Free authorization tracker spreadsheet for ABA agencies

Download it

Download the authorization tracker (CSV)

CSV opens in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets, and prints. It is deliberately not a fillable PDF: a PDF that has to be re-typed into a system is the problem this page is about.

Why agencies track this in both directions

An authorization grants a fixed number of 15-minute units of a specific CPT code over a date range. Delivering past the balance is unbillable labor you have already paid for, plus recoupment exposure if it slips through. Delivering well under the approved hours reads as low utilization, and payers cut hours at the next authorization. A tracker that only warns about running out solves half the problem.

What the spreadsheet tracks

• Authorized units per client, per CPT code, per authorization period
• Reserved units — future scheduled sessions counted against the balance
• Delivered units, from your session log
• Remaining balance, with warning thresholds as it burns down
• Utilization rate against the weekly authorized amount
• Weeks of runway at the current delivery pace, versus weeks left in the period

Where every spreadsheet eventually fails

A spreadsheet is reconciled after the fact — usually weekly, by whoever owns it. The scheduling decision that overruns an authorization happens days earlier, at the moment a make-up session gets booked. By the time the spreadsheet catches it, the session was delivered.

MegAligna runs the same burn-down live from the schedule and warns at the booking slot, before the session is committed. This spreadsheet is the manual equivalent, and it works: it just depends on someone reconciling it before the schedule moves.

This spreadsheet exists because the alternative is worse, but it is still a spreadsheet. ABA practice management software runs the same burn-down against sessions as they are documented, and ABA billing covers what happens when an authorization runs out mid-period.