Australia’s new Support at Home (SaH) program introduces a more transparent and consumer-focused funding model for in-home aged care. While the model improves accountability and visibility for participants, it also introduces significant operational and compliance complexity for providers, ensuring the need for good.

For many organisations, the shift from Home Care Packages (HCP) to Support at Home means rethinking how budgets are tracked, services are billed, contributions are calculated and statements are produced.

Below we outline the key compliance requirements and operational pain points we have seen provider must address, and struggle with, to operate effectively under Support at Home.

1. Support at Home (SaH) Budget Management and Real-Time Financial Control

Compliance Requirements

Under Support at Home, providers must:

• Track individual client budgets aligned to the funding classification
• Ensure services delivered remain within the available budget
• Clearly allocate costs across service categories
• Maintain accurate financial records for audit and reporting
• Prevent overspending or unapproved service delivery

Budgets are no longer something that can be reconciled months later. Providers must maintain live accurate and current financial visibility across every participant.

Operational Pain Points

Many providers struggle with:

• Fragmented systems: Rostering, care delivery, billing and finance systems often operate independently. Without integration, providers rely on manual reconciliation.
• Delayed financial visibility: When budgets are only reconciled during monthly billing, organisations may unknowingly exceed funding allocations.
• Manual intervention: Staff frequently rely on spreadsheets to track remaining funds, creating high administrative workload, increased error risk & limited financial oversight
• Lack of proactive alerts: Without automated budget tracking, staff may only discover funding issues after services have been delivered.

The result is financial risk, compliance exposure and unnecessary administrative effort.

2. Support at Home (SaH) Itemised Claiming and Service-Level Accuracy

Compliance Requirements

Support at Home introduces greater transparency around claiming.

Providers must submit itemised claims for each service delivered, including:

• Service type
• Date and time
• Duration
• Pricing
• Applicable funding category

Each claim must accurately reflect services actually delivered, rather than aggregated billing.

Operational Pain Points

This model creates several operational challenges.

• Service-to-claim mapping: Every service delivered by care staff must map correctly to a claimable funding category. Manual mapping introduces claiming errors, rejected submissions or revenue leakage
• High claim volumes: Providers may process thousands of individual service claims each month, including brokerage services. Without automation, teams face increased processing time, manual validation requirements and greater risk of submission errors
• Disconnection between rostering and billing: If service data must be manually transferred from rostering systems into billing systems, it creates duplication and administrative overhead.

To remain compliant and efficient, providers need automated claim generation directly from service delivery data and automated third party OCR invoice processing and reconciliation.

3. Managing Outsourced Services and Purchases with OCR Processing

Compliance Requirements for Brokered and Third-Party Services

Under the Support at Home program, providers are often responsible for arranging or coordinating services delivered by external providers or suppliers.

These may include:

• Allied health services
• Equipment purchases
• Home modifications
• Specialist care services
• Transport providers
• Other brokered services

Even when these services are delivered by third parties, the primary provider remains responsible for financial accountability and claiming accuracy.

Providers must therefore ensure:

• External service costs are allocated to the correct client budget
• Expenses align with the relevant funding category
• Claims accurately reflect the actual service or purchase
• Financial records are maintained for compliance and audit purposes

This introduces additional complexity when processing supplier invoices and purchase documentation.

Operational Pain Points

Many providers struggle to manage brokered services efficiently due to manual invoice processing and disconnected financial workflows.

• High volume of supplier invoices: Providers may receive invoices from multiple external suppliers each month, each with different formats and levels of detail. Processing these manually creates Significant accounts payable workload, Slow invoice approvals & Increased risk of data entry errors.
• Linking purchases to the correct participant: Invoices must be allocated to the correct participant budget and service category. Without automation, staff must manually Enter invoice details, Match the purchase to the correct client, Allocate the correct funding category & Apply the expense against the participant budget.
• Budget visibility challenges: If external purchases are not recorded promptly, organisations may lose real-time visibility of remaining participant budgets. This increases the risk of Budget overruns, Incorrect claiming & Financial reconciliation issues.

Support at Home requires providers to maintain clear financial records linking purchases to participant services and claims. Manual processes can make audit preparation time-consuming and error-prone.

4. Support at Home (SaH) Reconciliation and Financial Integrity

Compliance Requirements

Providers must ensure that:

• Claims submitted match services delivered
• Payments received align with claims submitted
• Client contributions are correctly applied
• Financial records are audit-ready

Reconciliation must occur across multiple data sources including:

• Service delivery records
• Claims submitted
• Payments received
• Client contributions

Operational Pain Points

• Multi-system reconciliation: When data lives across separate systems, finance teams must manually compare Rosters, Timesheets, Claims & Payment remittances. This creates significant workload and slows down financial cycles.
• Revenue leakage: Even small discrepancies across thousands of service claims can lead to Under-claiming, Incorrect billing & Missed revenue.
• Audit risk: Incomplete or inconsistent reconciliation increases the risk of regulatory scrutiny or audit findings. Providers need a single source of truth where service delivery, billing and claiming are tightly aligned.

5. Support at Home (SaH) Client Contribution Management

Compliance Requirements

Support at Home introduces participant contributions for certain services depending on income and service type.

Providers must:

• Apply the correct contribution percentage
• Separate government funded and client funded components
• Maintain clear financial records
• Ensure transparency for participants

Operational Pain Points

• Complex contribution calculations: Contribution rules vary depending on Service category, Client financial assessment & Government subsidy level. Manual calculation increases the likelihood of billing errors.
• System limitations: Many legacy care management platforms were not designed to handle split funding models where services are funded partly by government and partly by clients.
• Consumer transparency expectations: Participants and families expect clear explanations of charges, which requires accurate, itemised financial records.

Without automated contribution management, providers face billing complexity and increased customer queries.

6. Support at Home (SaH) Monthly Client Statements and Transparency

Compliance Requirements

Support at Home requires providers to deliver clear and detailed monthly statements to participants.

Statements must typically include:

• Services delivered
• Service dates and descriptions
• Costs charged
• Government contributions
• Client contributions
• Budget utilisation for the month and quarter
• Remaining budget balances

These statements are critical for ensuring participant transparency and trust.

Operational Pain Points

• Statement generation complexity: Producing accurate statements requires pulling data from multiple systems including Rostering, Timesheets, Billing & Finance. Manual processes often require staff to compile reports across several platforms.
• High administrative workload: For providers with hundreds or thousands of participants, monthly statement generation can become a significant operational burden.
• Customer enquiries: If statements are unclear or inaccurate, providers face increased Customer support calls, Billing disputes & Administrative overhead

Automation and system integration become essential to produce accurate, transparent statements at scale.

Final Thoughts

Providers that succeed under Support at Home will invest in systems that:

• Track budgets in real time
• Automatically generate itemised claims
• Simplify reconciliation
• Manage client contributions accurately
• Produce compliant monthly statements
• Automate processing of third party brokerage invoices
• Most importantly, these systems must ensure that service delivery, finance and claiming operate as one integrated workflow.
• This not only improves compliance but also reduces administrative workload, improves financial control and enhances transparency for participants.

Need Help with Managing all Aspects of Service Delivery and other aspects of running an Support at Home organisation? Let Us Help.

Our fully API-integrated Support at Home (SaH) software connects care delivery, budget tracking and claiming in one seamless workflow.

✔ Real-time budget visibility

✔ Automated claiming and reconciliations

✔ Automated third part (brokerage) invoice processing

✔ Client Contribution management

✔ Automated Monthly Statements

✔ Reduced admin and errors

Stop juggling spreadsheets. Start operating with clarity and control. Contact us today.