Setting your rates: NDIS limits are a ceiling, Support at Home prices are an argument

Under NDIS your rate is a lookup with a ceiling: the pricing schedule sets a maximum for each support item and you work at or under it. Under Support at Home your rate is an argument you have to publish: there are no caps, but the price has to be justifiable from what delivery costs you, and it goes on My Aged Care where anyone can compare it.

Same worker, same hour, two different methods for arriving at a number. This post is how to build each one, and the mistake that comes from carrying the first method into the second.

General information, not financial advice. Your costs and circumstances are your own.

What does an NDIS price limit actually mean?

It means the most you may charge, for some participants.

The NDIS pricing schedule — which replaced the Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits document from 1 July 2026 — lists each support item with its number, its unit, and maximum prices including the remote and very remote figures. The NDIA's guide to getting paid states the rule plainly: price limits are the maximum a provider can charge, they apply to supports delivered to plan-managed and agency-managed participants, and you can always agree less.

Two things follow that people miss.

The limit is not a recommendation. It is the top of the range, set for the most expensive circumstances the item covers. Charging it because it is there is a pricing decision, not a default.

Self-managed participants sit outside it. A self-managed participant pays your invoice directly, and the rate is whatever you agree in writing. Ask what they expect rather than assuming the limit applies.

What does "reasonable" mean under Support at Home?

It means costed. The Department's pricing guidance says you set your own prices, that a price must be based on the cost of delivering the service, and — importantly — that whether a price is reasonable "depends on the costs you incur to deliver that service to a particular participant".

So there is no number to look up, and no number to be safely under. There is a build-up you should be able to explain if asked.

How do you build a rate from cost?

The Department names the inputs a price may include. Treat them as a checklist rather than a formula, because only you know your figures.

Cost input	What it is
Labour	The wage or drawing for the hour, plus on-costs
Package management administration	The back-office work of running the service
Travel	Getting to and between participants
Sub-contracting	Where you use another provider to deliver part of it
Margin for cost of capital	A return on what you have tied up delivering the service

Travel and administration are on that list for a reason. Support at Home does not let you charge either as a separate fee, and does not let you take one from the care management account. They are not lost — they belong inside the hourly price. A rate built as "NDIS limit, and I claim travel on top" has to be rebuilt as a single number with the travel already in it. That is the most common and most expensive import error, and it is covered further in Support at Home vs NDIS.

What happens when you want to change a published price?

It becomes two jobs rather than one. The billing change is ordinary. The publishing change is a requirement: your published price is the one you most frequently charge, it lives on My Aged Care and on your own site, and it has to be kept up to date. A price that has drifted from what you actually charge is a transparency problem, not just an untidy website.

Practical consequence for a sole trader: settle a price list before your first participant, and change it deliberately rather than per-negotiation. A price you vary constantly is one you cannot publish honestly.

Can one rate serve both programmes?

It can, if it is built the Support at Home way and then checked against the NDIS ceiling.

Build the number from your costs with travel and administration inside it. Then, for NDIS work with plan-managed or agency-managed participants, check it sits at or under the relevant price limit. If it does, one rate serves both and your bookkeeping gets simpler. If it does not, you have learned something useful about either your costs or the limit — and you may end up with two rates, which is normal.

What you should not do is run the logic backwards: take an NDIS limit, call it your price, and hope it covers Support at Home delivery with travel absorbed.

How HarvestFlow Care holds your rates

Rates live on the service, with a price list behind them. A price list sets a rate for a date range; where a visit's date falls outside every price list, the service's default rate applies. That dating is the part that matters for published prices — a rate change takes effect from a date rather than rewriting what you already billed.

At signup both starter catalogues load: NDIS support items with their item numbers, and the Support at Home service list, each on its own price list. The NDIS figures come in as the national maximums, which is a starting point and not an instruction — every rate is yours to set, and the Support at Home figures are reference starting points that each provider is expected to replace with their own.

A visit then draws its rate from the list rather than from memory, and the invoice line carries the code the programme expects. The detail on plans is on the Support at Home page and on Care pricing.

The short version

An NDIS limit tells you where the ceiling is. A Support at Home price tells someone what your service costs to deliver. The first is a constraint, the second is a claim about your business — and the second one is public.

If you are just setting up, becoming an independent support worker covers the ABN, the checks and the insurance that come before any of this.