NDIS providers: your claims window is about to get a lot shorter

You delivered the service. Your contractor invoiced. Four months later.

Under the current rules, that is fine. From 1 December 2026, that claim is gone.

The NDIS claims window will reduce from two years to 90 days after a support is delivered. This reform has now been legislated, with commencement scheduled for 1 December 2026. The change will affect providers claiming through the NDIS payment system across the sector.

For allied health business owners operating with subcontractors or franchise agreements, the exposure is not abstract. It sits in the gap between when services are delivered across your network and when someone actually gets around to billing for them.

Where the risk sits
If you are a registered provider using subcontractors, the accountability is straightforward:

• You are responsible for claims made under your registration, including claims your contractors make or fail to make
• If a subcontractor misses the 90-day window, the claim may no longer be payable
• Absent clear contractual protections, the commercial loss will often sit with the registered provider

For franchisors, the risk is more structural. Franchisees may operate as separate registered providers, but franchisors often prescribe the systems, workflows and billing processes used across the network. If those systems were built around delayed reconciliations or end-of-quarter billing practices, the shift to a 90-day claims window creates network-wide operational exposure. Missed claims at scale quickly become a franchisor problem commercially, operationally and reputationally.

It is worth checking whether your agreements were drafted with a 90-day claims window in mind. Most were not.

What the new window actually means in practice
The two-year window has quietly allowed delayed billing practices to become normal across allied health businesses:

• Backdated invoices
• Delayed reconciliations
• Practitioners billing informally at the end of a month or quarter
• No one checking whether everything delivered has actually been claimed

A strict 90-day claiming timeframe does not accommodate any of that. Whether you run a subcontractor-heavy practice or a franchise network, you need visibility over what has been delivered, invoiced and claimed across the business in near real time. Most businesses do not have that today.

The shorter timeframe also increases the importance of contemporaneous records and prompt reconciliation of service evidence.

Is your business operating like this?

• Practitioners or franchisees invoice at the end of a billing cycle with no real-time oversight
• No clause in your agreements about claiming obligations or consequences for missing a deadline
• No system that flags unreconciled services as they approach 90 days
• Agreements that have not been reviewed since you first set the model up

Most business owners will not realise they have a problem until a claim is rejected.

Steps to take now
• Map how claims are actually raised across your business or network: who is responsible, what the process is, and how long it typically takes
• Review your contractor and franchise agreements for claiming obligations and what happens when a deadline is missed
• Check whether your systems can flag unreconciled services before the 90-day window closes
• Brief your contractors and franchisees – most are not across this change yet

How Bird Law approaches this

We do not just review the contract. We look at contractor arrangements, franchise structures, billing processes and service agreements to identify where your exposure sits and what needs to change.

The outcome: agreements that reflect the new environment, processes that protect your revenue, and a network that understands its obligations.

December 2026 is closer than it looks. The time to look at this is now.

Authored by Nadine Uysal, Lawyer at Bird Law.

This post is general information only. It reflects measures confirmed as part of legislated NDIS reforms commencing from 1 December 2026. It is not legal advice and should not be relied on for any specific matter. For advice on your circumstances, please get in touch.