How to log coaching practice: hours, sessions, consent and evidence

Keep one factual record of what you actually did, then map it to whatever form your route asks for. Check the required fields before you start, so you can capture details you may need later. If you have not chosen a route yet, start with coaching accreditation explained.

This is a working method, not an official form. Use the current forms and evidence requirements specified for your route.

Four records, kept apart

Keep session facts separate from reflections and sensitive supporting evidence.

1. The session ledger. One row per session. Facts only.
2. The client summary. One row per coaching relationship: who, dates, totals, arrangement, consent.
3. Reflection and development. What you noticed, what you would do differently, supervision and CPD.
4. Evidence references. Where the contract, consent record, feedback, recording or reference letter is stored, not the material itself.

Keep sensitive narrative out of a ledger you plan to export, filter or share.

The session ledger

Copy this table and use it as your working file. Use the last two columns to record your eligibility check and where supporting evidence lives.

Field notes:

• Client ref. Use whatever your route needs. NBHWC requires a coded identity for confidentiality; EMCC's Client Log V1.1 asks for client identifier initials; ICF's individual-client documentation expects the client's name and contact details, with consent. Keep the real identity in the client summary, not in the row you export most often.
• Role. Sessions where you were coached are not client coaching you delivered. Record them, and never let them merge into your delivered total.
• Coaching minutes. Record what happened, not what was booked. ICF counts partial hours, so a 30-minute session is 0.5 hours and does not need rounding up (ICF experience requirements).
• Participants. Group and team coaching is recorded separately from individual work at ICF, and coaching 15 people for an hour is one hour, not fifteen. Groups of more than 15 do not count unless a co-coach is present, in which case the time is split between coaches. NBHWC counts a group session as one session and asks you to list the number of participants.
• Eligibility review. Name the route or qualification unit, the rule checked and the date. Use "pending" until that check is complete. A session accepted for one route may be excluded from another. Where a rule divides time between co-coaches, retain both the session duration and your credited share.

The client summary: adapt it to your route

This example includes ICF paid/pro bono totals. Keep only the personal details your route needs and you are entitled to hold; other routes may need different fields.

ICF's documentation for an individual client is the client's name, the contact details you use to reach them, the start and end date of the relationship, and the number of paid and pro bono hours you coached them. For a group or team it is one participant's name and email address, the engagement dates, paid and pro bono hours, and the number of people involved. Where an organisation's confidentiality policy stops you holding client details, ICF's alternative is a reference letter from the organisation on letterhead verifying your hours, rather than an incomplete log entry.

ICF's instruction is to get the client's consent before adding them to your log, document it, and keep it in line with applicable data-protection law. ICF's page cites the EU GDPR as an example. If a client does not consent, leave their name off, and understand those sessions could not be verified in an audit. Consent to appear in your log is also not consent to be recorded. Ask for that separately, and store the answer with a date.

A worked example

Fictional, showing how a reciprocal arrangement becomes two records.

Amara has a 60-minute call booked with a reciprocal partner, Jo. They spend 40 minutes with Amara coaching Jo, 10 minutes on feedback, and 10 minutes arranging the next two sessions. The following week Jo coaches Amara for 45 minutes.

What that record supports, and what it does not:

• Amara delivered 40 minutes of coaching, which is 40/60 of an hour (two-thirds), not one hour because the call was booked for 60 minutes.
• The 10 minutes of feedback and 10 minutes of scheduling are not coaching. They matter for your own time budget and belong nowhere near a delivered-hours total.
• The return session is received coaching. It appears in Amara's development record, not in her delivered hours.
• ICF treats barter, including peer-to-peer coaching, as payment, which is why the arrangement column says barter rather than pro bono. That is an ICF classification. It does not tell you how EMCC, the AC or NBHWC would treat the same conversation, and the pages reviewed here do not establish an equivalent position.

Mapping your ledger to each form

ICF says you will not submit a detailed coaching log with client information when you apply: you report your totals and attest that they meet ICF's standards. Audits happen, and if you are selected you will be given instructions, but ICF states that "even during an audit, you will not be asked to submit coaching logs directly to ICF" (ICF experience requirements). Your log is your evidence for your own attestation. It is not a document you upload. The ICF log guide gives the templates.

EMCC's Client Log V1.1 asks you to include work "paid as part of your job, or outside your employment paid or pro bono", and carries a template version of V1.1 dated September 2020, while its reflective practice template is V2.0 dated June 2025 (EMCC Global EIA). Use the documents supplied for your application route. These are working templates, not proof that every field must be submitted on every EIA route. The reflective log describes its table as a guide and allows other ways to record reflection. The EIA evidence checklist shows blank and worked rows for each log.

For NBHWC, check the 20-minute minimum, the requirement for at least 75% coaching rather than education, live-session format and the exclusion of friends, family and classmates. The live page says "current classmates" while the January 2026 packet says "classmates"; ask NBHWC about former classmates. Its log page also provides a supervisor-letter alternative for applicants limited by employer regulations, with specified session totals, durations, coaching proportion and date range. Use that guidance rather than inventing a confidentiality exemption. The worked NBHWC log example shows the form row by row.

Two routines

After each session. Correct the coaching minutes to what actually happened. Add the arrangement. Note any consent or recording agreement you made. If something was ambiguous, write the ambiguity down rather than resolving it optimistically.

Once a month. Reconcile session rows against client totals. Move anything in "pending" forward by checking one rule, and record where you checked and when. Fix errors as corrections with a date rather than by quietly overwriting. Never reconstruct a session you cannot remember, and never round a total up to reach a threshold.

Before you export or share anything

1. Does this file need to contain names at all, or will references do?
2. Are received-coaching rows excluded from any delivered-hours figure?
3. Are durations the coached minutes, not the booked or call-length minutes?
4. Are group sessions marked, with participant counts, and separated from individual work?
5. Does the date range match the one being asked for?
6. Have you removed confidential narrative from the ledger? If reflective evidence is required, prepare it separately with the required anonymisation and consent.
7. Are you sending this to a body that actually asked for it, in the format it asked for?

If you keep practice records in an app, check any automatic call duration against the coaching time before relying on it. Tags and exports are working material; neither establishes acceptance by a professional body or qualification centre.

Related guides: Preparing AC accreditation evidence · How to find coaching practice partners · When peer coaching counts as paid ICF experience.

Sources

Requirements reviewed on 11 September 2026 against the sources below. Forms and template versions change; download the current one from the body when you apply.

• ICF experience requirements: partial hours, paid and pro bono definitions, barter, documentation by client type, group rules, confidentiality and consent, totals-and-attestation model, audit instructions.
• ICF coaching log template sample: ICF's own sample log.
• EMCC Global EIA: application routes and resources. Template examples discussed here are Client Log V1.1 (September 2020) and Reflective Practice Log V2.0 (June 2025); use the versions supplied for your route.
• AC individual coach accreditation: application routes and supporting documents, including AC templates.
• NBHWC coaching log requirements: session criteria and log fields.
• NBHWC board exam application packet, January 2026: full log fields, session numbering and the attestation.
• ILM 8588 handbook, January 2025 v2.1: Units 501/502 records, feedback and reflective evidence; centre formats.
• CMI Level 5 Professional Coaching Practice syllabus, March 2026 v09: centre assessment plans and Unit 534 evidence. The cover version governs, despite the v01 filename.