Browse help topics
Establishment fee tasks
Eligibility, the prompt on the Service Agreements tab, and generating the one-off establishment-fee claim.
Last updated · 10 November 2026
The NDIS Establishment Fee is a one-off fee for taking on a new participant relationship. Unlike NF2F and NDIA-requested report tasks, it is not about work you log, it is a flat claim you make once a participant’s committed supports cross the NDIS threshold. Most establishment-fee tasks start from a prompt on the participant’s signed service agreement; you can also add one by hand.
Eligibility
OneForce Care checks all of the following before generating the fee. These checks do not replace confirming eligibility under the applicable NDIS pricing arrangements:
- First-time: no establishment fee has been claimed for this participant by your organisation before.
- Signed service agreement: the participant’s current agreement is signed, and it includes supports from one of five specific NDIS registration groups (below), not the whole of Category 01/04.
- Committed hours: that one agreement commits at least 20 hours a month of those supports, for a term of 3 or more consecutive months. This comes from the Monthly hours field you set on each agreed support item when building the service agreement, not hours actually delivered.
Note
Eligibility is a whitelist of exactly five NDIS registration groups, not “Category 01/04 minus SIL”: 0104 (High Intensity Daily Personal Activities), 0107 (Daily Personal Activities), 0125 (Participation in Community, Social and Civic Activities), 0133 (Specialised Supported Employment) and 0136 (Group and Centre Based Activities). Other Category 01 or 04 supports, including Supported Independent Living, do not count even though they sit in the same categories. If a participant’s committed hours look right but the fee still is not eligible, check that the supports carrying the hours are actually from one of these five groups.
Note
The hours and the term must come from the same agreement. They are never added up across two agreements, and the term is counted in whole calendar months with the end date included, so 1 January to 31 March is three months but 1 January to 18 March is two. An agreement with no end date has no term and is never eligible.
How the task gets added
The prompt appears at the top of Service Agreements
Open the participant (Participants), then select the Service Agreements tab. When the current agreement is Signed and its committed hours meet the eligibility rule above, a brand-tinted bar sits at the very top of the tab, above the agreement register, headed NDIS Establishment Fee: “This participant looks eligible for the NDIS Establishment Fee (first-time participant; ≥20 committed Cat 01/04 hrs/month for a 3+ month term).”
Add the task, or dismiss the prompt
Select Add establishment-fee task to create it, or the X at the right of the bar to dismiss it. There is no “Not now” button and no confirmation on the X: dismissing stops the bar reappearing for that agreement, permanently, though it does not remove the participant’s eligibility. A new agreement for the same participant gets its own prompt.
Adding shows “Establishment-fee task added.” and the bar clears. The new task is titled Claim establishment fee for [participant name], starts in the To do lane with Normal priority, is left unassigned, and is linked to the participant. Its description records why it exists: “Created from the signed service agreement: the participant meets the establishment-fee criteria (first-time participant, >= 20 committed Cat 01/04 hrs/month for a 3+ month term).”
Watch out
Adding is safe to retry: if a task already exists for this participant, or the fee has already been claimed, nothing is duplicated and you see “Could not add the establishment-fee task.” instead. You can hit this on a brand-new agreement for a participant whose fee was claimed under an earlier one: the dismissal is tracked per agreement, but the one-off fee is tracked per participant.
Adding one by hand
You do not have to wait for the prompt. On Schedule›Tasks, select Create task, choose the Establishment fee type, and pick the Participant. Participant is the only extra field required by this type; the ordinary required Task title and Priority still apply. See Create a task. Creating it this way does not check eligibility, that happens when you generate the claim.
Enlarge screenshot
Swipe across the enlarged image to read each part of the screen.
Unsaved follow-up example only. Choosing Mavis does not establish eligibility; no task, charge or change to an agreement is created.
Generating the claim
Open the task. Its Edit task drawer works the same as any other, see Create a task. The claim button sits at the right-hand end of the Task type pills row, past the last pill, and unlike NF2F and NDIA-requested report it shows regardless of the task’s status: you do not need to mark it Done first.
Note
The signed agreement raises a prompt. Select Add establishment-fee task to create the task, or add it by hand from Tasks. Creating the task does not generate a charge.
Select Generate establishment fee claim. Eligibility is assessed fresh at this moment, not from when the task was added, so if the agreement changed in the meantime the claim can still be blocked.
On success, a flat establishment-fee charge lands in Finance›Billing for review before invoicing, and the task is automatically set to Done. The button is then disabled and reads “Claim generated ✓”.
Note
The fee is priced from the NDIS catalogue at the participant’s remoteness level, and the exact support item follows whichever of the five registration groups earned the eligibility, so a community-participation relationship claims a Category 04 item rather than a Category 01 one. Review the resulting support item and amount in Billing before invoicing.
If it is blocked
You see a message naming the first problem found:
| Message | Meaning |
|---|---|
| “Establishment fee has already been claimed for this participant.” | The one-off fee was already generated, from this task or an earlier one. |
| “No signed or active service agreement with personal care (Cat 01) or community participation (Cat 04) supports.” | The participant has no qualifying agreement right now. |
| “The agreement must commit at least 20 hours per month of Cat 01/04 supports (currently …).” | The committed Monthly hours on the agreement’s eligible supports fall short. |
| “The agreement term must be at least 3 consecutive months.” | The agreement’s start and end dates span less than 3 whole calendar months, or it has no end date. |
Tip
Check that the agreement accurately records the supports, monthly commitment and term the participant agreed to. Correct missing or incorrect information before trying again. Do not change an agreement simply to pass an eligibility check.
Watch out
A task claim is generated once. Archiving a task does not cancel its existing charge or permit a duplicate claim. Check the original charge in Billing before making a correction. If an outcome is uncertain, reopen the task and inspect its generated-claim state and Billing before retrying. The current claim action saves the charge and task link together; do not create a duplicate task to repeat the claim.
Before adding or billing the task
You need access to the participant agreement and task creation for the prompt action. Manual creation needs Tasks Add permission; claim generation also needs the enabled invoicing workflow and its required access. Check one qualifying agreement’s actual term and committed supports, the participant’s plan/budget and the dated catalogue evidence.
Eligibility is assessed from the forward commitment in one agreement. Do not add unrelated agreements together or substitute delivered past hours. The one-off check is per participant for this provider, so a new agreement or another task does not create another entitlement.
After generation, inspect the charge in Billing even when the task has become Done. Missing eligible support, dated price or budget evidence can block generation rather than using a guessed fee. Correct source evidence only when it accurately records the agreed arrangement, then retry the existing task. Archive or correct the Billing charge separately if the billing decision changes; task archival does not reverse it.
Check the commitment rather than the prompt alone
As an app-check example, one qualifying agreement with 12 committed eligible hours per month plus 8 more eligible hours per month reaches 20. Two separate agreements with 12 and 8 hours do not combine for this check. A three-month date span must also satisfy the whole-calendar-month rule; inspect the exact start and end dates rather than using the task’s deadline.
Check the eligible registration group on each contributing support and whether this organisation has already claimed for that participant. Adding the task records a follow-up, not proof that the fee is payable. If generation is blocked, correct only an inaccurate source record and retry the existing task. If no charge should be made, keep that decision clear in the task and handle any existing Billing charge separately.