Guide · free NDIS funding planner
How the funding planner works.
Six steps, and the things it leaves to you.
The funding planner is a free tool for working out what an NDIS plan will actually buy. You split the plan into funding blocks, allocate supports against each block at the published price limits, and read the totals back — per block, per discipline, and against what is still to place. It runs in your browser and needs no account.
How to use it
From a plan total to a costed schedule.
Every control named here is one the tool has. Nothing needs to be set up first, and you can load a worked example at any point to see a finished plan before you build your own.
- Step 01
Set the plan up
Give the plan a label, then enter the plan start and end dates and the date service actually begins. Choose a block size — months, quarters, half years or years — and the support stream the plan is claimed against, therapy or early childhood.
- Step 02
Choose the region
National, remote or very remote. The published catalogue carries three prices for each support item and the region decides which of them applies to this participant. Change it later and every line already entered is repriced, so every row moves to the new rate together.
- Step 03
Press Calculate to get funding blocks
The tool divides the plan’s span into numbered blocks at the size you chose and lists them with their start and end dates. Each block gets a budget you set: that is the spreading decision, made once and visible, instead of implied by whatever was typed into a sheet.
- Step 04
Allocate supports against the blocks
Add a line, pick the block and the support type, and choose the description of support. The charge code and the rate are filled in from the catalogue — you enter the quantity and the amount is worked out. A line that would take its block past the budget is refused on the spot, with a message telling you to raise the budget or reduce the quantity.
- Step 05
Read the totals back
The blocks table shows budget, allocated and remaining for every block, with a status against today’s date. The summary underneath groups the same lines by block — period dates, support type, description, rate, quantity and total — closes each block with a subtotal, and lets you reword a description for the person who will read it.
- Step 06
Take it away
Export to Excel gives you the workbook; Download PNG gives you the one-page summary as an image you can drop into an email. The first export asks for an email address, with an optional tick for occasional updates. Both files are stamped with where they came from and the price warning below.
Starting over: Load example fills the planner with a complete costed plan, and Clear plan empties it. Your draft is saved to this device as you work, so closing the tab does not lose it, and the region you chose is remembered for next time.
Why it helps
The sums stay right when the assumptions move.
The arithmetic is redone for you
Change the region, a block budget or a quantity and every figure that depends on it moves at once. That is the part that gets skipped in a spreadsheet, because doing it by hand is slow and doing it wrong is invisible.
Prices come from one catalogue
Rates and charge codes are read from a committed copy of the published schedule rather than from a formula somebody typed a year ago and has pasted forward since.
Over-commitment is caught at entry
A block that cannot afford a line says so when the line is entered, rather than in month eight when a participant has no funded supports left.
The result is handable
A spreadsheet or a one-page summary you can send to a plan manager, a support coordinator or the participant, without first explaining your own workbook to them.
What it does not do
A calculator, not an adviser.
The planner is worth using because it is honest about its edges. These are the ones worth knowing before you rely on a figure it gives you.
It is not advice
Nothing the tool produces is financial, clinical or plan-management advice. It does not decide what is reasonable and necessary for a participant, it does not assess eligibility, and it has no view on whether a plan should be spent the way you have laid it out. Those are judgements for the people who know the participant.
The prices are indicative
Indicative prices only. Confirm them against the current NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits before you rely on this plan. The catalogue behind the tool is a committed copy of a published schedule, and a schedule is revised. A plan you built before a revision will still add up; it may no longer match what you can claim.
It is not connected to anything
The planner does not claim, submit or lodge anything, and it is not joined to the NDIA, to a plan-management system or to your practice software. It does not know a participant’s real plan either — the budgets it works from are the ones you type in, so a figure entered wrongly will be costed just as carefully as a figure entered rightly.
Where your figures go
The plan is built in this browser and saved to this device. The words you type — the plan label, every description of support, anything you write about a person — are not carried by either request the tool makes. What does reach us is how far a visit got and how large a plan is at that moment: its budget and allocated totals, its block count and its discipline count. The export panel sets both requests out field by field at the moment it asks for an address, and our privacy policy covers what is kept and for how long.
Ready to try it?
Open the planner and press Load example to see a finished plan first, or start with your own dates. Free, and no account needed.