Support at Home invoicing: the two documents you send, and who pays which part

Getting paid under Support at Home means sending two documents for the same piece of work: a claim to Services Australia for the government's share, and an invoice to the participant for theirs. Neither covers the other. The claim goes first and only after the service is delivered; the participant's invoice follows, and it is the one small providers forget until a quarter has gone by.

This post is what goes on each, in what order, and the three things you cannot put on either.

General information, not financial or legal advice. Check your own circumstances against the Department's current pages.

Why are there two documents?

Because Support at Home splits the cost of every service between the Commonwealth and the participant, and the two halves are collected through entirely different channels.

The government's share reaches you as a subsidy claimed through Services Australia. The participant's share reaches you the ordinary way — you invoice them. The split is a percentage that attaches to the type of service, which means a single visit covering two service types can carry two different splits on two lines of the same invoice.

What is the claim process, step by step?

The Department sets out six steps:

1. You prepare a claim, including working out the claim amount.
2. You submit the claim.
3. Services Australia checks it.
4. Services Australia processes the payment.
5. You receive the payment.
6. You send an invoice to the participant for their contribution, if any.

Step six is a step, not an afterthought. It is the only part of the sequence that is entirely yours to initiate, and nothing chases you for it.

What can I actually claim for?

A service qualifies only if all of the following are true. It is an approved service in the participant's Notice of Decision. It is agreed in their care plan. You are registered to provide it. And you have already delivered it, while the participant was in your care.

The Department states the negative just as plainly: you must not claim for a service you have not delivered.

Two details in the preparation are worth knowing before your first claim:

• Claim the agreed unit price and the delivered units, even if that exceeds the available funding. Do not quietly trim a claim to fit a budget — claim what was agreed and delivered.
• Claim against the correct funding source. Services Australia holds several accounts on a participant's behalf, and they are not interchangeable.

Funding source	What it covers
Quarterly ongoing funding	The regular services in the participant's classification budget
Care management	The share set aside for coordinating their care
Assistive technology	Equipment approved under the AT-HM scheme
Home modifications	Approved changes to the home
Restorative Care Pathway	Short-term restorative funding
End-of-Life Pathway	End-of-life funding

Claiming ongoing services against the wrong account is a correction you will make later, in a quarter that has already closed.

Who pays which part?

The contribution depends on the service category, and the rate on the participant's circumstances.

Service category	Examples	Participant contributes
Clinical supports	Nursing, physiotherapy	Nothing
Independence	Assistive technology, personal care	A moderate share
Everyday living	Domestic assistance, gardening	The highest share

The exact percentage comes from a Services Australia income and assets assessment, similar to the Age Pension means test. Full pensioners pay the lowest contributions. There is also a lifetime cap on contributions, combined with the non-clinical contribution for residential aged care, and Services Australia notifies both you and the participant when it is reached.

From 1 October 2026 the Government fully funds personal care. Personal care sits in the independence category today and carries a moderate contribution; from that date a participant approved for it in their support plan accesses it at no out-of-pocket cost. If you bill personal care, the contribution line on those services goes to nothing — worth a diary note, because an invoice raised on the old split after that date overcharges someone.

What can I not charge for?

Three things, and the first two surprise anyone arriving from NDIS.

No separate administration fee. You cannot charge one, and you cannot take one from the care management account.

No separate travel fee. Under NDIS, travel is a line you claim. Here it is a cost you price into the service, alongside labour, package management, sub-contracting and a margin for the cost of capital. The Department's pricing guidance lists exactly those inputs as what makes a price "reasonable".

No unpublished price. You set your own prices — there are no caps — but you must publish the price you most frequently charge for each service on My Aged Care and on your own website, and keep it current. A provider that has not reported prices transparently may be referred to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.

How HarvestFlow Care bills one Support at Home visit

The split is resolved per service line rather than per client, and the order of precedence is the part worth explaining, because it is what stops a re-assessment silently repricing work you have already invoiced.

The percentage for a line is taken from the service agreement first, where the agreement names one for that support item — the agreement is the signed instrument, so it wins. Where it does not, the percentage comes from the participant's funding plan category, which is effective-dated: the revision in force on the service date prices the service, not whatever the plan says today. A re-assessment is a successor agreement rather than an edit, so history keeps the price it was billed at.

There is a deliberate guard underneath both. Where a funding plan governs the service date but the product carries no category the plan holds, the service draws nothing from the envelope and is booked entirely to the participant. That is the safe direction: there is no bucket for the subsidy to come out of, so claiming one would overstate what the government owes.

From there the two documents are two outputs of the same visit — a claim line against the right funding source, and a contribution invoice for the participant, which can be raised per client or consolidated per payer. The monthly client statement then reconciles them: the opening and closing balance of the subsidy envelope beside what the participant was charged and what they actually paid.

Funding plans and client statements are part of the Pro plan and are in beta. What sits on which plan is set out on the Support at Home page, and the prices are on Care pricing.

Before your first claim

Get four things straight and the rest follows: the participant's approved services and their care plan agree; your prices are published and cost-based; you know which funding source each service draws on; and you have a habit that fires step six. The quarter is the unit that matters, and unspent funds are what the habit protects.

If the programme itself is new to you, start with the Support at Home guide for sole traders.