NDIS 90-day claiming: what changes on 1st December and how to stay ahead
From 1 December 2026, a claim that sits in a backlog for three months won’t just be paid late. It may not be paid at all.
In our recent webinar, Haylie Diprose, Product Manager at Visualcare, and Kaylene Simms, Implementation Consultant at Visualcare, walked through what the new 90-day claiming rule means for NDIS providers. They covered what our claiming data shows across 146 Visualcare customers, and what claim-ready operations look like day to day. Watch the full recording below, or read on for the key points.
Watch the webinar
Can’t see the video? Watch the NDIS 90-day claiming webinar on YouTube.
Two years becomes 90 days
From 1 December 2026, the time to make an NDIS claim drops from two years to 90 days. The clock starts on the date the support is delivered, not the booking date or the date you raise the invoice. It applies to supports delivered from 1 December, whether the participant is NDIA-managed, plan-managed or self-managed.
Why 90 days is tighter than it sounds
Ninety days sounds like plenty of time. But every step between the shift and a successful claim now draws on the same window: the roster, the timesheet, the service codes, the export and the claim itself.
Rejections cost you twice. If a monthly claim batch comes back with one or two rejections, someone has to find the error, fix it and resubmit. That rework comes out of the same 90 days.
Plan managers add a step. For plan-managed participants, you invoice the plan manager, who then lodges the claim with the NDIA. Both steps have to happen inside the window, so every day your invoice sits unsent is a day the plan manager doesn’t have.
Batching slows you down. Claiming monthly or in catch-up runs means some services are already weeks old before they’re even submitted.
Late becomes lost. Under the old rule, a slow claim was slow cash. From 1 December, a claim made outside the window is lost revenue, and that’s money the business needs to pay the support workers who delivered the service.
A cash flow squeeze from three directions
The 90-day rule doesn’t land on its own. Providers are already managing two other changes that tighten cash flow.
Providers with a steady claiming rhythm will absorb this. Those who batch and catch up will feel it most.
What our claiming data shows
Across 146 Visualcare customers, the average time from service to claim is 11.4 days. That’s NDIS providers with 30 or more claims between July and September 2026, measured from the date of service to when the claim or invoice is generated in Visualcare.
Most providers are already close to a fortnightly rhythm. The median is 8.9 days, and 84 of the 146 average under 10 days. There’s a long tail, though: averages ranged from 1.3 days for the fastest provider to 52.1 days for the slowest.
Size doesn’t determine claim speed
We found fast and slow claimers at every size, from 30 claims a quarter to nearly 9,000. The median claim age for the smallest quarter of providers was 9.3 days, and for the largest quarter it was 9.9 days. Statistically, there’s effectively no relationship between claim volume and claim age.
Averages hide the risk
On average, providers are well inside 90 days. But the claims that drag tend to be the complex ones, and an 11-day average can hide individual claims at 60 days or more. What gets those claims through is process, not scale.
What claim-ready operations look like
In the second half of the session, Kaylene showed how a provider gets from a participant’s service agreement to a claim in Visualcare. The principle is simple: get the information right at the start, and the claim is ready as soon as the shift is done.
- Set up agreements with the right services. A participant can have more than one agreement, each with its own funding management type and payer. In the demo, core supports were plan-managed and psychosocial recovery coaching was NDIA-managed. Each agreement lists the services the participant is funded for.
- Roster only what’s funded. When you add a shift, Visualcare only offers the services on the participant’s agreements. That helps you avoid delivering, and then claiming for, a service the participant doesn’t have funding for.
- Turn completed shifts into timesheets. When a support worker starts and finishes a shift in the Visualcare app, the shift is ready to pay and ready to invoice. Coordinators can also send a rostered shift to timesheets directly, for example when a phone session was added after the fact. Shift notes and log-in details sit alongside each timesheet for review.
- Export by funding type. For NDIA-managed services, filter the data export, select the services and export a bulk claim file to upload to the NDIS. Then export the matching invoices to Xero or your finance system so payments reconcile.
- Invoice plan managers in the same run. For plan-managed services, export the invoices to your finance system and send them straight to the plan managers.
Run this on a fortnightly cycle and claiming lines up with a fortnightly pay run, with every service well inside the 90-day window.
One thing to do before 1 December
Pull last quarter’s claims and count how many were lodged more than 60 days after the service was delivered. Those are the claims most at risk under the new rule, and they’ll show you where your process slows down.
If that number is higher than you’d like, we can walk you through how claiming works in Visualcare, using your own scenarios.
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