How do I add NDIS Funding?

Funding is the critical success factor when invoicing and claiming from PRODA.  Funding must be established for each of your clients before you can roster services.  If you don't establish funding, you will not be able to roster services.

This article identifies how to set up basic NDIS funding items.  Other funding will be explained in other wiki articles.

Preparation for Setting Up NDIS Funding

NDIS Budget First

Nightingale gives you the functionality to establish a client's NDIS Budget from their plan.  This article describes this function: NDIS Budget First.  There are numerous operational benefits of identifying your client's budget from their plan.  There are fields within Nightingale that will prefill for you when you have an NDIS Budget for your client.

Organisation Settings for NDIS Funding

Go to Organisation Settings > Funding.  Select NDIS Settings.  Choose the price types that are applicable to you and your clients from the drop down menu.  Hit SAVE.

Client Details

There are details to capture about your client that will enable invoicing/claiming as well as calculate non-labour costs (where applicable) based on the correct rate ($ per km).  

Go to your client's Dashboard and Edit Client Details, then click on the NDIS tab:

For any NDIS client, these fields need to be completed.  From left to right:

1. NDIS Number:  your client's participant number.  Must be supplied to claim via PRODA or will be required on invoices when a client is self or plan managed.
2. NDIS Commencement Date:  this is the start date of your client's CURRENT plan - it is not the date they started with you providing services to them.  For example, if they joined you in February 2021, and their plan began on 01 July 2020, the date entered here would be the 01 July 2020 date.
3. NDIS Review Date:  this is the date you want to review your client's plan.  Many providers choose to do this at least 6 weeks in advance of the end dates of their clients' plans.  This Review Date will show as an alert on the Overview Page, both in the tab "Plan Reviews" as well as on the client's information.
4. NDIS Plan Sign Off Date: This date is the END date of your client's plan from NDIS.  In the example above, the END date is likely to be 1 July 2021.  (from #2 above)
5. Participant Needs Level: A selection of possible NDIS participant needs levels.
6. Participant Cost Level: A selection of possible NDIS participant cost levels.
7. NDIS Non-Labour Cost Rate ($ per km):  enter the agreed to $ per km.  This will most likely be the $.85 / km that NDIS allows for regular travel (as opposed to modified vehicle travel).
8. Plan Managed/Self Manages NDIS Funding Item:  tick this box if ALL services will be invoiced to the client or their plan manager and ZERO services will be claimed by you in PRODA. 
   Note:  If some of your client's services are invoiced, and some will be claimed, do NOT tick this box.  This situation will be covered later in these instructions.
    
9. Allow Global NDIS Rollover:  Tick this if you want to use the automatic rollover for funding and rostered appointments when NDIS publishes a new price guide.

Adding Support Funding to Your Client

From your client's Dashboard, go to Funding and then View Support Funding.  This is always a good first step to ensure you aren't about to duplicate any existing Support Funding.  When there are changes to make to a Support Funding Item, you have additional functionality here to edit an Item.

If there are no existing Support Funding Items to edit, and you still want to add a Support Funding Item, click on "Add Support Funding."  Select the Funding Type of NDIS.

When you tick NDIS Funding, the relevant fields for an NDIS Support Funding Item are now available to you. (page will indicate "loading")

If you entered an NDIS Budget, tick the NDIS Budget First field and your page will adjust again.  If you did not, and you are not going to enter a budget, then move onto Select the Pricing Guide step below.

When you tick the NDIS Budget First field, you will see the following which is meant to create time efficiencies when selecting the appropriate Support Funding Item.  (page will indicate "loading")

You will now have the ability to select the budget this Support Funding Item is linked to as well as the Budget Type (core, capacity or capital).

Select the correct Budget.  Then select the correct Budget Type.

In this example, the 1/3/2021 to 1/3/2023 budget was selected, and the choices of Budget Type are as above.  (The NDIS Budget First explanation can be viewed here:  Using Nightingale's "NDIS Budget First" workflow .)

The next field is to Select the Pricing Guide/Price List you want to load.  In this example, the 1/1/2022 Price Guide list was loaded.  Generally, the only time you would likely change this from the defaulted current list is if you do NOT have a Service Agreement with your client that indicates that the prices you charge are from the most current Price Guide.

In this example, Core was selected.  The next field of Support Category will then show only those categories associated with Core funding by NDIS definition. (page will indicate "loading")

In this example, "4. Assistance with social and community participation" was selected. (page will indicate "loading")

The next field is the Support item.  What is listed here is dependent upon the category you selected, the price type you selected for this client (as described above for the Client Details NDIS tab) and the Price Type(s) you selected for your organisation in NDIS Settings (also explained above in this document).

You are able to begin typing in the Support Item field to shorten your choices.  For instance, if you are setting up a Sunday support item, start typing "Sunday" in the field.  

Then scroll to the appropriate Support Item and select it.

When selecting the Support Item, Nightingale automatically populates the Current Funding Cost ($) and the Custom Unit of Measure based on the Price Guide selected in the beginning.  IF YOU HAVE A CUSTOM PRICE FOR EVERY INSTANCE YOU PROVIDE A SERVICE FOR THIS CLIENT USING THIS SUPPORT FUNDING ITEM, then you can override the generated price (in the above case, $103.34) to your lower price.  Otherwise, leave Custom Unit Cost ($) alone.

The next two fields, "Support Units Spent Elsewhere" and "Support Funding Spent Elsewhere ($)" are available if you want to track the total funding available to your client for this Support Funding Item if they have, for example, moved from one provider to you while their NDIS Plan is active, or you want to track what's already been spent against this Support Funding Item with you.  

For example:

1. Your client has $10,000 in their Core budget plan as per the example described.  The amount to be used for this Sunday Support Item, is $2000.  (The balance will be spent on weekdays and another Support Funding Item will be set up next for this.)
2. Your client's plan started on the first of January 2022, and you have provided some services against this funding item to them already -- and you are just setting up this funding item and then will set up rosters.  
3. You provided 2 hours of service to your client on Sunday, 2 January.  
4. In the field "Support Funding Spent Elsewhere ($)," fill in $206.68 which represents 2 units spent at the price per unit of $103.34.

It is recommended that you fill in the dollars spent, as they may have been claimed or invoiced at a different unit rate (under a different Price Guide).  Nightingale now knows that $200.32 of the funding you are allocating to this Support Item has already been spent.

The next field are used in the following way:

1. Tick Plan Managed/Self Manages NDIS Funding Item if this particular item is plan/self managed.
2. Ignore the "Do not include in NDIS Claim" field (this was created by a special request from a Nightingale client and will not affect your claims/invoices).
3. Maximum Budget ($) allows you to identify the amount of funding that has been allocated TO THIS FUNDING ITEM

In the example, this is a Sunday priced funding item. and we know that a specific amount of Core funding will be allocated to this Support Item and Core funding will also be allocated to other services.

If we say that this Sunday service will be provided one 2-hour shift per month, then the Maximum Budget would be 2 hours(units) x $103.34 (current price) x 12 months which equals: $2,480.16.

Setting the Maximum Budget will enable you to more reliably use the Client Funding Graphs for visual references as well as show the allocation of the total budget on the NDIS Budget page.

The rest of the page is for Travel and Transport.  

Click SAVE at the bottom left to save this Support Funding Item.  You will be taken to the View Support Funding page.  You can see below that your Support Funding Item is labelled as NDIS and Budget First.  If this item was a Plan/Self Managed item, it would be labelled as such.  You can see the start/end dates of the funding item as well as the total allocated to it, what units are available based on the total support funding for the item.

Moving to the View NDIS Budgets page next, you will see the following:

We have allocated $2,480.16 to the Sunday support item and it's reflected above.  The "spent elsewhere" shows in the Spent Budget column.  As attendances are completed, the Spent Budget column will adjust based on what services you provide.