Unspent Support at Home funds: the carryover rule, and how to spot a client about to lose money

At the end of a Support at Home quarter, a participant carries unspent money into the next quarter up to the higher of a capped amount of $1,000 or ten per cent of their quarterly budget. Everything above that goes back to the Commonwealth. The carryover is automatic — nobody has to apply for it — and that is exactly why it goes unnoticed: no form arrives, no alert fires, and the money is simply smaller next quarter than the family expected.

This post is the rule, the arithmetic the Department publishes, the part of it almost everyone gets backwards, and the three weeks in which you can still do something about it.

What actually happens to money a participant does not spend?

Support at Home funds a quarter at a time rather than a year at a time. At the close of each quarter, the Department's rule on individualised budgets is that a participant "can carry over unspent amounts to the next quarter" and that "this will happen automatically in their account".

The carryover is capped. The amount that exceeds the cap is not banked, not deferred and not recoverable — it returns to the Commonwealth.

How much carries over?

The cap is the higher of two numbers: a capped amount of $1,000, or ten per cent of the quarterly budget including any supplements. The Department's own worked example is the clearest statement of it:

a participant has an unspent amount of $1,100. Their quarterly budget is $8,000. This means they can carry over $1,000 (the capped amount), because it is higher than 10% of their quarterly budget ($800).

So that participant loses $100.

Read the comparison carefully, because it decides which number applies. Ten per cent only beats the capped amount once the quarterly budget passes $10,000, and on the Department's published classification table that is classification 5 and above. For most participants the capped amount is the one that applies, and the percentage is a distraction.

Quarterly budget	Ten per cent	Cap that applies	Why
$2,752.50 (classification 1)	$275.25	$1,000	The capped amount is higher
$7,617.13 (classification 4)	$761.71	$1,000	The capped amount is higher
$10,182.38 (classification 5)	$1,018.24	$1,018.24	Ten per cent has just overtaken it
$20,034.28 (classification 8)	$2,003.43	$2,003.43	Ten per cent is clearly higher

Those budget figures are current as of 1 July 2026 and are indexed each 1 July, so check the Department's table rather than this one before you rely on a number.

Does money carried in make next quarter's cap bigger?

No, and this is the part that catches people.

The cap is calculated on the quarterly budget alone. An amount carried into a quarter increases what the participant has available to spend that quarter, but it does not increase what can be carried out of it at the end. A participant who carries in the full capped amount and then underspends again does not get to carry out a larger figure — the ceiling is unchanged.

The practical consequence: carryover buys you one quarter of grace, not a growing reserve. Two quiet quarters in a row lose money even if the first one carried cleanly.

What about funds brought across from a Home Care Package?

Different pot, different rules. A participant who transitioned from the Home Care Packages Program kept their unspent HCP funds, and those sit outside the quarterly carryover rule entirely.

They are not, however, general spending money. The Department restricts them to assistive technology and home modifications, or to extra services once the participant has spent their whole quarterly budget for that quarter. So an HCP balance does not rescue an underspent quarterly budget — the quarterly budget has to be spent first before that money is even reachable.

When does the clock actually run out?

At the end of the quarter, on services delivered. Not booked, not agreed, not invoiced — delivered. A service you have not delivered cannot be claimed at all, so a visit scheduled for the first week of the new quarter draws on the new quarter's budget no matter when it was agreed.

That is what makes the last three weeks of a quarter the window that matters. A visit you notice is missing on the final Friday cannot be delivered retrospectively into the quarter that is closing.

How do you spot it before the quarter closes?

The honest answer for a small provider is that you have to look, and the looking has to be projective rather than historical. A report of what has been delivered so far always looks short in week four and fine in week eleven; the question is whether what is delivered plus what is already booked will consume the envelope by the close.

Three things make the difference:

• Work from the envelope, not the budget. The envelope is the quarterly budget plus anything carried in, less what is committed, spent, and already on the roster.
• Check at the eighty per cent mark, not at the end. A participant sitting at eighty per cent consumed with three weeks to go is usually fine; one at forty per cent is not going to get there by accident.
• Talk to the participant early. Extra visits have to be wanted, needed, and in the care plan. Consuming a budget for its own sake is not what the money is for.

How HarvestFlow Care flags a client about to lose money

Two places, and both are projections rather than reports.

The weekly digest names them. The care digest email carries a line — participants with unspent funds this quarter, money at risk — with a count and the dollar value at risk beside it. It counts scheduled visits as well as delivered ones, so it is telling you what will happen if the roster stays as it is, not what has happened already.

Booking a visit warns you at the point of decision. When a visit would take a participant past their envelope, the booking flags it — nearing once the envelope is eighty per cent consumed, over when the visit would not fit. It counts every other visit already scheduled in the same period, because a remaining balance that ignores the rest of the roster reads as healthy right up until the visits you already booked consume it.

It is a warning and never a block. Refusing to book care because an envelope is short would be the wrong failure: the visit may be urgent, the funder may reassess, and the participant may choose to self-fund.

The carryover caps themselves are settings rather than code, because government limits are indexed and adjusted — a compliance change should be an edit, not a deploy. Funding plans are part of the Pro plan and are in beta; what the plan covers is set out on the Support at Home page and priced on Care pricing.

The rule, in one paragraph

Unspent money carries over once, capped at the higher of $1,000 or ten per cent of the quarterly budget, automatically, and the rest is gone. The cap never grows from money carried in. HCP funds are a separate pot with narrower uses and cannot be reached until the quarterly budget is spent. And the only date that counts is the date a service was delivered.

If you are new to the programme's mechanics, the Support at Home guide for sole traders covers classifications, contributions and how a small team takes part.