Working With Service Logs

How to document a student contact or intervention, choose accurate service codes and minutes, connect the work to goals and cases, and create the next follow-up.

What a service log records

A service log is the record of work that actually occurred for one student: a contact, intervention, consultation, coordination activity, or other support. It answers four practical questions: what happened, when it happened, how much time it took, and what should happen next?

Service logs do	Service logs do not
Document completed student-support activity.	Replace a case plan, goal, referral, consent, or task.
Record one or more service codes with actual minutes for each.	Describe only the outcome you hope to achieve.
Connect the activity to active goals and an open case.	Automatically close or change those related records.
Create a follow-up task when another action is needed.	Serve as a general reminder without a completed service.

One log belongs to one student.

If a group activity must be reflected in individual student records, follow your district’s documentation practice for recording the appropriate service for each student.

When to create a service log

Create the log promptly after a service is delivered or a meaningful coordination activity is completed. Examples include a student check-in, family outreach, attendance planning, consultation with school staff, crisis response, a group session, or coordination with a community provider.

Use a task for work that has not happened yet. Use a service log after the work occurs. If the completed service requires another action, the log can create the follow-up task for you.

Start from the student’s Service Logs tab

Open Students and select the correct student.
Open the student’s Service Logs tab.
Review recent entries to avoid recording the same service twice.
Select Log Service.

Marcus Patel's Service Logs tab before the example service is entered — The history page summarizes services and minutes, then lists each dated entry for the student.

Enter the service details

New Service Log form showing date, delivery method, and contact site fields — Begin with when and how the completed service occurred.

Field	What to enter
Date of Service	The date the activity actually occurred. SocialNote associates the log with the academic year that contains this date.
Delivery Method	Phone, In Person, Virtual, Classroom, or Hybrid (In-Person + Virtual).
Contact Site	School, Home, Community, Virtual, or Other.

Choose service codes and record minutes

At least one active, visible service code is required. Search by code number or description, then choose the code that most accurately describes the action you performed.

Service code selector searching for chronic absenteeism and showing matching codes — The selector searches the codes available to your district. Review the description, direct or indirect type, and MTSS tier before choosing.

Use the primary code for the main service delivered.
Add another code only when a distinct service also occurred.
Enter the actual whole-number minutes for each code.
Do not copy the total visit length into every code row; the log total is the sum of the rows.
Choose the action performed, not merely the concern or desired outcome.

Service log with code 201 selected for a 30-minute in-person service at school — In the attendance example, code 201 is the primary service and carries the full 30 minutes actually spent in the student meeting.

For the complete shipped taxonomy, see the Service Code Reference. Your district may also make district-specific codes available or change which codes are active and visible.

Write useful notes

Field	Audience and purpose
Service Note	A shared team record of the activity, barriers addressed, action taken, student or family response, and agreed next step.
Confidential Note	A creator-only note when a limited-access professional detail is genuinely necessary. Other authorized team members do not see it.

Use the confidential field with restraint.

Both note fields are protected in storage, but the confidential note is visible only to the person who created the log. Keep the shared service note useful without including unnecessary sensitive detail, and do not use a private note to hide information the care team needs to act safely.

Example shared service note

Met with Marcus to review the last four weeks of attendance. Identified transportation as the primary barrier, reviewed the morning plan, and confirmed the family resource center connection. Marcus selected arriving before first period as this week’s action step.

Connect the service to goals and cases

Select any active goal that the service supported. If the student has an open, in-progress, or on-hold case, you may also connect one related case. These links let the team see what work contributed to the student’s plan without duplicating the service note.

Lower service log form with the related attendance goal and follow-up date selected — The example connects the meeting to Marcus’s active absence-reduction goal and records the next follow-up date.

A related record must already be active.

If no goal or case option appears, confirm that the student has an active goal or an eligible open case. Saving the log creates the link; it does not create the goal or case.

Create the next follow-up

Turn on Needs Follow-up when this service has a concrete next action. Enter a date on or after the service date. When the log is saved, SocialNote creates a medium-priority task assigned to you, with a reminder one day before it is due.

Tasks page showing the automatically created Follow up with Marcus task — The service log’s July 31 follow-up appears in Tasks so the next contact is part of the provider’s normal workflow.

Editing the log updates its generated follow-up task. Turning follow-up off cancels that task. Deleting the log also cancels the generated task.

Review, edit, or remove a service log

After saving, return to the Service Logs tab to confirm the date, codes, duration, site, provider, and follow-up. The summary cards report total services, summed code minutes, and whether logs contain direct or indirect services. A log with both kinds of codes can contribute to both type counts.

Service Logs history showing the completed attendance service — The completed service now appears in the student’s history and summary totals.

Saved service log detail for Marcus Patel — Open the entry to review all codes, links, notes, attachments, and follow-up information.

You may edit or delete only logs you created. Edit when correcting or completing the record. Delete only when the entry itself was made in error; deletion also removes its attachments and cancels its generated follow-up task.

Attachments

You may attach up to four supporting files, with a maximum size of 25 MB each. Supported formats include PDF; common image formats; Word and Excel files; and CSV. Follow district policy before uploading material that contains sensitive student information.

Completed example: reduce student absences

Field	Example entry
Date of Service	July 24, 2026
Delivery Method	In Person
Contact Site	School
Primary Service Code	201 — 1:1 meeting to discuss chronic absenteeism
Minutes	30
Related Goal	Reduce unexcused absences to 2 or fewer per month
Needs Follow-up	Yes — July 31, 2026

This log documents the intervention that occurred. The related goal continues to hold the measurable attendance outcome, and the generated task carries the next action into the provider’s workload.