Support at Home

Overview

Support at Home (SAH) is the Australian Government’s in-home aged care program. The hub runs your funding for it from end to end: enrolling participants, their quarterly budgets, claims to Services Australia, the monthly statement each participant receives, closing each month, and the problems that fall out along the way. The page heading reads Support at Home with the line “Manage SAH participants, budgets, and care management”.

Seven cards lead out of the hub: SAH Participants, Onboard Participant, Care Management Pool, SAH Claims, Client Statements, Reconciliation and Exceptions. The same money-side pages are also under the Support at Home tab of Invoicing. Above the cards, Participants, Active Budgets and Total Budget count what is current this quarter. Alerts warn about over-spend, claim deadlines, lifetime caps, unactivated draft budgets and open exceptions. When all is well the hub says there are no alerts and all budgets are on track.

There is no separate budgets page. A participant’s budget is part of the participant. You manage it on their profile, or on the client’s Service & Funding tab. Both show the same budget.

Terms used on this page

• Classification is the level of funding a participant is assessed for. It sets their quarterly budget, the amount they can draw on each quarter.
• Care management is a 10% share of each quarterly budget. It goes into a pooled amount rather than the participant’s own services.
• Contribution is the part of a service cost the participant pays themselves. The government subsidy pays the rest. Clinical services carry no contribution.
• A claim asks Services Australia to pay the subsidy for services you delivered.
• Drawdown is the budget used up by delivered services.
• Reconciliation means checking your figures against Services Australia’s, then locking the month so it cannot change.

Key dates

Support at Home began on 1 November 2025, when it replaced Home Care Packages and Short-Term Restorative Care. Funding amounts are indexed (raised) every 1 July. The 1 July 2026 figures are that first indexation, not a start date.

Price caps (government limits on what you can charge) were planned for 1 July 2026 but the government deferred them indefinitely on 20 May 2026. Cura can check caps, but only once cap values are entered on a price plan.

From 1 October 2026, personal care delivered on or after that date carries no participant contribution. Cura applies this on client statements by delivery date, not booking date. Personal care delivered before 1 October 2026 keeps its old rate.

Common tasks

Enrol a participant

You can start from three places. All three capture the same six steps.

• Onboard Participant on the hub. The page is headed Onboard SAH Participant.
• Creating a new client and picking the Aged Care card on the Client Type step.
• An existing client’s profile, using Enrol in Support at Home.

The steps are Personal Details, SAH Details, Contributions, Administration, Services and Review & Submit. From a new client, Client Type comes first. From an existing client, Personal Details is skipped.

1. Personal Details: choose Link to existing client (then Select Client) or Create new client (First Name and Last Name are required, plus Email, Phone, Date of Birth and Address).
2. SAH Details: enter the My Aged Care ID (required), the Classification Type (Ongoing or Transitioned HCP) and Classification Level. The screen shows the matching quarterly budget. Also set Planning Region (this picks the price plan), Modified Monash Category (levels 6 to 7 mean remote areas and may attract a remote supplement), Funding Status (Interim or Full), Pension Status, Contribution Tier and Entry Date.
3. Contributions: Clinical Rate is fixed at 0%. Enter the Independence Rate (%) and Everyday Living Rate (%) exactly as Services Australia notified them, and the Lifetime Cap ($) if known. Tick Financial Hardship Flag or Grandfathered No-ITCF if either waives all contributions.
4. Administration: assign a Case Manager and record the Preferred Contact Method, Statement Delivery, Accounting Reference (MYOB) and any Alternative Billing Address. All optional. You can complete them later.
5. Services: the services suggested for the package are ticked. Untick any the participant does not receive. They become budget lines at zero quantity. If the service catalogue has no Support at Home services yet, the step says so.
6. Review & Submit: check the summary. A mid-quarter start shows a reduced share such as “(pro-rated 75%)”, because the participant only gets the rest of that quarter.
7. Finish with Create Participant, Create Client & SAH Record or Enrol Participant, depending on where you started.

The participant then appears on the client’s Service & Funding tab and in the SAH module. They are one record.

Look up a participant

1. Click SAH Participants on the hub. Search with Search participants…. The list shows Client Name, MAC ID, Classification, Funding and Pension Status.
2. A card headed “N participants missing administrative details” lists anyone without a planning region, Modified Monash category, case manager or accounting reference. Click a row to fill them in. Nothing is blocked while they are missing.
3. Click a row to open the participant. The profile shows SAH Details, Administration (click Edit to change), Contribution Rates, Approvals, Current Budget, Supplements (Add Supplement for items such as Dementia / Cognition, Oxygen or Remote at Home) and Budget History.

Record what a participant is approved for

Some categories need separate approval. Assistive technology (equipment) and home modifications can never be paid from the quarterly budget. They have their own approved amounts.

1. Open the participant and find the Approvals card. It shows Funded categories, Assistive Technology and Home Modifications, each starting as not recorded or not approved.
2. Click Edit. Tick the funded categories (Clinical Supports, Independence, Everyday Living, Care Management). For assistive technology and home modifications, pick a Tier (Not approved, Low, Medium or High). The Cap amount fills from the current tier cap and you can change it. Add an expiry date.
3. Click Save approvals. You will see Approvals updated.

Approvals only warn. If a budget line or claim line is in a category the participant is not approved for, you see a warning and can carry on after typing a reason. Nothing is blocked.

Record a contribution rate from Services Australia

Services Australia tells each participant their contribution rates by letter. Cura does not work out tapered rates for part pensioners. You type in what the letter says.

1. Open the participant. Under Contribution Rates, each rate shows “As notified by Services Australia” with its effective and notified dates.
2. Click Record Services Australia rate notification. Enter Independence %, Everyday Living %, the Effective and Notified dates, and the lifetime cap if the letter states one. Click Save. You will see Rate notification recorded.
3. If you enter a rate that does not match the usual rate for the participant’s pension status, you get a warning to check the letter. The rate you typed is still saved.
4. If the new rate applies to services already delivered, a Retro-adjustment required panel lists each one with the old amount, new amount and difference. Collectable now covers delivered services. Collectable after delivery covers services not yet done. Contribution-free personal care is never collectable. If it was already charged it appears under Refund owed instead. These figures are for information only. Raise any extra invoice or refund yourself.
5. Earlier rates stay in the rate history, marked as superseded.

Build and activate a quarterly budget

1. Open the participant’s Service & Funding tab (or their profile in the SAH module).
2. If this quarter has no budget, click Create Budget. Check the Quarter, the Quarterly Amount (worked out from the classification), Carryover from Previous ($), and optionally a Price Plan and Notes. Click Create Budget again.
3. A draft budget opens with panels for Clinical Supports, Independence and Everyday Living. Care Management has its own panel and shows how much of the pool is used.
4. In a panel, click Add line. Pick the service, then the Shift (the time band that sets the rate: weekday daytime, evening or night, Saturday, Sunday or public holiday), the Hrs/Qty per visit and the Frequency. Weekly and fortnightly lines need at least one weekday. The unit rate and line total update as you type.
5. Hours must be in quarter-hour steps and cannot be negative. A service must belong to the panel it sits in.
6. For a service delivered by an outside provider, tick Brokered and enter the supplier and purchase order reference. These lines have no fixed price. The cost comes from the supplier’s invoice later.
7. Watch Allocated vs Available. If you plan more than the participant has, a banner warns you, but you are not stopped.
8. Click Update Budget to save. A draft stays fully editable.
9. When ready, click Activate. A message explains that activating locks the service lines, rates, quantities and dates. If the grid holds unsaved edits, you can choose Save and activate, Discard and activate or Cancel.

A draft budget not yet activated shows on the hub as “Draft budget is not activated”.

Change a budget after it is active

1. For a change to lines, rates, dates or carryover, click Raise amendment on the active budget. The Effective date starts as today.
2. Enter the Reason (required) and an Approver (it starts as you). Click Raise amendment.
3. A new draft version opens with the same editable grid. Edit it and activate it as above. Until you activate it, the hub’s Active Budgets figure is one lower.
4. The amendment history lists every version with its reason. Click View on an old version to see it as it was. A banner reads “Viewing superseded version”. Click Back to current to return.
5. Small edits such as Notes save straight away and are logged. No amendment is needed.

Deliveries made under an earlier version still count against the current budget.

Check the budget and drawdown

1. On the participant, the Current Budget card shows Classification, Care Mgmt (10%), Primary Budget and Remaining, with a “% used” bar. Click Show breakdown for supplements, carryover, any legacy home care package unspent amount, the pro-rata factor and Total Available.
2. The Drawdown card shows Consumed and Remaining. Completing a shift draws it down automatically. Cancelling a delivered shift gives the amount back. Sync drawdown forces a fresh check, for example after you fix data. It never double-counts.
3. Each line shows an Estimated figure (what the plan says should be used by now) next to Actual (what was really delivered, priced by the time band it was delivered in). If the mix of deliveries is on track to overrun the quarter, a banner warns you.
4. Delivery for a service with no matching budget line shows under Unattributed delivery. Choose a line and click Attribute. If the line is in a different category, you are told and the button becomes Attribute anyway.
5. If Sync drawdown skips items because their month is locked, a message says how many. Post an adjustment in the current open month instead.

Roll a budget over to the next quarter

1. On an active budget, click Roll Over to Next Quarter.
2. Check the Rollover Preview: the Carryover Amount, the Carryover Cap (max(10%, $1,000)) and any Excess to Return to Government.
3. Click Confirm Rollover. The new quarter is marked Provisional until Services Australia confirms its own figure (see the reconciliation task below).

Track the care management pool

1. Click Care Management Pool on the hub. This page is read only.
2. Use the quarter arrows. The cards show Total Pooled Credits, Drawn Against Pool and Remaining Balance.
3. Participant Deductions shows one row per participant, using the current budget version. To change a deduction, change the participant’s budget.

Create and submit a claim

A claim is for one participant and one quarter.

1. Click SAH Claims on the hub. Filter with All, Draft, Finalised, Submitted, Paid and Rejected. A strip shows Total Amount, Govt Subsidy and Participant Contribution.
2. Click Create Claim. Pick the Participant and the Quarter / Budget. Each budget shows its remaining amount.
3. Under Claim Lines, pick a Category (Clinical, Independence, Everyday Living, Assistive Technology or Home Modifications), enter the Charged Amount ($) and click Add Line. Use Remove to take a line off. Lines are only kept once you save the claim.
4. Select the delivered services to include. Each shows its rate and time band.
5. Warnings can appear when you add a line. The participant may not be approved for the category, an assistive technology amount may be used up or expired, or the line may take the claim past the remaining budget. Type a Reason for override and click Add anyway. The line is marked Overridden.
6. If your price plan has a cap and the amount is above it, the line is refused and the cap is shown. Lower the amount.
7. Click Save as Draft or Finalise.

Submit, get paid, handle rejections

1. Open the claim. A draft can be finalised or deleted.
2. A finalised claim offers Submit to Services Australia and Export CSV for the portal file.
3. When payment arrives on a submitted claim, enter the Payment ID and click Mark as Paid. The claim shows “Payment received on” the date and the ID. The Paid tab also lists the ID.
4. If it bounced, click Mark as Rejected, type the Reason and click Confirm Reject. The claim shows its Rejection Reason.
5. Click Resubmit to make a new claim linked to the rejected one. The old claim then links forward to it.
6. The Statements and Reconciliation buttons on a claim open the first month of its quarter, to see what fed a figure.

Read and issue a client statement

Each participant gets one statement a month. It shows what was charged, what the subsidy covered, and who holds the unspent money.

1. Click Client Statements on the hub. Choose the month under Period and narrow the list with Reconciliation (All, Unreconciled, Reconciled, Exception) then Apply. Every active participant has a row, even with no services.
2. The list shows Participant, MAC ID, Opening, Income, Expenses, Closing, Unspent held by and Reconciliation. Click a row to open it.
3. Balances by custody splits money into Your contributions and Subsidy held by Services Australia. Services Australia holds each participant’s unspent subsidy and pays you in arrears. Neither row can show a negative balance.
4. If delivery in a month went over the participant’s budget, a notice shows an Unfunded delivery amount. Your organisation absorbs it. It is not an amount the participant owes.
5. The services table includes cancellations and no-shows. Cancellations carry a fee only when short notice applies. No-shows are $0.00.
6. The equipment section appears on every statement. It shows committed assistive technology funds and their expiry, or says no equipment funding is recorded.
7. Care Management shows hours and dollars used against the pool.
8. Click Add item to record something the system cannot see, such as a brokered supplier invoice. Items marked internal do not appear on the client copy.
9. A Payment determination (what Services Australia decided to pay) is marked (internal only) and is left off the client copy.
10. Click Export statement for the client copy. It works on a draft statement too. If the month is locked you will see “This month is locked”, and figures can no longer change.

Personal care delivered on or after 1 October 2026 shows Your contribution of $0.00 on the statement, with the full amount as subsidy. Personal care delivered before then keeps the participant’s rate. Other services keep their usual rates.

Close the month

Work through the month in order, load Services Australia’s response, then lock it.

1. Click Reconciliation on the hub and choose the month under Period.
2. Monthly pipeline has five steps, each with a status (Not run, Running, Complete, Error), a Last run: time and a Run button (Re-run later):
   1. Import recurring items: the standing monthly charges.
   2. Check delivered shifts: adds every delivered shift in the month to the budget ledger. Re-running never double-counts.
   3. Check external / supplier items: does the same for approved supplier invoices. If an invoice matches no budget line, it is listed with an Attribute on budget link.
   4. Submit claims: sends the month’s claimable services to Services Australia.
   5. Upload Services Australia response: loads the XML file so payments match statement lines.
3. Under Payment determinations, choose the file and submit it. The result says how many rows were read, matched and unmatched. An unmatched row becomes an exception.
4. Under Period lock, click Lock [month]. A message says locking is permanent. Confirm to lock. Months must be locked in order, starting with the earliest month that has activity. If an earlier month is open, the button is off and names it.
5. If delivered care in the month has not drawn down (for example, no active budget covered the date), the card lists it and the button is off. Fix it, or click Acknowledge then Confirm acknowledgement. This allows the lock, creates no drawdown, and adds an Undrawn delivery exception.
6. A locked month is never reopened. Post an adjustment in the current open month.
7. “Locking is overdue” appears when the last lock is older than the number of days shown on the card. Do not ignore it.

Reconcile the government allocation for a quarter

Budgets are monthly in practice, but the government works out each quarter’s carryover itself, on its own timetable. Cura’s carryover figure is a prediction. Services Australia’s figure is the one that counts.

1. On Reconciliation, click Import SA allocation and pick the Quarter.
2. Choose the allocation file and click Upload allocation. The expected columns are listed under the button.
3. Read the preview before anything is saved: SA Budget ID, SA available, SA carryover and Cura’s own Cura computed figure. Lines matching nobody are flagged.
4. Click Commit import. Their figures are recorded beside Cura’s. The budget card then shows SA Budget ID and SA available.
5. Carryover reconciliation compares Cura computed with SA confirmed and shows the Variance. A difference raises a Carryover variance exception. Run reconciliation checks again.
6. On a budget marked Provisional, click Confirm SA rollover as authoritative. The opening carryover changes to their figure, the card reads Confirmed by Services Australia, and the change is logged. Cura’s original figure is kept.
7. Confirming does not close the exception. Someone still records how it was handled.

Work the exceptions

Every problem is a worked item with an owner and a recorded answer.

1. Click Exceptions on the hub. Filter by Status (All, Open, Investigating, Resolved). Click Run detection to look for new items. You will see how many were raised.
2. The list shows Type, What happened, Amount, Owner and Status. Types:
   • Negative balance: delivery went over the participant’s budget.
   • Unmatched payment: a payment matched nobody, or differed from what you claimed.
   • Unclaimed service: a delivered service is in no claim.
   • Carryover variance: your carryover differs from Services Australia’s.
   • Undrawn delivery: delivered care that has not drawn down.
   • Claim rejected: myplace rejected an NDIS claim line. The row has Correct and resend and Write off buttons.
   • Claim capped: an NDIS line was paid at the price limit. The amount is the difference.
   • Lodgement deadline: a claim line is near or past its lodgement limit (90 days for NDIS, 60 for aged care). The wording shows “closes today” or “closed on” with the date. An NDIS badge marks items from an NDIS claim batch.
3. View source opens the statement or reconciliation the item is about.
4. Pick an Owner (Unassigned to start) and click Assign.
5. When dealt with, click Resolve, answer “How was this resolved?” and save. The note is kept.

Keep prices current

Government rates change. In Invoicing, Price Plans, use Import price guide to load a new set of rates from a file, after reviewing a preview. Already active budgets are not re-priced. Use Raise amendment if a price change should reach an active budget. See the Invoicing help page.

See how this feeds the QFR

The QFR tab in Reports is built from this module: budgets, claims and the care management pool. Keep them current and the QFR needs no extra entry. See the Reports help page.

Tips

• One enrolment, three doors. The fields are the same from every door.
• Mid-quarter starts are pro-rated automatically.
• Warnings do not block care. Over-allocation, missing approvals and over-budget claim lines all warn and allow an override with a reason.
• Claim statuses move one way: draft, finalised, submitted, then paid or rejected.
• Claims must be lodged within the 60 day window. Watch the hub alerts.
• The carryover cap is the larger of 10% of the quarterly budget and $1,000. Anything above it is flagged as Excess to Return to Government.
• Lock each month as you finish it. A skipped month blocks every month after it.
• Services Australia holds all unspent subsidy. Statements never show a provider-held balance.

Troubleshooting

• “Select a category and enter a valid charged amount.” A claim line needs a Category and a charged amount above zero.
• A claim line is refused for a price cap. The matching price plan has a government cap. Lower the amount, or check Invoicing, Price Plans.
• “A Services Australia Payment ID is required to mark a claim as paid” Fill in Payment ID first.
• “No completed services found for this participant in the selected quarter.” Check the shifts are completed and fall inside the budget quarter.
• “No participants found. Add your first SAH participant.” Use Onboard Participant.
• A budget line will not save. Check that hours are in quarter-hour steps, weekly lines have a weekday, and the service belongs to that panel.
• The Lock button is off. An earlier month is open, or delivered care has not drawn down. The card says which. Fix it or acknowledge it.
• “This month is locked” and a figure is wrong. Closed months are never reopened. Post an adjustment in the current open month.
• A payment matched nobody. It appears under Exceptions as Unmatched payment. Use View source and check the payment reference against the claim.
• Looking for a Quarterly Budgets page. There is none. Use the participant profile or Service & Funding tab, and Care Management Pool for the pooled amount.