On this page you will find step by step tutorials for each step that you need complete in order to get paid. There are still a few issues preventing some payments going through – it seems the majority of them are with individual clients, and some funding types. There does seem to be a problem with Trans disciplinary plans and the way that funding has been allocated to existing providers, which may be preventing new clinicians from accessing funds. Other issues could be with your registration, and the way it appears on the portal. You will need to speak with NDIS about these issues.
Provider Registration:
Official Advice from NDIS:
Speech Pathologist registrations have been consolidated to ‘therapeutic supports’ (19th Aug 16)
Speech pathologists should note that their registration group has been consolidated in the new system to be inclusive of all professional therapists (e.g. allied health – speech pathologists and occupational therapists). This single therapeutic group is named ‘therapeutic supports’ and it contains all of those other aspects that speech therapists would have seen separately before (i.e. a different name, but with the same registration, authorisation and functions).
Step 1: Check your bank account details
My bank account details didn’t migrate rom the old payment portal to MyPlace. You cannot make a payment request if you have no bank account details in the system. The good news is you can add them (and change them) yourself.
Step 2 – Create a service booking for your client
You will need to to do this for each client that does not have a service already entered. The advice from NDIS is to enter any service bookings that have not been automatically entered/migrated. I am so sorry if you have lots of service plans to enter – they need to be entered one by one 🙁 Plan for some super indulgent self care (massage, wine, or a weekend getaway) straight afterwards. You will need it!
Note: I have one client that I cannot add a service booking as their plan has not been activated on the system.
Advice for searching for plan using dates (23rd Aug 2016)
- Try searching for the plan date from yesterday’s date to today’s date
- Use exact start and end dates
- Use today’s date for start date and a date close to the end date of plan for end date (within a few weeks)
Official advice from NDIS:
Submitting Payment Requests against multiple claims (19 Aug 16)
(payment requests and service bookings must be for the same period as the participants plan)
We are finding in some cases providers are unsuccessful when submitting Payment Requests because they span multiple plans for a given participant. Providers are required to create Service Bookings to cover each plan and separate the payment requests accordingly.
Approval of provider claims on behalf of participant (19 Aug 16)
(Participants do not need to authorise service bookings in their portal)
Participants are generally required to approve Service Bookings created by providers for them. This is necessary for the providers’ Payment Requests against the Service Booking to be paid.
However, providers can approve the Service Booking on behalf of the participant if this has been discussed with the participant and agreed. There is a tick box included in the process to create a Service Booking which can be selected to indicate the provider is approving the Service Booking on the participant’s behalf. Providers are encouraged to do this wherever possible and appropriate.
Step 3 – Request a payment
There are two ways you can create a payment claim, the payment request function, and the bulk upload form.
The individual payment method is great if you only have a few clients to make claims for, or if you just like to check what you are doing every step of the way. I like to put the claim request ID on each of my invoices so I have a second way to reconcile payments.
The bulk upload method is perfect if you have a large number of clients to to request payments for.
I’ll show you each method, so you can choose which works for you.
Official advice from NDIS:
Payment Requests for services delivered in June 2016 (19 Aug 16)
To accommodate the system cut-over and the beginning of a new financial year, please split your Payment Requests into two time periods:
1. Claims for services delivered on or before 16 June 2016.
2. Claims for services delivered from 17 June onwards.
Services provided in 2015–16 should be claimed using the support item numbers and prices as per the 2015–16 price guide. (note I have successfully claimed using the 2016-2017 price codes – this may be new functionality).
Submitting Payment Requests within 60 days (19 Aug 16)
Providers should submit Payment Requests in the myplace portal within 60 days of the service date. If they submit a Payment Request more than 60 days after the service, they will need to contact the Agency to progress the claim on behalf of the provider.
Plan Manager prices (19th Aug 2016)
For financial intermediary monthly processing services, the myplace portal is currently limiting Payment Requests for 2015–16 services at the published 2015–16 Price Guide price of around $30/month (prices vary by state and location). If you have concerns about this, please contact your local Regional Office to discuss.
Note that the price for financial intermediary monthly processing in the 2016–17 financial year is limited to around $90 (prices vary by state and location) in accordance with the 2016–17 Price Guide.
Unofficial advice reported by others:
Check you are using the correct item code:
Ensure you are using the correct code. Some people have been incorrectly advices to use the code: “Specialised individual therapy for early childhood” item 15_040_0118_1_3. This is incorrect, and may result in the error: provider not qualified to claim for the support item. Use the code “individual assessment, therapy and/or training (includes assistive technology)” item 15_048_0128_1_3
Make 1 claim per day (or time period)
Consolidate your claims if multiple services are provided in one day/period.
Method 1 – Create an individual payment request
Note: The NDIS report that it is now possible to enter part hours (see below – I haven’t yet tested this functionality). Use this conversion sheet to converts minutes to decimal.
Official advice from NDIS:
Decimal values for quantity in the portal (19th Aug 16)
Providers can now claim in decimal format in the portal. This includes for hours (e.g. 2.5 hours = 2 hours 30 minutes). Up to five numeric values is accepted, including NNNNN OR NNN.NN format.
Official clarification: You can enter hours in the quantity column (decimal format( OR the hours column (26th Aug 16) We would like to clarify that decimal values can be used in the Quantity column, including to represent hours (e.g. 2.5 hours = 2 hours 30 minutes). However values entered into the Hours column cannot be decimal and must be in an hour: minute format (e.g. 2:30 for 2 hours 30 mins). Similarly, the hours: minute format cannot be used in the Quantity column.
You cannot use both formats for the same claim.
Note: that decimal format in the Quantity column must always be used for support items with a unit of measure of ‘each’ or similar.
Choose the most relevant support item to your service (19th Aug 16)
Importantly the new price guide has consolidated some of the support items and descriptors. As such, therapists may have to use more general items than they did previously. You should look for the different descriptors and select the most appropriate item to the service you deliver.
Method 2 – Upload a bulk payment form
Please see advice in method 1 – create a payment request regarding support items.
Download my prefilled bulk payment template
Download the NDIS blank bulk upload form
Get the new support codes (mapped against the old codes)
Importantly the new price guide has consolidated some of the support items and descriptors. As such, therapists may have to use more general items than they did previously. You should look for the different descriptors and select the most appropriate item to the service you deliver (NDIS portal update 19th Aug 16).
How to quickly change all the dates in your bulk upload file to the correct format – do this step just before you save the file, and do not reopen it again (or all the dates will change back!)
NDIS quick reference guide to bulk payments
Note: You need to get every single part of the form correct to be able to claim. Just one error will result in the entire claim form being rejected. NDIS also suggest re-saving the file with a new name before resubmitting it (Yes, that’s painful).
Official Advice from NDIS:
Some errors are being corrected after submission (26th August 2016)
- If entered incorrectly, in some instances the start and end dates will be converted into the correct format. However providers should format the dates as YYYY-MM-DD.
- The GST code can be entered in lower case (i.e. it accepts ‘P2’ or ‘p2’).
- Any special characters entered in the item code will be converted to an underscore (e.g. convert dashes to underscores).
You also need to have an active service booking for the period you are claiming for for every participant. Some people have been advised to try and do a bulk upload for clients they were previously connected to, but cannot make a service booking for on the system.
Submitting bulk claims – hints and tips from the NDIS (26 Aug 2016)
There are some things you can do to ensure that your bulk claims are processed successfully through the myplace portal.
Template and format
- Use the bulk upload template available on the myplace Provider Portal.
- Ensure each item is entered in a separate line item in the template
- The date columns in the bulk upload file should be in the format YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2016-08-24).
CSV files
- Make sure there are no extra characters in columns or rows that are beyond the viewable section of the worksheet. There should be no character in rows or columns that are beyond the claim data you are entering (e.g. your claims end on row 47, however there is a character in a cell in row 102) as this will result in the whole file not loading.
- When saving an Excel worksheet as a .CSV file, make sure it is saved as the ‘Comma delimited’ option.
- The bulk upload filename cannot exceed 20 characters in length. This limit includes the extension (.CSV) and all characters used in the filename, including the ‘.’ (dot) (e.g. BULKUPLOAD2.CSV is 15 characters).
- CSV files with the correct date format that are saved and closed – then reopened – will revert the date format to an incompatible format, and will need to be reformatted – this is a function of Excel.
Payment Requests
- Line items within the bulk upload file should create the corresponding number of Payment Requests (e.g. 100 rows/lines (excluding the header row) will ideally create 100 payment requests).
- If an individual bulk upload line item does NOT create a Payment Request, it is an error with the line item/s which has prevented the request’s creation (e.g. the participant does not exist).
- Payment Requests that are created with a status of ‘Pending’ will be paid after the next payment run cycle – this occurs a minimum of once a day, Monday to Friday.
- Payment Requests with a status of ‘Pending’ will usually change to ‘Paid’ following the completion of a payment run cycle.
- Payment Requests created after the last payment run cycle on a Friday will be picked-up in the payment run cycle of the next business day – typically the next Monday.
- Payment Requests that are created with a status of ‘Rejected’ have failed due to some type of validation error (e.g. the support item price is not valid for the service dates being claimed).
- Payment Requests that have been ‘Rejected’ (or claims that do not create a Payment Request), must be rectified and reloaded. A ‘Rejected’ claim cannot be fixed in the portal, it will remain in ‘Rejected’ status forever, and a new request needs to be created.
- If your bulk upload results in ‘Rejected’ Payment Requests, or fails to create some requests you should NOT reload the whole file. Create a new file with only those line items that failed, and fix the issues before attempting to reload.
Advance/Emergency/Manual Payments
A number of providers have been issued with advance/emergency/manual payments over a period of weeks. This has created further issues for some people. The emergency payments were not entered on the system in such a way that they reconciled against the individual participants. The payments are considered a ‘loan’ (ie a debt) in the accounting system, and need to be ‘paid off’ prior to further payments flowing to your bank account. In order to ‘pay off’ the loan, you need to enter all of the claims that relate to the payment into the NDIS portal. The NDIS advised they have a process for entering these on your behalf, however given the large number of providers affected, this may take some time to occur. You can enter these yourself if required using either of the 2 methods above. If you need to get paid ASAP – I recommend entering it your self using the bulk upload method. There is a process in place to avoid duplicate payments (see below).
Official NDIS advice:
Duplicate payments (26th Aug 2016)
Please note, that the Provider Portal will reject Payment Requests which appear identical to those previously submitted. The system will look at all fields in the Payment Request including the receipt number, to ensure the Payment Request is unique and has not been previously claimed for.
We will enter payments on your behalf – wait for us to contact you (19th Aug 16)
Last week we let you know that the Agency had commenced a process to acquit advance payments that some of you received, and that you may receive a call seeking some additional information.
If you are contacted by someone from the Agency, and you are not available at that time, you must agree a time that works for you, for our staff to call you back. Working through this process allows us to update your record with information about all your Payment Requests and enables you to receive your correct payments for future Payment Requests. The Agency will enter the information into the system on your behalf, you will just need to provide us with the information required for successful Payment Requests to be made.
Step 4 (optional) – Check your payment request status
Once you have made your payment request, you can check your payment request status. You can get the payment request ID here, and check if there were any issues with the payment.The NDIS advises:
Providers can check on the status of each payment request in the payment request tile to compare this against the uploaded file.
Official advice from NDIS:
- Providers can check the reason for each incomplete payment request by clicking on the payment request number in the payment request tile.
- Currently there is no functionality to check the reason of rejected payment requests.
- The majority of rejected payment requests will be due to missing service bookings.
- It is important to note that rejected payment requests will not appear in the payment request tile on the portal.
Step 5 (optional) – Check your remittance advice
Video coming soon. The money hits your bank account BEFORE the remittance. Wait 1-2 days before trying to reconcile.
NDIS official advice 26th Aug 2016:
NDIS remittance advice now available in HTML, PDF and CSV formats
On the Inbox tile, remittance advices are now available to download in PDF and CSV for use with excel format (note: this will open in Excel if the provider has Microsoft Office). Previously they were available in HTML only. These options are available to the right of the Subject for each inbox item.
Note: We are aware of an issue with opening the CSV format of the remittance advice from the inbox where it opens as a text file (.txt). We are working to resolve this over the weekend. In the meantime, you can save the file and remove the .txt from the file name so that it ends in .csv, and then open it with Excel.
Bonus – list of helpful phone numbers to get issues sorted out
Download this handy PDF with helpful phone and emails contacts for NDIS and parliamentarian contacts. If you are still having problems, make some noise!
NDIS essential phone number list for portal issues
Bonus 2 – Making a complaint to the NDIS
Information sourced from here: https://myplace.ndis.gov.au/ndisstorefront/about-us/contact-us/feedback-complaints.html
NDIS complaints procedure:
Our Complaints Procedure requires that we:
- take immediate action where there appears to be a high risk of harm, neglect or abuse
- aim to acknowledge complaints within the next business day from receipt
- call you within two business days of acknowledgement
- aim to resolve complaints within 21 business days of receipt
- publish information on our performance.
When we contact you to talk about your complaint we may ask you to provide more information to help us understand the nature of your complaint.
We will contact the person or organisation you are complaining about, provide them with details and ask for their comments and relevant information. We will let you know what they say in response to your complaint.
Complaints can be resolved in many different ways and the officer who is handling your complaint can provide you with information about how similar complaints have been resolved.
Still not happy?
If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of your complaint you can ask for a supervisor or manager to review your complaint and how it was handled. After this, if you are still not satisfied, you may seek assistance from the Commonwealth Ombudsman:
- Call: 1300 362 072
- Web: http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/making-a-complaint
Compensation for Detriment caused by Defective Administration (CDDA)
Members of the public can suffer loss or damage because of a government agency’s mistake or poor administrative practice. When that happens, they may not always be able to seek a remedy through administrative appeal, litigation or another legal mechanism.
The Scheme for Compensation for Detriment caused by Defective Administration (CDDA scheme) is an administrative scheme established to allow Australian Government agencies to provide compensation where there is a moral rather than a legal obligation to do so.
Contact the Ombudsman to discuss this further.
Read more here: Compensation for Defective Administration