Skip to main content
This guidance is for Lumary DC. For help with a different Lumary product, check out our Care Management (CM), Allied Health (AH) or Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) guides.

NDIS - Funding Periods

Updated

This article explains the recently introduced and updated NDIS funding periods within a participant's plan, and guidance for service providers using Lumary.

Quick read update - 28 November 2025

Lumary has released our funding period features! These features are available in CM Release 24, partially in DC Release 2.8 with remaining features in DC Release 2.9, and in AH Release 14. 

Lumary is making it easier to manage NDIS funding periods with new features that help you plan, track, and claim services more confidently. More detail is provided below in the full article including the five problem statements we are solving and details about each feature available to manage funding periods on a service agreement.

Why it matters

  • Aligning service delivery with the correct funding period is essential in the PACE environment.
  • Timely claiming helps reduce errors, rejections, and delays in payment.
  • Clear tracking and early insights support better conversations with participants and Plan Managers.

Need help adjusting your billing cycles?

If you're still billing monthly or fortnightly, we recommend exploring faster billing cycles. Reach out to your Account Manager or submit a support request for guidance and to request a health-check.

What are funding periods?

Funding periods are a budgeting mechanism designed to give participants more manageable access to their plan funds over time, rather than receiving their full budget at the start of their plan. This helps reduce the risk of overspending and ensures funding is used consistently across the length of the plan.

The NDIS introduced funding periods in October 2024. From May 2025, funding periods allow for different durations across participants’ plans. These changes are being gradually rolled out as participants receive new or reassessed plans.

Key guidance for providers:

  • Funding periods are not additional funding - they simply control when funds are available during the plan.
  • Funding Period Start and End dates - are defined based on the plan's start date and may not align to calendar months.
  • 3-month funding periods - for most plan categories by default.
  • 1-month funding periods - for Home & Living Supports (SIL) is likely.
  • Bespoke funding periods - for Assistive Technology or Home Modifications is likely depending on the participant's needs.
  • Different funding components - (core, capacity building, capital costs) may have different funding period lengths within the same plan.

Top

Who has access to plan information?

Access to NDIS plan details, including funding budgets and funding period breakdowns, is restricted to the participant and with consent, their nominated Plan Manager or Support Coordinator. These parties are under no obligation to share this information with service providers.

The NDIS does not provide service providers with direct access to plan or funding period data through the PACE/PRODA portals. Furthermore, the NDIS APIs have not been updated to support access to funding period information and even if they were, access would be limited to the participant’s nominated Plan Manager and Support Coordinator only.

Key guidance for providers:

  • Request a copy of the participant’s plan - This is currently the only way a service provider can gain insight into the participant’s overall funding and the funding periods applied to their plan. However, keep in mind that participants are not obligated to share their plan, and you will not have visibility of services being delivered by other providers.
  • Request funding allocation confirmation from Plan Managers - If the participant is plan-managed, you should, as part of your service agreement process, request written confirmation from the Plan Manager that funding has been allocated for your services. Ask them to confirm that sufficient funds are available for the relevant funding periods covered by the agreement.

Top

What is the main risk of this change for service providers?

With the elimination of Service Bookings under the PACE rollout, the primary risk for service providers is the potential rejection of claims or invoices toward the end of a funding period, due to that period’s funding being exhausted.

It’s important to note that any unspent funding is automatically rolled over to the next funding period within the same plan. Rejected claims can generally be re-submitted once the new funding period begins, provided the claim date still falls within the overall plan dates and sufficient funding is available in the current period. 

Providers are encouraged to maintain communication with the participant's Plan Manager or Support Coordinator (where relevant) to stay informed of any funding constraints.

Key guidance for providers:

  • Unspent funds accumulate into subsequent funding periods - Unused funds from a funding period will roll over into the next funding period within the same plan. This ensures that no funding is lost as long as it remains within the plan’s overall duration.
  • Providers can submit claims for services delivered in a previous funding period - as long as; The date of service falls within the plan’s overall start and end dates, and there is sufficient funding available in the current funding period to cover the claim.
  • Failed claims - If a claim fails due to insufficient funds in the current funding period, an error message will typically indicate this—for example: “There are insufficient funds in the funding period for the NDIS support.”
  • Stay in touch with Support Coordinators - If you encounter funding errors when submitting claims, it may indicate that funding within a specific period has been depleted. We recommend reaching out to the participant’s Support Coordinator to help clarify the situation and coordinate next steps.

Top

Should service providers change service agreement durations in Lumary?

For most service providers, no major changes are needed. Funding periods are primarily an administrative tool to support participants and their plan managers to more easily manage their budgets, and are not a constraint on how providers deliver agreed supports.

In Lumary, Service Agreements play a critical role in the end-to-end service delivery process. They are used to:

  • Quote the agreed services with the participant, including quantities, rates, and funding categories
  • Formally record agreement between the provider and participant on delivery and payment of those services
  • A mechanism to ensure that services scheduled (on session, jobs, respite bookings, auto generated SDs) are planned inline with agreed participant funding
  • A mechanism to track service delivery against the agreed quantities and contracted budget allocation
  • Enable accurate billing for delivered services, based on what was agreed

Creating multiple service agreements to align with each funding period would significantly increase administrative workload without adding value. It would also place an unnecessary burden on you as a business, participants and support coordinators by requiring additional signature processes, and could delay service provision or cash flow if agreements are not returned promptly. 

As you have no control over the entire budget spend for a participant, shorter agreements do not lower the risk of participant overspend at a plan/budget level, which is the factor that would impact successful claims/invoicing for services you provide.

For the most part, funding periods do not change what services are agreed to or approved in the plan, we recommend continuing to structure service agreements in line with the plan and services being requested.

Key guidance for providers:

  • Continue creating service agreements in line with the plan duration. Funding periods do not replace the need for clear, long-term service agreements that span the participant’s plan period.
  • You don’t need to align service agreements with funding periods. There's no requirement to create new or rollover service agreements every three months (for example).
  • Lumary rollover functionality is available, for when and if you have particular participants that require you to have funding periods reflected in agreements. However, we recommend using this feature sparingly, given the extra administrative load it creates.
  • There is no real benefit to creating shorter agreements - as you have no control over the budget spend. Even with shorter periods the same level of risk is present as the participant can over spend other services within the funding period and affect your claiming/billing.

Top

How is Lumary supporting funding periods?

Let’s begin by outlining the key challenges we’ve identified through conversations with customers and industry experts, challenges that funding periods will create or amplify for providers:

  1. Lack of visibility into funding period allocations makes it difficult to manage service delivery against funding availability.
    Providers struggle to see how much funding is allocated, committed, or remaining across specific timeframes (e.g. monthly, quarterly), leading to overspend or underutilisation.
  2. Manual setup of funding period allocations is time-consuming and error-prone.
    Entering and managing funding allocations manually for each support category increases administrative burden and the risk of incorrect setup.
  3. Delayed or rejected claims due to exhausted funding in a period create cash flow issues and more admin work.
    Without early warnings or clear error messages, finance teams spend unnecessary time identifying and resolving failed claims due to over-claimed funding periods.
  4. Service delivery teams and coordinators lack timely insights to adjust support plans before funding issues arise.
    Without forward-looking tools, providers can't anticipate funding shortfalls or communicate proactively with participants and their support networks.
  5. Insufficient tools for communicating funding status with participants and Plan Managers.
    Providers are unable to easily share clear, up-to-date funding breakdowns, making it harder to align on support delivery and avoid misunderstandings.

To help providers operate with better oversight of NDIS funding periods, Lumary is delivering iterative enhancements that simplify how you plan, track, and align service delivery with participant funding availability. These improvements will also mean little disruption to your service agreement creation process.

Planned enhancements include:

Auto-generation of funding periods and allocations on service agreements

We’re developing a new feature that will automatically generate funding periods for each support category on a service agreement, and allocate funding to those periods based on the category totals or service agreement Items (SAIs) information.

How it will work:

  • Funding periods will be auto-created for each support category, reflecting how they appear on a participant’s PACE plan.
  • Allocations to each period will be calculated proportionally based on the number of days covered by each SAI relative to the duration of the funding period.

What’s required?

  • Where different to the service agreement start date, a participant’s plan start date can be entered.
  • Each support category in the agreement must have its funding period type defined (e.g. 1-month, 3-month).

Why per category?

This mirrors how funding periods are defined in participant plans — different categories may follow different schedules (e.g. Core may be quarterly, SIL monthly).

Why automate?

To reduce manual data entry and administrative overhead, ensuring your funding breakdowns remain accurate and up-to-date with minimal effort.

What’s next?

In future iterations, allocations will be calculated using the built-in funding calculator at the SAI level. To support this, we’ll encourage providers to use this calculator rather than entering totals manually.

Where it applies:

This functionality will be available for new NDIS service agreements where the PACE Plan checkbox is ticked.

How you can view and use funding period data

The generated funding period information will be made available for:

  • On-screen review on the service agreement,
    Funding Periods Button (1).gif
  • Inclusion in customisable reports and service agreement documentation, and
    FundingPeriodsReportTypes.png
  • Supporting clearer communication with participants, Plan Managers, and Support Coordinators.

Should we include this in our service agreement templates?

Yes, we have provided an example appendix with the funding period break-down in the release notes to help you adapt quickly.

We recommend also including wording such as:

I confirm that I have reviewed the participant’s current NDIS plan and considered any other known supports being delivered. Based on this review, I am satisfied that there is sufficient funding available within the relevant funding periods to cover the supports outlined in this agreement (and within the funding period breakdown provided in Appendix X).

Top

Tracking funding periods

Following the release of auto-generated funding period allocations on service agreements, we will be introducing tools to help you track both planned and delivered services against these funding periods.

Given the volume of data involved, tracking insights will be refreshed via a nightly batch process. This ensures performance at scale while keeping your data relevant.
You will also have the ability to trigger a manual refresh on individual service agreements when real-time updates are needed — for example, when service quantities change mid-period.

What information will this give to service providers?

For each support category, broken down by funding period, you will be able to view:

  • Allocated Funding – The amount assigned to the period based on service agreement Items
  • Committed Funding – The estimated value of scheduled services (based on planned services or Skedulo jobs)
  • Actual Delivered – The value of Services Delivered (SDs) during the funding period
  • Remaining Balance – A real-time view of remaining funds, calculated as Allocated minus Committed and Delivered amounts
    FundingPeriodDetails

This data will help you and your team:

  • Proactively manage service delivery against plan allocations
  • Prevent claim errors by identifying funding constraints early
  • Improve conversations with Plan Managers and Support Coordinators around funding availability and adjustments

Top

Potential future enhancements

As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting providers through the evolving NDIS landscape, Lumary is continuing to invest in features that simplify funding period management and strengthen your operational processes.

Proposed future enhancements may include:

Claim error insights & escalation support

We plan on developing functionality to enhance visibility of claim errors, especially where errors relate to exhausted funding within a specific funding period. When a claim fails due to period-based funding issues, we’ll:

  • Provide clear, contextual error messages so finance and admin teams can quickly identify the cause
  • Display the relevant Support Coordinator or Plan Manager contact details (where available), allowing your team to follow up directly and resolve funding or approval issues faster

This will help reduce delays, improve your team’s efficiency, and ultimately support faster recovery of failed claims.

Proactive funding communication tools

We also plan to introduce tools to support proactive, transparent communication with participants and their support networks.

These tools will provide:

  • Estimated upcoming service costs per funding period, based on your current service agreement and scheduled services
  • Alerts when upcoming delivery is projected to exceed available funding in the current period
  • Exportable summaries that can be easily shared with participants, Support Coordinators, or Plan Managers, supporting more effective funding conversations

These insights are designed to enable your teams to engage earlier, resolve potential overspend issues, and help clients make informed decisions about their supports — before it affects service continuity or claim outcomes.

Top

Billing and claiming in the funding period environment

With the introduction of PACE and funding periods, it’s more important than ever to bill and claim as close to the date of service as possible. Timely claiming ensures that your invoices align with the correct funding periods, reducing the risk of errors or rejections due to exhausted period funding.

Why timely billing and claiming matters

Submitting claims promptly after service delivery:

  • Ensures funds are still available within the relevant period
  • Reduces delays in payment
  • Lowers the risk of rejected claims due to overdrawn allocations

If your organisation operates on monthly or fortnightly billing cycles, we strongly recommend reviewing your processes. Many providers have successfully transitioned to weekly, daily or near-real-time billing, significantly reducing admin overhead from failed claims.

To explore how your organisation can enable faster billing cycles, please Submit a support request, or please contact your Account Manager. We can connect you with a consultant to assess and support process improvements.

Invoicing practices with Plan Managers and Participants

Invoices in Lumary are designed to reflect per-date, per-service data, enabling accurate claims against specific funding periods — even when a single invoice includes services that span multiple dates and periods.

It is not always practical or appropriate to generate separate invoices for each individual funding period. This is particularly true when clients have different period types across support categories, or when providers deliver continuous services across funding boundaries. Lumary’s invoice data structure supports this reality by clearly itemising each service by date and support item.

Plan Managers and Participants can use this level of detail to claim correctly for each service delivered, within the relevant funding period. Rejections based solely on the presence of multiple periods in a single invoice should be challenged, as they are not supported by NDIA rules — the key requirement is that each service is clearly recorded by date and support item.

To support correct claiming:

  • Invoices should be itemised with separate lines for each date and support item.
  • Avoid consolidating services into bulk descriptions or ranges, as this may hinder correct claiming against individual periods.

This approach aligns with best practice, supports compliance, and helps ensure your organisation gets paid promptly while reducing administrative overhead for Plan Managers and participants.

Top

Additional information

Lumary recognises adjusting to the implementation of funding periods will take some time, and is committed to helping service providers to be operationally efficient in administering the constantly changing NDIS landscape.

As with all Lumary development, these features are being designed in collaboration with providers and industry experts to ensure practical, scalable solutions that fit real-world workflows.

If you have any feedback regarding how funding periods are affecting your business, please Submit a support request and provide your valuable insight, or please contact your Account Manager.

This guidance has been prepared based on the latest information provided by the NDIS:

Related articles

Powered by Zendesk