Every ABA leader has that night. You know the one. You’re supposed to be reviewing treatment plans, but in reality you’re knee-deep in missing notes, staff messages, and a spreadsheet that looks like it was designed to break your spirit. You tell yourself you’ll “fix the system later,” but you’re so overwhelmed that later never comes. Meanwhile, your staff are burnt out, audits are looming, and the system you’re stuck with is not helping.
For some leaders, there’s a moment when the weight finally tips. Here are the stories of what happened next.
“I Can't Trust Data Anymore”
Amy Legan, owner of Aspire Behavior Solutions, remembers what it felt like when her software stopped earning her trust. Notes disappeared, and graphs took days to sync. She found herself second-guessing whether the data on her screen were accurate. Instead of supervising, she was cross-checking, re-entering numbers, and asking staff to “make sure” everything got uploaded.
As she put it:
“Coming from platforms that 'lost' data and session notes, I was a very untrusting practice owner. Motivity has relieved me of those fears. Having trust in this team is my biggest win because I can focus my time in other areas and know that Motivity has my back.”
For Amy, switching meant she no longer had to live with the constant doubt. She could finally spend her time on clinical leadership instead of babysitting her software.
Losing 100 Hours a Week to Weak Software
Kyle Quinn, President of ABC for Autism, remembers how the hours piled up. Supervisors were stuck troubleshooting, staff were figuring out workarounds, and parents were left waiting while graphs loaded at a crawl. He calculated it one week and the number was staggering:
“We couldn’t keep spending 100 hours per week trying to make the software work. And quite frankly, it was really irking people. Before Motivity, we wasted a lot of time dealing with software issues.”
That’s weeks of staff time eaten up by fixing what never should’ve broken in the first place. The shift after switching was just as dramatic. At Apex, Dr. Benjamin Aaronson noticed a similar change:
“By our conservative estimate, Motivity saves us over 1500 person-hours every summer! We have reclaimed those hours for clinical review and team meetings, which is having a major impact on our ability to serve the kids.”
The lesson is clear: the real bill for bad software shows up in staff hours lost, and in frustration that never gets recovered. These leaders decided they couldn’t afford that tax anymore.
When Audit-Time Becomes a Nightmare
If you’ve ever stayed up past midnight shredding old binders or digging through shared drives, you know what audit prep feels like.
Anne Lau at ABC Group Hawaii used to spend late nights with files, papers, and wondering if a missing session note would come back to bite her:
“Going through funder audits since using Motivity became so easy! Not having to purge binders, shred, scan, or file data sheets, and having the peace of mind knowing where everything is all the time is priceless. Our session notes are insanely easier now too! We can spend more time teaching our clients and less time documenting for compliance.”
Switching turned audit prep from a nightmare into something routine. Walking into an audit with a stomach drop became just click, export, and hand it over.
Glitches That Drive Staff to Burnout
ABA staff burnout isn’t always about caseload size or parent demands. Sometimes it’s the tools. Staff who spend all day in session don’t have patience for frozen screens or graphs that take forever to load. Kyle Quinn saw how constant crashes wore his team down:
“Our team is happier now because we can focus on our jobs, not software glitches.”
That’s the part leaders often miss until it’s too late. A frozen graph in the middle of a session stalls the learner, chips away at staff morale, and over time, that frustration shows up in turnover.
The flip side is clear at The Lighthouse Learning Center, where Mari Cerda saw her team’s energy rebound after switching:
“Motivity is really fun! It makes it effortless for me to see the programs and graphs for all the students in the program, especially live when the paraprofessionals are running the sessions. The simplicity of the graphs makes it easy to show progress to a parent while in a meeting or a parent-teacher conference.”
That makes the difference between RBT®s dragging their heels through a session and walking out proud of the work they just did.
What Switching to Motivity Really Changed for Clinical Directors
These stories are about ABA leaders who finally called time on the wasted hours, the audit panic, and the staff headaches. They couldn’t keep running their clinics on shaky ground.
After the switch to Motivity, they describe something simple but rare: certainty. Knowing that their data are solid, that reports are ready when needed, that their teams aren’t drained by ineffective tools. That certainty is what gave them back their bandwidth to lead, supervise, and actually improve outcomes.
If you’ve noticed the same warning signs: missing notes, supervisors wasting time fixing graphs, or staff grumbling about glitches, schedule your Motivity demo. We’ll show you how it feels when your data, your team, and your audits finally work the way your team does.