How to address errors when a participant’s NDIS plan has ended and avoid ‘Billable (No Funding)’ issues once the Activity is locked
Several features are available in SupportAbility to address issues, such as errors due to 'No plan found...' when submitting Bulk Payment Requests or when an Invoice is rejected, or you are notified that a participant's NDIS Plan has ended.
Based on different scenarios, this article steps through how these errors can be addressed and how your organisation can use various features to avoid ‘Billable (No Funding)’ issues once the Activity is locked.
Privileges:
- 'View Financial Information' in combination with either:
- 'Team Leader for ALL Services'
- 'Edit Client Records Across ALL Services'
Audience: Authorised Representatives, Finance Team, Team Leaders
Summary
The following list summarises the content within this article. Click on the links below to take you to the relevant sections:
- Unable to adjust the Client's Funding Source from Billable (No Funding)
- How to address errors when a participant's plan has ended
- How to address errors when the new NDIS Plan and funding details are known
- How to address errors when the new NDIS Plan and funding details are not yet known
- Summary of steps
- Why is it important to complete these steps?
- Cancel the Rejected Allocations/Invoice Items
- Extend the End Date of the Client's NDIS Direct Funding record
- Place the Funding record 'On Billing Hold'
- Hide Budget Utilisation Warnings
- Re-add the Rejected Support Allocations in Finance Edit Mode
- Continue to Allocate NDIS Supports whilst awaiting the new funding details
- Create the Client's new Funding record using the Plan Review feature when the new funding details are known
- Complete financial processing for services delivered
- How to address errors when the new NDIS Plan and funding details are known
Unable to adjust the Client's Funding Source from 'Billable (No Funding)'
When a Client's NDIS Direct Funding record ends, the Funding Source will revert to 'Billable (No Funding)' in the Activities that they participate in beyond the Funding end date.
If the Client's Funding Source has reverted to Billable (No Funding) for any of the group Activities they participate in, once the Activity Sign Off has been performed the Activity will essentially be 'locked' due to:
- Other participants having NDIS Support Allocations included in a Bulk Payment Request (BPR, for Agency Managed Supports), or
- Direct Invoices having been generated (in the case where they are Self Managing or Plan Managing all or part of their Funding), or
- Staff Time Sheets having been included in a Time Sheet Batch.
This results in the Client's Funding Source being unable to be corrected manually once a new Funding record has been created. For example, Client Jessie:
The Activity Sign Off cannot be removed for the reasons mentioned above.
Several tools can now be utilised to avoid this issue, as outlined in detail below.
How to address errors when a participant's plan has ended
After encountering an error such as 'No plan found...' when submitting Bulk Payment Requests (BPRs), or when an Invoice is rejected by a Plan Manager due to the participant's NDIS Plan having ended, or when you are notified by a Client that their new NDIS Plan has commenced, there are now tools available in SupportAbility to address each of these scenarios.
The order in which to utilise these tools depends on whether or not the new funding details are known. Examples of each of these scenarios have been outlined below.
How to address errors when the new NDIS Plan and funding details are known
When the Client's new NDIS Plan and funding details are known, provided the start date of the new Funding period commences before the previous Funding record expires, the new NDIS Client Funding record can be created using the Plan Review feature.
For example, a fortnightly invoice for the Supports delivered to our Client Bradley in September has been sent to his Plan Manager, Bright Plan Management.
The End Date for Bradley's NDIS Direct Funding record #81 is the 14th of September, 2022. However, he advised us at the end of September that his new NDIS Plan commenced on August 30th.
Given that we have invoiced Bright Plan Management for the Supports delivered in September, these Supports are still associated with the Client's current Funding record #81:
Given we know the commencement date of the new Funding record i.e. 30th of August, and this occurs before the end date of the previous Funding record #81, i.e. 14th of September, we can create the Client's new Funding record using the Plan Review feature. This will automatically update Funding Source to the new Funding record in all Activities it is in use for that occur within this date range, including the Activities in September.
Create the Client's new Funding record using the Plan Review feature
To create the Client's new Funding record using the Plan Review feature, navigate to the Client's existing NDIS Funding record, #81 in this example, then open the Actions menu and select 'Plan Review':
This allows you to enter the new Funding Start and End Dates, e.g. 30th of August:
Once 'Add' is selected, a blue notification message will appear advising what will occur once this is confirmed.
In summary, selecting confirm:
- Creates the new Funding record, including a copy of all NDIS Supports and settings from the current Funding record
- Updates the End Date of the original Funding record automatically to the day prior to the new Funding Start Date
- Updates the Funding Source in the associated Activities automatically to ensure all NDIS Support Allocations that occur within the new Funding Date range are linked to the new Funding record
Once confirmed, you will be navigated to the new Funding record where any required updates can be made, e.g. reviewing NDIS Support Budgets, notes and any other settings:
A link to view the Funding record this record was created from, i.e. #81, is listed in the Client Funding Details section on the right next to 'Reviewed From' for reference.
Creating the Client's new Funding record using the Plan Review feature ensures all Expenditure and Utilisation is automatically linked to the correct Funding record.
In this example, we can see that Bradley's Funding Source has been updated automatically to the new Funding record #101 in the Activities in September, regardless of the fact the Activity Sign Off had occurred, and Invoices have been generated:
This ensures that the existing Invoices, Expenditure and Utilisation is automatically linked to the correct Funding record that commenced on the 30th of August.
How to address errors when the new NDIS Plan and funding details are not yet known
When there is a delay in finding out about the Client's new NDIS Plan and funding details, and your organisation is continuing to deliver Supports to the Client in such a situation, the suggested workflow to address this is similar to the above.
Summary of steps
However, some additional steps are required and are recommended to be completed in the following order:
- Cancel the Rejected Allocations/Invoice Items
- Extend the End Date of the Client's NDIS Direct Funding record
- Place the Funding record 'On Billing Hold'
- Hide Budget Utilisation Warnings (optional)
- Re-add the Rejected Support Allocations in Finance Edit Mode
- Continue to Allocate NDIS Supports whilst awaiting the new funding details
- Create the Client's new Funding record using the Plan Review feature when the new funding details are known
- Complete financial processing for services delivered
A detailed example of this workflow has been outlined below.
Why is it important to complete these steps?
In summary, it is important to Cancel the Rejected Allocations/Invoice Items associated with the current Funding record first as they have not been successfully claimed/paid.
Extending the End Date of the Funding record and then placing this 'On Billing Hold' is recommended to not only ensure NDIS Support Allocations can continue to be added in the Activities the Client participates in for continuity of service delivery, but to also ensure the new Funding record can be created using the Plan Review feature once the new Funding details are known.
It is important to create the new Funding record using the Plan Review feature, to ensure that all of the Allocations that have been added against the original Funding record that was placed ‘On Billing Hold’ whilst awaiting the new Funding details are automatically linked to the new Funding record correctly.
The added benefit to this approach is not needing to go back retrospectively and ‘backfill’ all of the historic Activities once the new funding details are known.
Cancel the Rejected Allocations/Invoice Items
Following a Rejection from the portal indicating that a participant's plan has ended, e.g. Joelene Makovsky:
The Rejected Allocations can first be Cancelled in the BPR.
To Cancel Rejected Allocations, select the relevant Allocations, then navigate to the Bulk Actions menu and select 'Mark for Cancellation':
Navigate back to the Bulk Actions menu and select 'Process Action' to finalise this:
Once this has been processed, the selected Allocations are now 'Cancelled':
It is important to note that if you become aware of the fact that a Client's plan has ended and the new Funding details are not yet known for a participant who is Plan Managed or Self Managing their plan, similar to the above, you can Cancel the Invoice Items in the relevant Invoices as required:
For more information regarding this, please see the How to Cancel Invoice Items in a Direct Invoice article linked below for reference.
Extend the End Date of the Client's NDIS Direct Funding record
To keep track of the supports that are delivered whilst awaiting the new Funding details, it is recommended to extend the 'End Date' of the Client's Funding record (if required) and then place the Funding record 'On Billing Hold' (as outlined in the next section).
For example, the End Date for Joelene's NDIS Direct Funding record is the 19th of September, 2022. Given we are continuing to deliver services to Joelene that will be claimed against her new Funding record once the details are known, we will extend this out for a period of two months to the 19th of November, 2022:
Notes can be added to explain why this has been extended for reference. Extending the Client's Funding Period ensures that NDIS Support Allocations can continue to be added for the Activities they participate in, allowing you to keep track of the supports utilised.
Place the Funding record 'On Billing Hold'
Given that the last BPR submitted resulted in errors for Joelene, we want to ensure that the NDIS Support Allocations in subsequent Activities are not included in financial processing. Therefore, placing the Funding record 'On Billing Hold' is important as it ensures that NDIS Support Allocations are not included in financial processing once the Activity Sign Off is performed.
Placing the Client's Funding record 'On Billing Hold' also allows us to continue to utilise the Funding record in the Activities Joelene participates in so we can continue service delivery as normal whilst awaiting confirmation of the new Funding details and avoid the need to backfill this retrospectively once the new Funding details are known.
To update this, navigate to the Client's Funding record and select the 'Change' button next to 'On Billing Hold' in Client Funding Details:
To place the record 'On Billing Hold' select 'Yes' and then Save:
Once saved, the Funding record will be On Billing Hold, and you will notice a banner at the top of the Funding record reflecting this:
If the Funding record is not extended and placed On Billing Hold, this runs the risk that the Client's Funding Source in Activities will revert to 'Billable (No Funding)' once the Funding period expires.
In addition to this, when you are ready to re-add the new Funding record for the individual, the Activity Sign Off will most likely be unable to be removed at this stage, due to other billing assets being associated with this such as Invoices for other Clients.
Hide Budget Utilisation Warnings
Since the Funding End Date has been extended and we are continuing to use this Funding record to Allocate NDIS Supports with the Funding record 'On Billing Hold' until the new Funding details are known, you may notice Budget Utilisation Warnings appear if the Budget is close to or has exceeded the total value.
Therefore, you may wish to turn off Budget Utilisation Warnings for any Clients you have completed this for, as they are not relevant given the Expenditure and Utilisation will be moved to the new Funding record when it is created using the Plan Review feature once the new Funding details are known.
To turn off Budget Utilisation Warnings, navigate to the Client Funding record and choose 'Hide Utilisation Warnings' for the relevant NDIS Supports:
It is important to note that this will only hide the Budget Utilisation Warnings when the Budget is near to being utilised. However, if the utilisation has gone over Budget (as per the above screenshot), red 'Budget over utilised' warnings will continue to appear.
Therefore it is important to inform Staff that Budget Utilisation Warnings can be disregarded for Client Funding records that are 'On Billing Hold'.
Re-add the Rejected Support Allocations in Finance Edit Mode
In this scenario, it is also important to re-add the Support Allocations that were Rejected in Signed Off Activities, so that they may be claimed in future against the new Funding record once the new Funding details are known.
To do this, you can locate these Allocations in a few different ways. You could navigate to the BPR and filter the list down to Cancelled Allocations only, then navigate to each Activity from here:
Or you could use the Allocations Report, available from the Finance menu, to search for Allocations that have the BPR Processing Status of Cancelled in general, or for the specific Client e.g. Joelene:
Once in the Activity record, open the NDIS Support Allocations for the Client:
You will notice a couple of badges displayed in the Activity record 'On Billing Hold' reflecting the status of the Client's Funding record for reference, and over in the 'Finance' column, a badge reflecting there are 'Cancellations' for this Client.
NDIS Support Allocations appear in 'Finance Edit Mode' for Staff with the required 'Finance Admin' privileges (i.e. 'View Financial Information' in combination with either the 'Edit ALL Client Records', or 'Team Leader for ALL Services' privilege) after Activity Sign Off:
To re-add these Support Allocations, either use the 'Add Support Item' search or navigate to the Actions menu and select 'Duplicate':
Once re-added, the Quantity, Portion and Price can be updated as required to reflect the existing Allocations e.g:
Given that the Client's Funding record is 'On Billing Hold', these Allocations are blocked from inclusion when generating BPRs and/or Invoice Batches until this setting is removed when appropriate as outlined below.
Continue to Allocate NDIS Supports whilst awaiting the new funding details
Now that we have extended the End Date in the Client's Funding record and placed it 'On Billing Hold', NDIS Support Allocations can continue to be added for the Activities they participate in, allowing for continuity of service delivery, ensuring these Supports are not included in financial processing:
'On Billing Hold' badges are displayed in multiple places to reflect the status of the Funding record, including in the NDIS Support Allocation window:
N.B. Given the Funding End Date has been extended in situations where the expenditure has gone over Budget, red 'Budget over utilised' warnings will continue to appear as per the examples above.
However, Budget Utilisation Warnings can be disregarded for Client Funding records that are 'On Billing Hold' due to the fact that the over utilisation will be moved to the correct Funding record when this is created via the Plan Review feature once the new funding details are known.
Create the Client's new Funding record using the Plan Review feature when the new funding details are known
When the new Funding details are known, it is recommended to create the Client's new Funding record utilising the 'Plan Review' feature.
For example, Joelene informs us her new plan commenced on the 5th of September. Given this date occurs before the end date of her current Funding record (we extended ending on the 19th of November), we can create the new Funding record this way.
The Plan Review feature is available from the 'Actions' menu of the existing NDIS Direct Client Funding record:
Selecting this creates the new Funding record automatically based on the dates entered e.g. 5th of September, and copies all settings from the original Funding record, including NDIS Support Budgets once confirmed:
Any settings, notes and NDIS Supports can then be adjusted in the new Client Funding record, e.g. #102, as required. A link that indicates which Funding record this was reviewed from e.g. #80, is included too for reference:
The End Date of the original Client Funding record #80 is also updated as part of this process automatically:
Additional notes can be added as required to provide an overview of what has occurred.
However, the most important element to creating a new Funding record in this way is that doing so automatically updates the Funding Source in all of the Activities that align with the dates of the new Funding record, e.g. #102, regardless of the Activity Sign Off status:
It is important to create the new Funding record using the Plan Review feature, to ensure that all of the Allocations that have been added against the original Funding record that was placed 'On Billing Hold' whilst awaiting the new Funding details are automatically linked to the new Funding record correctly.
The added benefit to this approach is not needing to go back retrospectively and 'backfill' all of the historic Activities once the new funding details are known.
It is important to note that following the new Funding record being created, any Allocations in Signed Off Activities will be available immediately to include in a BPR or Invoice Batch as outlined below. If the Allocations need to be reviewed before the billing is completed, then the new Client Funding record can be placed 'On Billing Hold' as soon as it has been created temporarily to allow for any reviews to be completed.
When you are ready to bill for these Allocations, simply remove 'On Billing Hold' from this Funding record. You may also wish to remove 'On Billing Hold' from the previous Client Funding record, but this step is only required if there are any outstanding Allocations relating to the previous Funding record that need to be billed (which should not be the case).
Complete financial processing for services delivered
Following this, Allocations that need to be billed for the Client for services delivered can be included in Invoice Batches/BPRs as all of the Allocations are linked to the new and correct Client Funding record e.g. Funding record #102 for Joelene, and no more errors should be encountered:
