Overview
Services Australia has mandated that, from 1 October 2026, three personal care services under Support at Home move from the Independence contribution category to Clinical Supports. The three services are:
Assistance with self-care and activities of daily living
Assistance with the self-administration of medication
Continence management (non-clinical)
This requires a change to your Eziplan configuration. A cutover assistant has been built to make that change for you.
Run the cutover assistant before you finalise or create any budget that carries a personal care service on or after 1 October 2026.
What you need to do:
Run the cutover assistant. It is on the Service Type Assocs. tab in Support at Home configuration, and opens ready for the mandated change.
Review the budgets it flags. Every budget it changes is marked Needs Review. Open each one, check it and save it.
If relevant, run it again for any price plan that starts after 1 October 2026. The default run picks up price plans that run across 1 October, not ones that start later. See "I have a price plan starting after 1 October" in the FAQ.
Then create or copy budgets. On a budget running across 1 October, personal care may need to be on it twice, once for each period.
Running the cutover assistant
Start it from the Start the Cutover Assistant button on the Service Type Assocs. tab. There are five steps. Each is confirmed and applied on its own, so you can stop after any step and what is done stands.
Step 1 - Services
Opens already filled in for the mandated change, with the cutover date set and each service listed against its replacement.
Step 2 - Service types
Lists the local service types associated with the service being replaced, all selected. What you select here decides which price plans and budget lines the next two steps look at.
Step 3 - Price plans
Lists the price plans carrying those service types that run across the cutover date, all selected. Most providers carry all of them.
Each gets a new revision holding the replacement service, priced exactly as the service it replaces. To charge something different, edit that new price plan revision afterwards as you would any other.
A price plan that starts after the cutover date does not run across it, so it won't be listed. Those can be picked up by a second run, covered in the FAQ.
Step 4 - Budgets
Lists the client budgets holding the service past the cutover date, all selected. For each one the existing line ends the day before the cutover, a line for the replacement picks up the dates it gives up, the budget moves onto the new price plan revision, and it is flagged Needs Review.
The Budget status filter decides which budgets are listed and defaults to active only. You can include drafts and do everything in one run, or run the assistant again later with the filter changed. A budget spanning the cutover date has its line split, appearing under both the old category and the new. A budget sitting entirely after the cutover date has its line moved. The Lines column says which.
Step 5 - Done
Reports what the run applied: the associations created, the price plan revisions added, and the budgets brought into line.
Finalising budgets
The assistant does not finish the job. Every budget it changed is flagged Needs Review in the budgets list. Open each one, check it and save it. Saving clears the flag.
A budget that has been through the cutover holds the service under both categories, each line dated to its own period.
The activity log records what the assistant did, and the price plan revision carries the service under both categories.
Creating a new budget
Personal care items under Clinical Supports are only available after the assistant has been run, because the items need to be configured in the relevant price plans.
On a budget running across 1 October, personal care may need to be on it twice: once under Independence to 30 September, and once under Clinical Supports from 1 October.
A line cannot be dated outside the period its service is available for. If it is, the line is flagged and the message names the available range, so you can correct the dates or add the second line.
Copying a budget across the cutover
Complete the assistant's price plan step first, or the copy has no revision to carry the replacement service.
Single and bulk copy both identify the services moving category, separately from services being removed, and carry them into the category that applies for the new dates. Check the participant contribution, or turn Move off and add the lines yourself.
FAQ
Are Q3 budgets impacted?
No, budgets that finish prior to or at the end of September are not impacted by the 1 October change.
What will happen to each budget?
It depends on the date range and when it was created.
If price plans and budgets span those dates (have some dates prior and some dates post), then they will need to contain two versions of the service: one for the period ending 30 September, and one for the period commencing 1 October.
If the budget existed before the assistant was run, the assistant splits the line. The budget is flagged Needs Review; open it, check it and save it.
If the budget is copied after the assistant has run, the copy carries the service into the category that applies for the new dates.
If the budget is built from scratch after the assistant has run, add the second line manually.
If price plans and budgets exceed the cutover date (i.e. commence after 1 October), they will follow the new rules, appearing only once under the Clinical Supports category.
You won't need to run the assistant for budgets created in future. What governs budgets from then on is the configuration it writes. For the change in personal care items from Independence to Clinical effective 1 October, budgets created or copied after the run follow those dates, whether or not they cross 1 October.
I've copied budgets recently and haven't run the assistant. What should I do?
Run the assistant, then open each copied budget and check personal care is on it.
If the personal care items you expect are there, review, address any flags you see and save as normal. If personal care items are missing, you might have made the copy after Eziplan added an end date for the services, but before running the assistant. Delete that budget, run the assistant, and copy it again.
Why does the same service sometimes appear twice?
A Support at Home service can now exist over more than one period, each with its own contribution category and dates. Service type associations and price plans show the date range each entry applies to, and a budget spanning 1 October (beginning before and ending after) holds personal care under both categories, with the participant contribution calculated at the rate that applied to each portion.
Do I have to use the assistant?
No. Changes can be made manually if desired: associate the local service types with the replacement service, add the replacement to each price plan running across the cutover, then on each budget end the existing line the day before and add a line for the replacement.
The assistant does all of that in one pass and opens prefilled with the services relevant to your organisation.
Why was a budget left out of the run?
The reason is given in the Cannot be moved column.
A budget finishing before the cutover date is left alone. Nothing on it runs past the change.
A budget on a price plan that was not carried across cannot be moved yet. Complete the price plan step for that plan, then run the assistant again.
I have a price plan starting after 1 October. Why isn't it listed?
The assistant lists price plans that run across the cutover date you give it. A price plan that starts after that date does not run across it, so it is not listed.
Run the assistant again, with that price plan's start date as the cutover date. Use the start of its date range, not a date inside it. The run picks up the price plan and the budgets sitting on it.
To give an example, if a price plan exists for 1 January 2026 - 31 December 2026 and another for 1 January 2027 - 31 December 2027, the assistant will need to be run twice:
first with the cutover date of 1 October 2026, impacting plans and budgets that span that date
then with the cutover date of 1 January 2027, impacting plans and budgets that begin on that date
Can I stop part way and come back?
Yes. The budget run keeps going if you close the assistant or lose the page, and reopening brings you back to its progress.
The earlier steps save nothing in progress. Start again with the same replacements and cutover date, and each step reports what is already done.
What is not changing?
Participant statements and invoicing follow the contribution amount Services Australia returns on reconciliation, so they need no change.
There is no change to personal care service scope, eligibility, delivery model, workforce requirements or service identifiers.
Claiming and reporting use the date the service was delivered, so a closed period returns the same figures when a report is re-run.