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, you'll first need to create either an individual or group session.
Required packages
Last updated in version: Lumary 21 minor release 4
Before you begin...
To claim activity based transport costs, you'll need:
- a current service agreement that allows transport claiming
- a category and service that allows transport claiming, and
- a planned service where the Travel Chargeable checkbox was ticked when adding the planned service to the session.
If a primary service you're claiming does not allow for transport claiming, the relevant fields will still appear. Providers can use these fields to capture data, which they may use to compensate workers for transport that isn't billable. No service delivered (SD) records will be created for the parts of the transport where the primary service doesn't allow claiming.
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.
- Go 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.
The examples in this article show how the system handles sessions where there were multiple workers and a group of attendees. The same approach applies for individual workers and/or individual attendees, but there are fewer steps.
If multiple workers were assigned to a session, 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 SD records will need to be made. The name of the worker relating to the transport details you're 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.
- If you're also adding provider travel, add the details of the travel costs in the travel sections.
- Scroll past the travel section 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.
- In the Total Time Transporting Client (mins) field, add the amount of time in minutes that the worker spent transporting the client.
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 an SD record.
- In the Total Distance Transporting Client (KM) field, enter the distance in km travelled while transporting the client.
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 agreed transport rate set in the agreement for the client.
- In the Apportionment section, 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.
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 and parking fees.
- 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 to generate SD records for expenses.
- In the Expense Description field, enter the description for the expense.
- In the Amount field, enter the cost.
- In the Apportionment section, 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.
- Once all details are filled out, click on the Confirm or Next button. The Next button appears if your session included multiple workers. Once you've added information for all of the workers, the Confirm button will appear.
It is important to check that all information is filled out correctly in the Complete Session form. Individual SD records will be generated for each client and worker, for travel labour time, and each non-labour expense for both travel and transport services. This can result in a significant number of SD records being created.