Provider Travel is an essential aspect of NDIS service delivery, allowing providers to claim travel-related costs for visiting participants. It covers the time and expenses associated with workers travelling to (and sometimes from) a participant's location, ensuring that support is delivered effectively.

Provider Travel is actually different from Activity Based Transport:

• Provider Travel: The time and travel costs spent travelling to deliver a support to a participant.
• Activity Based Transport: Time and travel costs spent transporting a participant to the activities related to the support.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to correctly handle Provider Travel under the NDIS guidelines on Comm.care. If you're interested in Activity Based Transport, read the tutorial here.

Provider Travel

Provider Travel is the time and travel costs you or your worker incur when travelling to deliver a service to a participant. Overall, in the context of NDIS Provider Travel, there are two types of costs:

• Labour Costs (Time): These costs cover the worker's time spent travelling to (and sometimes from) the participant, calculated based on agreed hourly rate for the primary support.
• Non-Labour Costs: These are costs like tolls, parking fees, and vehicle running costs related to the worker’s travel to (and sometimes from) the participant, calculated variably.

If you travel to multiple participants on one trip, you should divide the worker's time and non-labour costs amongst participants, with the agreement of each participant in advance.

Note: You must meet ALL conditions outlined by the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits (previously the NDIS Price Guide) in order to claim for Provider Travel from a participant's NDIS Plan. For detailed information, please refer to the latest version of the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits.

A Use Case for Provider Travel Claim

Your support worker travels 35 minutes (20 kilometres) to help a participant in Zone 3 of the Modified Monash Model. They provide two hours of Core support (Assistance With Self-Care Activities).

You and the participant have agreed to an hourly rate of $72.13. They have also agreed that you can claim for travel time and for the non-labour costs associated with that travel (at $0.85 per kilometre). Zone 3 has a travel claim limit of 30 minutes.

Moreover, the worker has to pay for a road toll fee ($5), and the participant has agreed that you can claim this toll fee too.

Technically, your claim for this particular support comes in four separate parts:

• The primary support.
• Provider Travel (Labour cost) for the total 30-minute travel to the participant.
• Provider Travel (Kilometres) for the 20-kilometre travel to the participant.
• Provider Travel (Toll charges) for the toll charge when travelling to the participant.

Follow the steps below on how to set things up on Comm.care to successfully claim for Provider Travel later.

Step 1: Set up your Services involving Provider Travel

If you want to claim for Provider Travel, first you need to do some setup in your organisation's services. Keep in mind that, Comm.care adheres to the latest version of the NDIS Support Catalogue that indicates the support items that Provider Travel can be claimed against.

Go to Your Organisation > Services. Then click Add Service or click on an existing Service and click Edit.

On the Service modal, when you proceed to the Line (support) items section:

• Add the item for the primary support (01_015_0107_1_1). After that, you can see “Y” in the Travel column. This means NDIS allows you to claim Provider Travel against this support item. (Note that the NDIS PAPL still use the old line item 01_301_0104_1_1 on its example).
• Add the item Provider Travel - Non-labour cost (01_799_0107_1_1). This will be used to claim for the vehicle running cost, calculated by the kilometres travel to the participant. Make sure you select Manual under the Period section; this allows you to change the support item name and unit price later. After clicking Add, you need to edit the support item name to Provider Travel (Kilometres), and set the unit price to $0.85 if that's the agreed hour rate.
• Add another item Provider Travel - Non-labour cost (01_799_0107_1_1). This will be used to claim for the toll charges. Make sure you select Manual under the Period section; this allows you to change the support item name later. After clicking Add, you need to edit the support item name to Provider Travel (Toll Charges).

Tips: 'Provider Travel - Non-labour cost' support items always come with the sequence number 799.

Step 2: Enter the agreed details in Circle Roadmap

Provided that you and the participant have agreed that you can claim for Provider Travel, as detailed in the Service Agreement, the next step is to enter the agreed details on the related Service in Circle Roadmap.

Go to Circle > Roadmap, then open the related Service and click Edit. Make sure you do the following two things:

• Under the Allow Travel Claims section, select the time cap depending on your participant location. In this case, select 30 Min time-cap MMM 1-3 Areas as the participant is located in Zone 3.
• Then, move to the Pre-Agreed travel time (Min) section, and enter the agreed amount of travel time (in minutes) to be charged. Let's say you agreed with the client for a fixed 30 minutes in this case, just enter 30.

Step 3: Add an appointment

When you add an appointment that you can claim for Provider Travel, it’s important to set up the support items correctly.

Go to Circle > Calendar > Add Event. Alternatively, go to Your Organisation > Calendar > Circle > Add Appointment. Then fill in the fields as normal.

After selecting the related service that you have set up in Step 1, proceed to the Support Item section, you should:

• Select the support item for the primary support. After that, you will see 2 support items appearing with different Claim Types: Direct Service and Provider Travel. You may notice the Time values for these items have been filled: one from the appointment's duration, and the other from the pre-agreed travel time in step 2.
• Add the support item Provider Travel (Kilometres). The default value for Time has been automatically set to 0. You just need to set the Quantity to 20 (for the total kilometres travelling to the participant).
• Add the support item Provider Travel (Toll charges). The default value for Time has been automatically set to 0. Also, you just need to set the Quantity to 5 (for $5 to be spent). This will result in the total charge being equal to the quantity, as the unit price has already been set to $1.

Step 4: Completing the Progress Note

After delivering the support that involves Provider Travel, it’s time to make sure your staff complete the Progress Note properly.

To get started, simply click on the red page icon in the related appointment on the circle calendar.

On the Progress Note modal, you can see that Comm.care has already pre-filled multiple line items using the data from the appointment. This means you can spend more time on entering other vital information.

Below are several things you may notice in the support items:

Provider Travel - Labour costs

• Time: Although this value has been pre-filled from the pre-agreed travel time (30), you can change it to the actual time spent (35). Note that because it is greater than the time-cap (30 mins), the value you see in the invoice will be 30 mins, while in the staff hours report you will see the actual time (35 mins).

Provider Travel (Kilometres)

• Quantity: Feel free to change the pre-filled value (20) if you need to. But most of the time, you will just want to keep this field intact.
• Price: See that this field has been populated ($0.85) from the Service in Step 1.

Provider Travel (Toll charges)

• Quantity: Feel free to change the pre-filled value (5) if you need to. But most of the time, you will just want to keep this field intact.

Step 5: Understanding invoices involving Provider Travel

At this stage, let’s consider that you have created an invoice or claim using the progress note from Step 4. You will see on the invoice that the Provider Travel charges are shown separately from the primary support charge, allowing for accuracy and transparency.

When you submit an NDIS Bulk claim upload, the Travel Time charges are flagged with TRAN under Claim Type.

In the Staff Hours report, if you look at the Time column, you will see the actual time spent for the Provider Travel - Labour Cost item (0.58 hour or 35 mins), instead of the maximum amount against the time cap as in the Invoice (0.5 hour or 30 mins).