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Establishment fee tasks
Eligibility, the signed-agreement banner, and generating the one-off establishment-fee claim.
Last updated · 3 July 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 are created for you from a signed service agreement; you can also add one by hand.
Eligibility
A participant is eligible when all of these are true:
- First-time: no establishment fee has been claimed for this participant by your organisation before.
- Signed or active service agreement: it includes personal care (Category 01) or community participation (Category 04) supports.
- Committed hours: that 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
Not every Category 01/04 support counts, Supported Independent Living hours (also Category 01) are excluded. If a participant’s committed hours look right but the fee still is not eligible, check which supports on the agreement are carrying the hours.
How the task gets created
The banner appears on a signed agreement
Open the participant ( Participants ), then select the Service Agreements tab. Once an agreement is Signed and its committed hours meet the eligibility rule above, an NDIS Establishment Fee banner appears above the agreement form: “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 Not now to dismiss the banner for this agreement without creating a task. Dismissing stops the banner reappearing for that agreement; it does not remove the participant’s eligibility.
Adding shows “Establishment-fee task added.” and the banner clears. The new task is titled Claim establishment fee for [participant name], starts in the To do lane with Normal priority, and is linked to the participant.
Watch out
Adding is safe to retry: if a task already exists for this participant, or the fee has already been claimed, selecting Add establishment-fee task again shows “Could not add the establishment-fee task.” instead of creating a duplicate. You can see this on a brand-new agreement for a participant whose fee was already claimed under an earlier one, the banner can reappear because 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 banner. On Schedule ›Tasks , select Create task, choose the Establishment fee type, and pick the Participant. It is the only field the type needs, see Create a task. Creating it this way does not check eligibility, that happens when you generate the claim.
Generating the claim
Open the task (its Edit task drawer works the same as any other, see Create a task). Unlike NF2F and NDIA-requested report, the Generate establishment fee claim button shows regardless of the task’s status, you do not need to mark it Done first.
Select Generate establishment fee claim. Its helper text reads “Posts a flat establishment-fee finance row at the PAPL rate for the participant. NDIS eligibility re-checked at click time.” Eligibility is assessed fresh at this moment, not from when the task was created, so if the agreement changed in the meantime the claim can still be blocked.
On success, the finance row lands in Finance ›Billing , ready to include on an invoice, and the task itself is automatically set to Done. The button is then disabled and reads “Claim generated ✓”.
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
Fix the service agreement (extend the term, or raise the Monthly hours on an eligible support) and select Generate again.
Watch out
A claim can only be generated once per task. To redo it, archive the task and create a new one, then generate the claim again.