This article gives a brief overview of things you'll need to know about travel and transport for NDIS claiming.
Before attempting to claim travel or transport costs, make sure your client's service agreement allows travel and transport claiming.
Travel and transport funding from the NDIS allows participants to access services and other activities outside of their homes, as well as provides compensation for workers to travel to provide services, allowing them to increase the radius of their service delivery area. Travel and transport costs can only be claimed on approved services that are part of core or capacity building support budgets, as stated in the NDIS price guide. Travel and transport cannot be claimed from capital support budgets. For a full explanation of the travel and transport guidelines, see the latest NDIS price guide.
This article has been split into sections covering the following areas of travel and transport:
Terminology
There are several terms that you'll need to be familiar with when claiming NDIS travel and transport costs:
- Travel is a worker travelling to and from client appointments (no client in the car).
- Transport is taking a participant from one place to another (client/s in the car).
- Labour costs are the costs for time spent travelling to and/or from appointments or transporting a client.
- Non-labour costs are the additional costs (for example, parking costs, road tolls or vehicle wear and tear) that a worker may incur while travelling to and/or from appointments or transporting clients.
- Apportioning is used to refer to the dividing of costs when travel or transport involves two or more participants.
Travel
Travel involves a worker travelling to or from a service, without a client in the vehicle. Provider travel can be split into labour costs and non-labour costs. The costs that can be claimed differ depending on whether the service is claimed from the core or capacity building budget.
Travel labour costs
Travel labour costs are the costs for the time in minutes taken for the worker to travel to or from an appointment.
The maximum number of minutes that can be claimed varies depending on the travel regions, as defined by the NDIS price guide:
- up to 30 mins of travel can be claimed per worker for MMM-1-3 areas, and
- up to 60 mins of travel can be claimed per worker for MMM-4-5 areas.
Each of the following are counted as separate travel sessions:
- travelling to an appointment
- travelling from the same appointment, and
- travelling to a new appointment.
The maximum number of minutes that can be claimed applies to each individual travel session.
Travel non-labour costs
Travel non-labour costs are the extra costs incurred by the worker when travelling to or from an appointment. These can include vehicle wear and tear (recorded and charged by distance travelled in km), parking fees and road tolls. Non-labour costs can only be claimed if a zero or greater value is recorded in the related Total Travel Time or Total Distance Travelled fields.
The costs that can be claimed vary depending on where the worker is travelling and the services they are delivering.
| Travel to appointment | Travel from appointment |
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Both labour and non-labour costs for approved core and capacity building services can be claimed when travelling to an appointment. |
Both labour and non-labour costs for approved capacity building services can be claimed when a worker is travelling from the last appointment in a trip and returning to either their usual place of work or their home. |
Transport
Transport is taking a client from one location to another, and so must involve the worker having a client in the vehicle with them. Provider transport can be split into general and specialised transport, and activity based transport, depending on whether transport will occur as part of another service, or as a service in itself. The rate for all forms of transport can be negotiated with the client.
General and specialised transport
General and specialised transport is designed to support participants that require transport to an activity that is not part of a service itself, or to a service that is provided by another organisation. General and specialised transport does not occur as part of another service and is delivered as a specific transport line item from the Core Support budget that must be stated in the participant’s plan. General and specialised transport can only be delivered to a single client at a time and can't be apportioned.
Activity based transport
Activity based transport is the transport that occurs as part of another approved service within the core or capacity building budgets. Unlike core transport, activity based transport does not need to be claimed separately and will be automatically calculated from the time and distance spent travelling while delivering the service.
The costs that can be claimed depend on the type of transport that is taking place.
| Transport as part of a service | Transport outside of a service |
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Transport that takes place during another service is activity based transport. Both transport labour (minutes spent transporting) and non-labour (km travelled, as well as any extra costs incurred, such as parking fees) costs can be claimed when undertaking transport during a service. |
Transport that occurs outside of another service is general or specialised transport and may include transport services to go to a school, educational facility, place of employment, the community, or a service provided by a different organisation than the one providing the transport services. Costs associated with this type of travel are usually a rate that is negotiated with the client. |
Apportioning
Where a worker is travelling to provide services to more than one client in a travel region (including the return journey, where applicable) or transporting more than one client in a travel region then the provider should apportion that travel time between the clients, with the agreement of each client in advance.
General and specialised transport can only be delivered to one client at a time and so is not able to be apportioned.