In this article we discuss the changes to the billing for group shifts and how the changes to shifts and prices within ShiftCare.

The NDIS has provided helpful guides to understand the changes. You can access the Group-Based Social and Community Participation Supports – Guidance for Pricing Transition here.

In summary, the prices for group services formerly included an element to cover centre capital costs as well as non face to face administration time. This is now being broken out into separately identifiable charges.

As stipulated by the NDIS, ShiftCare customers, as providers, will need to adjust their agreements with clients/participants before migrating to this new pricing model. Once the agreements have been confirmed by clients the shifts can be adjusted in ShiftCare to modify the invoicing accordingly.

Key dates: transitional pricing arrangements for group and centre based social and community participation supports end on 31 December 2023. When invoicing the changes should be applied from 1 January 2024.

To opt-in to the changes on your account, on the prices page, you'll see a blue button "Migrate to new group pricing".

A warning will be shown to explain that the change is permanent and account wide for everyone logging in to your ShiftCare account.

On completing the migration, your account will have the new group pricing model applied. Once migrated your invoicing and scheduling will use the new pricing format. This will change your future shifts and invoices but not impact your previously created invoices.

Once you click on the Migrate button, you'll see a message confirming the change.

In response to the NDIS changes the system will now automatically divide the 1:1 price by the ratio selected in the shift.

The change eliminates the need to manually add ratios to the price book. Instead of incorporating a line item specifying the cost for each ratio, in the price the system will automatically apply a reduced fee based on the selected ratio for the shift.

In advanced edit mode for each client you can select the ratio from 1:1 through to 1:20, using your mouse wheel to select the options beyond 4.

Providers seeking to modify their shift scheduling to align with the new NDIS pricing model for group shifts can do so by adding the additional pricing elements to their existing hourly based service charge by adding splits to the client's time.

There are 3 components of the pricing per participant. Each are hourly based pricing:

Non-face-non time can be billed via shifts that are separate to the group shift to account for the time used to organise the group service. The group shift would then contain a split in the client’s time for the centre capital cost plus the regular activity/service fee for the group service.

The group service and centre capital cost can be added to the shift for the client by using the split button in advanced edit mode. This is an example of 1 client on a 9am-3pm shift.

Should you wish not to migrate to the new group pricing model, please ensure the group prices are updated to include lines within the prices stipulating the cost for the ratios you are using.