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.
Check any budget you create or copy 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.
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.
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
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
Why does the same service 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 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. The same change can be made by hand, one record at a time: 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 pre-filled 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.
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.