NDIS guide

NDIS claim time limits: the 90 day rule from December 2026

Last updated . Applies to National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) providers, support workers and sole traders in Australia.

What is the NDIS 90 day claim rule?

In Australia, an NDIS provider currently has 2 years to submit a claim for a support it has delivered. From 1 December 2026 that window closes to 90 days. The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) states the new rule in one sentence: "Claims must be submitted within 90 days of delivering a support." It lists that change under December 2026, among the changes flowing from the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Act 2026 (Act No. 66 of 2026), which received Royal Assent on 20 August 2026.

Ninety days sounds generous until you count the chain. The shift happens, the worker writes the note, the note reaches whoever does the invoicing, the invoice goes to a plan manager, and the plan manager submits the claim. Every one of those steps spends part of the same 90 days, and a provider only controls the first few. A provider who invoices at the end of the month and chases the occasional missing timesheet is already using a good part of the window without noticing, because the current limit is so wide that nothing forces the issue.

What is the NDIS claim time limit now?

Two years, and it is already enforced automatically. A change to the NDIS Act took effect on 3 October 2024 giving providers, in the NDIA's words, 2 years to submit claims for payment after the support start date. A 12 month grace period applied, ending at midnight on 2 October 2025, and the NDIA states that from 3 October 2025 its systems automatically reject claims more than 2 years old. The NDIA's current guide to getting paid puts the same limit slightly differently: "You need to submit payment requests within 2 years after an NDIS support has been delivered."

That difference in wording, the support start date in one place and after the support has been delivered in the other, rarely matters at 2 years. At 90 days it matters for any support delivered over a period rather than in a single session. The Act uses one trigger for both limits: subsection 45A(5) counts the period from the day the support is provided to the participant, and the December 2026 amendment changes only the length, from 2 years to 90 days. For a support delivered over several days the Act does not say which day counts, so treat the first day of delivery as the safe assumption and do not build a process that depends on a later reading.

The claim deadlines in play, and which one is which

Searching this topic returns 60 days, 90 days and 2 years, usually with no date attached, because several different rules are in play at once and one of them is stale. They are not the same rule and they do not start counting from the same event.

Rule How long Counted from Status
Statutory claim limit, current 2 years The day the support is provided (section 45A(5)) In force since 3 October 2024. Claims more than 2 years old automatically rejected since 3 October 2025
Statutory claim limit, new 90 days The day the support is provided (section 45A(5)) From 1 December 2026 (Schedule 2, Part 5 of the amending Act)
Payment requests for NDIA managed participants 90 days The end of a service booking Stated in the NDIA guide to getting paid, updated 14 July 2026, but the NDIA has removed service bookings in its new computer system, so it only bites where a service booking still exists
NDIA Provider Toolkit wording 60 days The end of a service booking Undated page, expressed as an obligation on registered providers to claim within a reasonable time. The current guide to getting paid says 90 days, so use that

The service booking row is the reason so much of this is confusing. The NDIA has removed service bookings, stating that they gave providers funding surety but limited participant choice and control, and replaced the arrangement with the "my providers" concept. Its guide to getting paid still carries the service booking wording. So a 90 day clock tied to the end of a service booking is not something most providers can still measure, while a 90 day clock tied to the date of delivery is about to apply to everyone. Plan managers also set their own invoice cut-offs, often 90 days. Those are that plan manager's commercial terms, not the statutory limit. If someone tells you about "the 90 day rule", it is worth asking which one they mean.

One more timing rule sits underneath all of them. The NDIA states that it may hold a claim for review if it is submitted more than 6 months after the support was delivered, and that the review can take up to 28 days. If more information is needed you are told in writing and given at least 14 business days to provide it. From December 2026 a claim that old should not exist, but the review process still applies to anything already in the system.

Where the December 2026 date comes from, and what is not settled

The change sits in the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Act, which received Royal Assent on 20 August 2026. The NDIA's page on that Act, current as at 17 September 2026, lists claiming timeframes under "Changes from December 2026" and states the 90 day rule in the single sentence quoted above. The date is fixed by the Act itself: section 2 of the amending Act commences Schedule 2, Part 5 (Reducing claim times) on 1 December 2026. From that day paragraph 45A(5)(a) of the NDIS Act reads 90 days instead of 2 years.

One point causes confusion and is worth clearing up. The NDIA's August 2026 provider fact sheet, "NDIS legislation information, changes for providers", puts the same 90 day sentence in a block headed "Changes from October 2026". That block also contains changes the NDIA website dates to 2027 and 2028, including the expansion of mandatory registration and the trusted panel of plan management providers. So the October heading appears to be either a loose grouping of everything from October 2026 onwards or an error in the fact sheet. Either way, work to December 2026 and check the NDIA's page again in November.

Three things are genuinely not published yet, and no one should tell you otherwise:

  • Whether there is a transition. The 2 year limit came with a 12 month grace period. Nothing the NDIA has published says whether the 90 day limit gets one. The amending Act has no application or transitional provision for this change, so it does not settle whether a support delivered before 1 December 2026 keeps the 2 year window. The Minister can still make transitional rules on the point under Schedule 5 of the amending Act, and none had been made as at 8 October 2026. Plan for the tighter outcome.
  • Whether late claims can be accepted at all. The current limit is enforced by automatic system rejection. The Act already contains a discretion that the amendment does not change: under subsection 45A(6) the CEO may treat a late claim as made in time if exceptional circumstances justify the delay and the claim was made within a reasonable period. How the NDIA will apply that discretion to the 90 day limit has not been published.
  • How it is measured for plan managed and self managed supports. A provider working with a plan managed participant does not submit the claim; the plan manager does. A provider working with a self managed participant invoices the participant. The NDIA has not published how the 90 days will be counted in either case, and its guide to getting paid states no time limit for either.

Who this affects

Every provider who claims NDIS funds, registered or not, and the route the claim takes decides where the risk sits.

  • NDIA managed participants. You submit the payment request yourself through the myplace provider portal, and the NDIA states you need to be recorded as a "my provider" before you submit it. The 90 days is yours to manage end to end.
  • Plan managed participants. You invoice the plan manager, who submits the claim. Your invoice has to arrive early enough for them to claim inside the window, which means your internal deadline is shorter than 90 days by however long their processing takes. The NDIA states the invoice must include a valid Australian Business Number (ABN) unless you are exempt from providing one, and that an exempt supplier must include a statement by a supplier form.
  • Self managed participants. You invoice the participant, they pay you, and you then send them a receipt so they can acquit the expense against their plan. A participant who pays promptly but acquits late is a risk you cannot see from your own records.
  • Independent support workers and sole traders. The exposure is worst here, because invoicing is the job that gets done last after a full week of shifts. There is no accounts team to notice a missed invoice.

What to fix before December 2026

None of this needs new software. It needs a shorter, more predictable cycle and a way of noticing when a claim has not gone out.

  1. Measure your actual lag. Take last month's claims and work out the number of days between the date of support and the date the claim was submitted. Use the worst case, not the average. If the worst case is over 60 days you have no margin for a sick week, a holiday or a disputed invoice.
  2. Move to a fixed claim cycle. Weekly or fortnightly, on a set day, whether or not everything is perfect. Claim what is clean and deal with the exceptions separately, rather than holding a whole run for one query.
  3. Put a note deadline on workers. If a progress note or shift record is the evidence behind a claim, it needs a submission deadline in writing, in the employment or contractor documents and in the induction, not just a verbal expectation.
  4. Put an invoicing timeframe in your service agreements. State when you invoice, who you invoice, and what happens if a participant or plan manager disputes an invoice. If the agreement is silent, a dispute can quietly consume the whole window. An agreement also needs a variation mechanism now that support budgets are being reduced from 1 October 2026. Our guide to what has to be in a SIL service agreement works through the claiming and invoicing terms in detail for supported independent living, and the same logic applies to ordinary supports. How much you can invoice is a separate question, capped by the NDIS price limits in force on the day the support is delivered.
  5. Ask each plan manager for their processing time and work backwards. If they need 10 business days, your invoice deadline is not 90 days, it is closer to 70, and less again if anything has to be corrected and resubmitted.
  6. Clear the backlog now. Run a list of every delivered support with no submitted claim, oldest first, and work through it before the window narrows. Anything more than 2 years old will already have been rejected.
  7. Reconcile claims against delivery records. Rosters, attendance logs and progress notes should account for every claim, and every claim should trace to a record of delivery. For registered providers, that reconciliation is also what the NDIA's Provider Payment Assurance Program asks for.
  8. Diarise it. Put the December 2026 change, and a check of the NDIA's page in November, in your compliance calendar with a named person against it.

The records side of this

A shorter claiming window raises the value of the records behind each claim, because there is less time to reconstruct anything. The same Act inserted section 45B, which requires NDIS providers to keep records relating to claims for 7 years from the day the claim is made, but only records of a kind prescribed by the NDIS rules. The section commenced on 27 August 2026; as at 8 October 2026 no rules prescribing those records had been made. The NDIA is direct about the consequence in its record keeping guidance: "Failure to provide complete and accurate records during a review may result in funds having to be repaid to us." A claim submitted inside 90 days that cannot be evidenced two years later is still a problem, so the two obligations are best treated as one system. Our guide to how long NDIS providers must keep records sets out the periods and where each one comes from.

The documents that carry the weight here are ordinary operational ones: a service agreement that states invoicing terms, progress notes and attendance records that evidence delivery, an invoice and payment register that shows what has been claimed and what has not, and a compliance calendar that carries the dates. Chapter & Clause publishes each of those as editable templates in the NDIS Provider Core Library, including the Invoice and Payment Register, the Progress Notes Template and the NDIS Pricing and Claims Guide, and sole traders can start with the Independent Support Worker Verification Pack. Templates have to be customised to how you actually work and then used, and a document only becomes evidence once it is filled in.

Frequently asked questions

How long do NDIS providers have to submit a claim?

Two years from the day the support is provided at present, enforced by automatic rejection of claims more than 2 years old since 3 October 2025. From December 2026 the NDIA states that claims must be submitted within 90 days of delivering a support.

When does the 90 day NDIS claim rule start?

December 2026. The NDIA lists claiming timeframes under "Changes from December 2026" on its page about the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Act, and section 2 of that Act fixes the day as 1 December 2026. An earlier NDIA fact sheet groups the same sentence under a heading of October 2026, alongside changes the NDIA dates to 2027 and 2028, so that heading appears to be a loose grouping or an error rather than a start date.

What happens if an NDIS claim is submitted late?

Under the current limit, the NDIA's systems automatically reject claims more than 2 years old, so the payment is simply not made. The Act already lets the CEO treat a late claim as made in time if exceptional circumstances justify the delay and the claim was made within a reasonable period (subsection 45A(6)), and the December 2026 amendment does not change that; how the NDIA will apply it to the 90 day limit has not been published. Separately, the NDIA states it may hold a claim for review if it is submitted more than 6 months after the support was delivered, and that the review can take up to 28 days.

Does the 90 day rule apply to plan managed and self managed participants?

The NDIA's statement is about claims generally and does not carve out any plan management type, but it has not published how the 90 days will be counted where the provider does not submit the claim. For plan managed supports the plan manager submits the claim, so a provider's practical deadline for sending the invoice is shorter than 90 days. For self managed supports the participant acquits the payment after you invoice them and send a receipt. Until the NDIA publishes detail, the safe approach is to work to 90 days from the date of delivery in every case and allow time for someone else's processing.

Is this the same as the 90 days from the end of a service booking?

No. The NDIA's guide to getting paid states that payment requests for NDIA managed participants must be submitted within 90 days from the end of a service booking, a clock that starts when the service booking ends. The NDIA has since removed service bookings in its new computer system, so for most providers there is no service booking to measure from. The new limit starts when the support is delivered and will apply whether or not a service booking exists.

Do unregistered providers and sole traders have to meet the claim deadline?

Yes, if they claim NDIS funds. A claiming deadline attaches to the claim, not to registration status. Unregistered providers are generally paid by plan managers or self managing participants rather than claiming from the NDIA directly, which means the invoice has to reach whoever does claim well inside the window.

Sources

This guide is general information about Australian regulatory requirements, current as at 28 September 2026. It is not legal or financial advice, and requirements change. The operational detail of the December 2026 claiming limit has not been published in full, so check the NDIA's current guidance before relying on anything here, and seek professional advice for your own circumstances.

Related guides

General information, not legal advice. Current at the date shown on this article. Check anything you rely on against the current legislation and NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission guidance.

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