90 Days to Claim. Seven Years to Keep.
The 2026 NDIS reforms will not be won or lost in your service delivery. They will be won or lost in your back office.
Picture the Friday afternoon email. A support worker’s shift from three months ago has finally surfaced on a timesheet. Nobody caught it. Under the old rules that was fine. You claimed it late and moved on, because you had two years.
From 1 December 2026, you have 90 days. After that, the support was delivered, the worker was paid, and nobody is reimbursing you for it.
That single change tells you most of what you need to know about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Act 2026.
It passed Parliament on 19 August 2026, received Royal Assent the following day, and the first measures commenced on 27 August. The Act touches eligibility, planning, funding, registration, claiming and fraud. The part that shows up in your bank account is administrative.
Here is the plain version, in the order it hits you.
The dates that matter
Record-keeping obligations start. Providers keep claim records for seven years, participants and plan managers for three. Tighter rules on unscheduled plan reassessments. The NDIA gains stronger compliance powers.
Already live. Your filing system is now a compliance control.
Unregistered SIL providers who have not lodged a registration application can only claim for supports delivered to 30 September. Participant budgets for social, civic and community participation and capacity-building daily activities begin resetting, by 50 per cent and 10 per cent respectively (the Act calls these assistance with social, economic and community participation, and improved daily living skills). Thriving Kids begins rolling out for children aged 8 and under with developmental delay and/or autism with low to moderate support needs, at scale by 1 January 2028.
Hard stop for some SIL providers. Revenue per participant starts moving for everyone else. Early childhood caseloads begin moving outside the scheme.
The window to claim a support drops from two years to 90 days.
Your billing cycle, not your service delivery, becomes the risk.
Plan renewals replace plan continuations. Unspent funds from the previous plan do not carry over. Tighter assessment of reasonable-and-necessary supports for new entrants.
The end of the late-in-plan spending surge.
Participants begin progressively transitioning to new framework planning.
Plan structures and budget lines change shape.
Expanded mandatory registration for higher-risk supports including personal care, daily living supports and supports in closed settings. New provider enrolment system begins; most providers will need to enrol with the NDIA.
Audit readiness becomes a business requirement.
New access and eligibility rules apply to new applicants, with existing participants reassessed over three years.
Referral volume and participant mix change.
Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing Securing the NDIS for future generations timeline. Dates after October 2026 are as published and may shift.
Three changes that could affect your cash flow
The SIL cut-off, and a 50 per cent budget reset
Since 1 July 2026, SIL supports have been claimed under the new registration group 0138 Assistance with Supported Independent Living. Unregistered providers delivering SIL before 1 July can continue under transitional arrangements if they have lodged a registration application.
Miss 1 October and you can only claim for supports delivered to 30 September. See the NDIA’s SIL claims and payment changes notice for the detail.
The quieter change on the same date affects everyone. Participant budgets for social, civic and community participation and for capacity-building daily activities begin resetting as plans are reassessed or renewed, progressively over a 12-month period.
The Department has confirmed the scale: social, civic and community participation allocations fall by 50 per cent and capacity-building daily activities by 10 per cent, delivered by ministerial determination from 1 October. It will not always mean a 50 per cent fall in actual spend, because many participants were not using their full allocation. Do not build future forecasts solely on previous funding levels.
90 days, and a system that checks your work
Ninety days sounds generous until you map what sits inside it. Roster, shift delivered, timesheet, payroll, invoice, claim, reconciliation. Seven steps, and only one of them happens on the ground.
- Roster
- Shift deliveredon the ground
- Timesheet
- Payroll
- Invoice
- Claim
- Reconciliation
One weak link and the clock runs out. The NDIA has also introduced additional claim validation and quality control measures in its upgraded payments system, so claims that do not line up with service records or plan details are more likely to be queried before they are paid.
Unspent funds stop rolling over
A renewed plan will not carry forward unspent funds from the previous plan. Providers whose revenue has benefited from late-in-plan spending should model what happens when that pattern changes.
The part nobody enjoys: records
Since 27 August 2026, providers must keep prescribed NDIS claim records for seven years, backed by a civil penalty of 120 penalty units, currently about $43,680. Participants and plan managers keep theirs for three years. The records must show a claim was correct and the support was actually delivered. If required records cannot be produced, the NDIA can treat the amount as a debt.
Seven years of service agreements, timesheets, invoices and evidence of delivery, retrievable on request. That is a system with an owner, not a filing decision.
The Act bans providers from offering or giving an inducement or kickback likely to encourage someone to start, keep or increase their use of that provider’s services, so review any referral fee or incentive arrangement now and take proper advice.
What this means across the business
Rostering
The roster is now part of the evidence behind a claim, not just a scheduling tool. Changes made after a shift have to reach the timesheet, or the claim and the record supporting it will not agree.
Payroll
Timesheets have to reflect what was actually delivered, not what was planned. A variance corrected in payroll but never carried back into the claim leaves the two disagreeing.
Bookkeeping and claims
The claim has to be submitted within 90 days of the support being delivered, so the run from delivery to invoice to claim has to hold inside that window every month.
Finance
Participant budgets, the October reset and registration status all feed the forecast. Plan-level revenue is no longer a stable input.
Records and compliance
Seven years of claim evidence, retrievable on request, with someone named as responsible for it.
Marketing and referrals
Referral fees, incentives and promotional arrangements need reviewing before the inducements ban starts on 20 November 2026.
Six functions. In a lot of provider businesses, the same two or three people cover all of them.
Where to start on Monday
Four moves, in order. None of them require a consultant.
Confirm your registration position and put every date above into one calendar that someone actually owns.
Run one week of rosters against timesheets, payroll, invoices and claims. Wherever they disagree, you have found your 90-day risk.
Decide today where seven years of claim evidence lives and who is responsible for it.
The 90 days runs from the date the support was delivered, not the date you invoice. Track delivery to submission and treat anything past 30 days as an exception to work, not a number to report.
That last one is the most useful metric a provider can adopt this year, and almost nobody measures it.
The uncomfortable arithmetic
None of these reforms increase what you can charge, and the Minister is now the pricing decision-maker. They increase the administrative work required to be paid at your existing price: more frequent claiming, tighter matching, longer retention, more evidence.
Which leaves three options.
Most of the work these reforms create is process work, accurate and repeatable and deadline driven. It does not need to sit in the same room as your support workers. It does need to happen every single day.
Your compliance load just went up. Your margin did not.
My Offshore Staff places trained bookkeepers, payroll officers, rostering officers, claims administrators and business analysts into Australian NDIS businesses. They sit inside your systems, work to your process and clear the daily administration that these reforms are about to make unforgiving. You keep the client relationship and the decisions. You stop losing the week to reconciliation.
Book a free 30-minute call →Related: NDIS offshore support · How offshore staffing works · All services
Sources and further reading
- NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Act 2026 (Cth), Act No. 66 of 2026
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: Securing the NDIS for future generations timeline
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: About the changes to the NDIS
- NDIS: Securing the NDIS for future generations
- NDIS: SIL claims and payment changes from 1 July 2026
This article is general information only and is current as at 25 September 2026. It is not legal, financial or compliance advice and does not take account of your circumstances. Commencement dates published by the NDIA and the Department may change. Check current NDIS guidance and seek appropriate professional advice before acting.