What an NDIS invoice must include (with a checklist)

An NDIS invoice needs to identify you, identify the participant, and describe each support in the NDIA's own terms: your business name and ABN, the participant's name and NDIS number, and for every line the support item number, the date of service, the quantity, the unit price and the line total. Add an invoice number, an invoice date, the GST treatment of each line and your bank details, and a plan manager can pay it without writing back. Only part of that list is written down by the NDIA; the rest is what makes an invoice payable in practice, and this post says which is which.

Who are you invoicing, and does it change what goes on it?

It changes who reads it and how the money moves. The NDIA's Guide to getting paid sets out three cases. A self-managed participant receives your invoice and pays it themselves, then claims the money back; the NDIA asks you to send a receipt once they have paid so they can acquit it. A plan-managed participant has a plan manager, and you send the invoice to the plan manager, not the participant; the page says plainly that the invoice must include a valid ABN unless you are exempt from providing one. An NDIA-managed participant is different in kind: there is no invoice, because the registered provider submits a payment request through the provider portal. If you are unregistered, that third door is closed to you, which is the subject of registered versus unregistered providers. The full picture of who pays whom is in self-managed, plan-managed or agency-managed. Write the invoice for the plan manager, the stricter reader, and the self-managed participant gets everything they need too.

Which fields does the NDIA actually require?

Fewer than you might think; the rest comes from plan managers' own processes.

The Guide to getting paid says a payment claim needs five things: the participant's name, the participant reference number or NDIS number, the dates of support, the support item reference number and the support item price. That list is written for a portal claim, but it is what a plan manager keys in from your invoice.

For self-managed participants the NDIA's How to pay for your NDIS supports page lists what they enter when they claim: the dates the support began and ended, the support category, the amount, your name, your ABN, a description of the support and a copy of the invoice. Note that they need a description they can understand, not just a code.

Everything else comes from ordinary Australian invoicing, and some of it becomes a legal requirement the moment the document is a tax invoice. The ATO's tax invoices page lists seven details a tax invoice for a sale under a thousand dollars must make clear: that it is intended to be a tax invoice, the seller's identity, the seller's ABN, the date of issue, a description with quantity and price, the GST amount, and the extent to which each sale is taxable. A sale of a thousand dollars or more also needs the buyer's identity. An invoice number, hours as a quantity, a unit rate and bank details are simply what a plan manager needs to match your line to the price limit and pay you.

The checklist

The whole list in one place, with where each item comes from.

Field	Who needs it	Where the requirement comes from
Your business name	Everyone	ATO tax invoice rules; plan managers
Your ABN	Everyone	NDIA (plan-managed invoices); self-managed claim; ATO
Participant's name	Everyone	NDIA payment claim
Participant's NDIS number	Plan managers	NDIA payment claim
Support item number	Plan managers	NDIA payment claim
Plain-English description of the support	Self-managed participants	NDIA self-managed claim
Date of each service	Everyone	NDIA payment claim
Quantity (hours or units)	Everyone	ATO; plan managers, to check against the price limit
Unit price and line total	Everyone	NDIA (support item price); ATO
GST treatment of each line	Everyone	ATO (which lines are taxable, and the GST amount if any)
Invoice number	Plan managers	Practice, not regulation; it is how a payment is matched to you
Invoice date and due date	Everyone	ATO (date of issue); your own terms
Bank details	Everyone who pays you directly	Practice

"Everyone" means both kinds of payer, not the NDIA, which you never invoice. The ATO's rules bind only when the document is a tax invoice, which is to say when you are registered for GST; a sole trader under the threshold issues an invoice, and the ABN and business name are still expected by the people paying you.

What does one line look like?

Each line is a small claim in its own right. One clean line, with the item number and rate as an illustration rather than a quotation from the pricing schedule:

01_011_0107_1_1  Assistance with self-care activities, standard, weekday daytime
Sat 5 Sep 2026   09:00 to 11:00   2.00 h x A$70.23 = A$140.46   GST-free

The item number is what the plan manager types first; the date, quantity and unit price let them check the line against the plan and the price limit. Take your own item numbers and rates from the NDIS pricing schedule, which from 1 July 2026 replaced the Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits document and which lists the support item number, name, unit and maximum prices for each support.

What about GST?

Most supports delivered to a participant are GST-free, but not all. The ATO's National Disability Insurance Scheme page says a supply to a participant is GST-free when all four conditions are met: the participant has an NDIS plan in effect, the support is one of the reasonable and necessary supports in that plan, there is a written agreement between you and the participant or someone acting for them, and the support is covered by one of the tables in the GST-free NDIS Determination. A supply in excess of what the plan specifies is not GST-free, and the written agreement can be a combination of documents, including the invoices you issue.

Two consequences. Your service agreement is part of your GST position, so keep it signed and current. And if you are not registered for GST you charge none, and the document should say "Invoice", not "Tax invoice"; an ABN under the words "tax invoice" on a document with no GST invites exactly the query you were trying to avoid. None of this is tax advice; for anything unusual, the ATO pages above and your accountant are the right places to take it.

What gets an invoice sent back?

Plan managers bounce invoices the portal will not accept, and the reasons repeat.

• No support item number, or the wrong one. The most common. A description alone cannot be claimed.
• A rate above the price limit. The Guide to getting paid says price limits are the maximum you can charge plan-managed and NDIA-managed participants.
• Dates outside the plan, or outside the service agreement. Both the NDIA and the ATO tie the support to a plan in effect and a written agreement.
• Hours that do not match what was agreed or delivered. Quantity is the field most likely to be queried, so keep the evidence for it.
• Sent to the participant instead of the plan manager, or the other way round.
• No ABN. The NDIA names it for plan-managed invoices and self-managed claims alike.
• No NDIS number. The plan manager has to look it up before they can claim.
• GST charged on a GST-free support, or a tax-invoice title on a document with no GST.
• A reused invoice number. The second one looks like a duplicate and is held.

How HarvestFlow Care fills this in from the visit

HarvestFlow Care builds the invoice from the visit you already recorded. Field by field:

The line comes from the visit. Open Invoices, choose Bill visits, pick the client and the period, and every completed visit that has not been billed is listed. The service on the visit is the support item on the participant's agreement, so the line carries the service name, its support item code and the date of service. The hours come from the visit under your workspace's charge basis: the recorded check-in and check-out times, or the booked window. The rate comes from your own services and rates; a visit with no rate is called out and the invoice refused until one exists, so nothing is quietly billed at zero. Support item numbers and starter rates are loaded from a published list into your own copy, which you own and edit.

Your details print only when they should. Your business name, ABN and GST registration live in your workspace settings. The ABN prints on an invoice only when you have said you are GST-registered, and the document is titled "Tax invoice" only when a tax number prints; with GST off, no GST is charged and the document is an "Invoice". Your address, billing email, payment terms, days until due, payment instructions and bank details print on every invoice you send, and never anyone else's.

The right person receives it. An agreement and its invoices are addressed to an account, which is what sends a participant's invoice to their plan manager. When a client's record says invoices go to a plan manager and carries that manager's email, pressing send addresses it there, and the client's NDIS number prints under the Bill-To name so the plan manager can match it to the participant. You can always type a different address before sending.

The evidence travels with it. An invoice raised from visits also carries a Service Confirmation sheet: one row per visit with the date, the arriving and leaving times, the hours charged, what was done, who delivered it and the client's signature where one was captured. A visit can only ever be billed once, and the invoice is numbered in your own sequence.

What HarvestFlow Care does not do is claim for you: claiming from the NDIA for an NDIA-managed participant is the registered provider's own act in the provider portal. Nor does it take a cut. There is no percentage of your invoices and no per-participant fee, which is the argument of why there is no percentage; the rate card is on the pricing page, and the quick start guide runs from signup to a sent invoice.

General information, not tax or legal advice.