Understanding Billable Hours in Support Coordination: What’s In and Out of Scope

This blog unpacks the essentials around billable hours, explores best practice for recording your time, and helps you communicate your role boundaries clearly and ethically.

Under the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits (often called the Price Guide), there are strict rules about when providers can claim, how much they can charge, and what types of activities are considered billable.

For Support Coordinators, understanding these rules isn’t just about compliance—it’s about professionalism and transparency. Most of our work happens behind the scenes, and if participants don’t understand which activities are billable, they can feel blindsided when hours run out faster than expected.

Being able to confidently explain what’s in and out of scope protects both you and your participant, while helping to build trust and accountability in your working relationship.

Billable activities are tasks that directly support a participant to implement, monitor, or review their NDIS plan. These activities align with the capacity-building purpose of Support Coordination.

• This generally relates to meetings with or to support a participant.

• Includes meeting with participants (in person or online) and attending NDIS reviews to support a participant to understand the planning process and make informed decisions.

• Time spent travelling to meet with participants, in line with the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits rules, is billable within specified limits, including how much you can claim and which expenses are claimable.

• However, most Support Coordinators use their own transport rather than a company vehicle, so they choose to claim this expense on their tax instead.

This is where Support Coordinators spend most of their time, and where confusion often arises due to the work being completed behind the scenes rather than directly with a participant.

• Researching providers and supports requested by the participant, including making phone calls or sending emails to gather options or confirm service availability.

• Preparing for, facilitating, and following up on stakeholder meetings.

• Writing documentation including case notes, action plans, and risk assessments to evidence how you have supported a participant.

• Safeguarding and risk management activities, including following up on incident reports, submitting a change of situation, gathering evidence from the participant’s support network, or liaising with advocates or mainstream service providers where required.

• Budget monitoring and forecasting, reviewing expenditure statements, tracking service usage, and planning for future support needs.

• Liaising with Plan Managers and other providers to resolve funding or service delivery issues.

• Communicating with participants and their networks to coordinate supports and ensure service continuity.

All of these activities are considered billable when they directly assist the participant to pursue their plan goals and are clearly linked to their support needs.

• Preparing formal reports like the 8-week Implementation Report, end-of-plan review, or progress update, including preparation, evidence gathering, and submission of reports.

• If a participant cancels with insufficient notice, you can claim that time per NDIS rules.

• However, due to the nature of the Support Coordinator role, most use this time for other billable tasks such as completing documentation or planning.

Together, these form the core of billable Support Coordination work under NDIS rules.

Just as important is understanding what is not billable. These tasks may still be essential activities you complete as part of your role or your responsibilities to the organisation you work for, but they are not billable activities that can be charged against a participant’s plan.

• Driving a participant to appointments or community activities is a Support Worker responsibility and is not part of a Support Coordinator’s role, therefore, it is not billable.

• Support Coordinators continually provide information to stakeholders and the NDIS about the participant’s situation to advocate for the supports they need.

• This differs from formal advocacy. When ongoing advocacy is required to support a participant to access their rights, Support Coordinators link participants to advocacy services they do not take on the role of an advocate themselves.

• Activities such as participating in supervision, attending staff meetings, or training to increase your professional skills and knowledge are not billable.

• Tasks like setting up participant files, getting Support Coordinator Service Agreements and consent forms signed, or invoicing are considered organisational overheads, not billable activities.

• Building relationships and increasing awareness of community supports is valuable but not billable unless the activity directly relates to meeting the needs of a specific participant, rather than developing your general knowledge of local services.

Accurate recording of billable time isn’t just a compliance requirement, it’s ethical practice. The NDIS expects Support Coordinators to demonstrate that every billed activity:

• Directly assists a participant to pursue their goals,

• Has been agreed upon in advance, and

• Is properly documented for transparency and accountability of how Support Coordination funding has been utilised.

Most Support Coordinators record their billable time in 6- or 15-minute increments and round up or round down, which evens out over time. For example, if a series of activities for a participant takes 20 minutes, it could be recorded as three 6-minute blocks (18 minutes) or one 15-minute block.

To reduce administrative burden and ensure you’re using available hours efficiently, many Support Coordinators use Support Coordination Software. This helps streamline admin processes by recording and tracking both billable and non-billable activities throughout your day, while keeping track of KPIs. You can also pull reports to provide clarity for participants about how their Support Coordination funding has been utilised.

When writing your case notes, action plans, and risk assessments, make sure you clearly connect activities completed with the participant’s plan goals and outcomes.

Understanding what you can and can’t bill for is about more than following the rules it’s about ethical, transparent, and participant-centred practice, and operating within the boundaries of your Support Coordinator role.

Understanding billable time is essential to maintaining ethical, transparent, and accountable Support Coordination practice. If you need support in strengthening your understanding of NDIS billing requirements, contact us. Our team of experienced professionals can guide you with resources, coaching, and practical strategies tailored for Support Coordinators.

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