This article explains how to claim costs associated with transporting clients during appointments by completing a Sessions Calendar appointment from a session record.
Activity based transport refers to a worker transporting a client during another service. If you're providing transport as a service in itself and will not be providing other services to the client, this is general or specialised transport and can be claimed as a regular service. See our NDIS travel and transport overview article for more information on the types of transport.
To claim transport costs for a Sessions Calendar appointment without using the Lumary mobile app, you'll first need to create either an individual or group session.
To claim transport costs you'll need:
- a current service agreement that allows transport claiming, and
- a service that allows transport claiming.
If the services that you are claiming against do not allow for transport claiming, the relevant fields will still appear, but no service delivered (SD) records will be created for those services.
To claim for transport using sessions:
- Click on the Sessions Calendar tab or navigate to the client's Calendar. Sessions can also be opened by clicking on their text link in the Sessions list view.
- Navigate to your session and click on it. This will open an information panel on the right.
- Click on the session name text link to open the session record.
- Click on the Complete button. This will bring up the Complete Session form.
- Check that the Travel Area field at the top of the form shows the correct area. This should have been set during the creation of the session, but can be altered here if needed.
Multiple workers
If multiple workers were assigned to a session, then their transport details will need to be added in separate steps in the Complete Session form. This is because each worker may transport the client or clients different distances, or have incurred different costs when providing transport, and individual service delivered records will need to be made accordingly. The name of the worker relating to the transport details you are currently filling out will be shown at the top of the Complete Session form. Each step will represent a different worker, with the final step being a confirmation of all details.
- Add any travel details associated with the session, as shown here.
- Scroll to the bottom of the Complete Session form and put a tick in the Client transported during this session checkbox.
- If a modified vehicle was used to transport the clients, put a tick in the Modified vehicle or bus was used checkbox. This will change the rate that is used to calculate transport expenses.
- Add the amount of time in minutes that the worker spent transporting the client in the Total Time Transporting Client (mins) field.
Transport time
The Total Time Spent Transporting Client (mins) field is used to capture data for your business's internal reporting. Completing this field populates the appointment travel (AT) record but does not create a service delivered (SD) record.
- Enter the distance in km travelled while transporting the client in the Total Distance Transporting Client (KM) field.
Transport distance
The distance travelled while transporting a client is used to calculate part of the non-labour costs associated with transport. This may involve the costs associated with running a vehicle and is charged per km travelled. The rate charged per km will be taken from the default rate set by your organisation, or the negotiated transport rate for the client, if they have one.
- In the Apportionment section, directly below the Total Time Transporting Client (mins) field, enter the portion of the transport that will be charged to each client in the Client Portion field. This will default to apportion the cost evenly between clients, but can be changed.
Cost claiming restrictions
All fields on the Complete Session form will be available to be filled in, but not all costs may be claimed by every client. In the Apportionment section, under the Cost Claiming column, each client will have an indicator of whether they are allowed to claim the costs for that section. This status can be different for each client in each section of the form. When claiming transport services this may be Allow or Prevent. SD records will only be created for transport services that the client is allowed to claim, but all data entered into the form will be recorded for data collection purposes within your organisation.
- If any non-labour transport expenses were incurred, click on the Add Expense button in the Transport Non-Labour Expenses section. Note that you must enter a zero or greater value in the related Total Time Transporting Client or Total Distance Transporting Client fields in order to generate a service delivered record for the expense.
Transport non-labour expenses
Non-labour expenses are expenses that are incurred beyond the time taken for the service to be delivered. These fields can be used to capture expenses like road tolls or parking fees.
- Enter the description for the expense in the Expense Description field.
- Enter the cost of the expense in the Amount field.
- In the Apportionment section below Add Expense button, apportion the non-labour costs between clients. This apportionment applies to all non-labour transport expenses, but can differ from labour transport expenses apportioned above.
- If you would also like to claim for costs involved with travelling to or from a session, see this article.
- Once all details are filled out, click on the Next button and fill in the information for any remaining workers.
Activity based transport is charged at the rate of the service that it occurs as a part of. This means that no extra SD record will be created in addition to the SD record that's created for the service.
It is important to check that all information is filled out correctly in the Complete Session form. Individual SD records are created for every labour and non-labour expense for each client and worker, for both travel and transport. This can result in a significant number of SD records being created that can be difficult to edit later.