact. Writing up a month of entries from memory produces thin, guessed-at detail and inconsistent hours. Log as you go, or at least weekly.
• Missing or late sign-off. Your entries must be sighted and signed by your principal supervisor regularly. A stretch of unsigned entries can put that whole period’s recognition in doubt.
• No evidence for Section B. PD hours without a certificate or attendance record are hard to defend.
• Ignoring the ratio. Racking up practice hours without matching supervision breaches the 1:18 guideline and can mean practice hours aren’t fully counted.
  
  

A reusable entry template

Copy this skeleton and fill it in for each activity — it covers every field an auditor or supervisor expects:

As a one-line habit, an entry should answer: on this date, for this long, I did this specific thing (direct or client-related), and here’s what I took from it — and my supervisor has seen it.

How PsychTrakka keeps entries compliant by default

Doing all of this on a spreadsheet or a printed LBPP-76 is where the friction lives — remembering the fields, keeping the direct/client-related split honest, watching the ratio, and chasing signatures.

PsychTrakka is a digital provisional psychologist logbook built for exactly this pathway. Each entry form already asks for the right fields for its section, keeps direct client contact and client-related activities in separate columns so the 500-hour total stays accurate, prompts you for a reflection, and tracks your hours and the 1:18 supervision ratio in real time. When it’s time for sign-off, your supervisor reviews and signs entries through a secure link — no printing, scanning, or reconstructing a month of practice from memory. The compliant entry becomes the default, not the thing you have to remember to do.

Sources

The logbook requirements in this guide are drawn from the Psychology Board of Australia’s official materials. The Board is the authority here, so always confirm the current guidelines and forms before you rely on them:

• Psychology Board of Australia — 5+1 internship program (the source of the eight core competencies and the internship requirements cited here)
• Psychology Board of Australia — the Record of professional practice (the LBPP-76 logbook) and provisional registration guidelines, available from the Board’s provisional registration pages