Stage 01
What has to exist before you take the first one
Setup, in the order it becomes load-bearing — and an honest line around what the guidance settles and what it leaves to other bodies.
Start here first
Start with the question that decides everything else
Before any of the setup below matters, answer one question: which kinds of participant do you intend to take? That single decision changes whether you must be registered at all, and it changes how money reaches you. It is the subject of its own page, and it is worth reading first if you have not already.
The right registration position
Sourced
You must be registered with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission if you "provide supports or services to NDIS participants with NDIA-managed funding" — one of a listed set of activities that also includes specialist disability accommodation, specialist behaviour support, plan management, and using regulated restrictive practices.1
1. What are the responsibilities of a provider — National Disability Insurance Scheme. ndis.gov.au
For an occupational therapy practice, read that as: registration is required to take NDIA-managed participants, and it is not required to take plan-managed or self-managed ones. So the registration decision is not a general "should I be registered" question. It is a question about which participants you can accept. A practice that is not registered can still work — with plan-managed and self-managed participants only.
From practice, not the guidance
This tends to be the setup question people get wrong in both directions. Some practices assume they cannot start at all until registration is complete, and sit out work they were always allowed to do. Others assume registration is a formality they can catch up on later, and only find out otherwise when a claim has nowhere to go. Neither assumption is safe, and the fix is the same: settle which kinds of participant you intend to take before you promise anyone a start date.
Being recorded as a "my provider"
Sourced
Registration is not the only requirement for claiming from the agency. "You also need to be recorded as a my provider before you submit your payment request."2
The agency publishes separate guidance on how to be recorded as a my provider.3
2. Guide to getting paid. ndis.gov.au · 3. How to be recorded as a my provider. ndis.gov.au
This is a second, separate gate, and it sits between you and payment rather than between you and delivery. Being recorded also affects how quickly a valid claim is paid — see the sequence.
Portal access
Sourced
There are two provider portals. "The myplace provider portal is used for participants on our old computer system. The my NDIS provider portal is used for participants on our new computer system."4 Which one you use depends on which system your participant's plan is on.
The agency publishes separate guidance on using the provider portals.5
4. Guide to working as an allied health provider. ndis.gov.au · 5. How to use the provider portals. ndis.gov.au
Portal access is load-bearing only if you are taking NDIA-managed participants. If your first participant is plan-managed or self-managed, you invoice instead.
An ABN, if you invoice a plan manager
Sourced
An invoice to a plan manager "must include a valid Australian Business Number (ABN) – unless you are exempt from providing an ABN". Where you are exempt: "You must include a statement by a supplier form if you are exempt from providing an ABN."6
6. Guide to getting paid. ndis.gov.au
What this page does not settle
Not established by the gathered guidance
Insurance certificates and worker screening checks are real obligations for a practice — but the guidance gathered for this site does not establish them, so this site does not state them as requirements of the scheme. They sit with other instruments: the Commission's registration requirements and worker screening rules. Confirm each with the body that owns it before you rely on anything here.
Note that your ABN position is established, but only for one narrow purpose: invoicing a plan manager. Your broader tax and GST position is a matter for the tax office, not for this site.
From practice, not the guidance
A useful way to hold this: the scheme is not the only thing with a claim on how your practice is set up. Professional registration, insurance, and tax obligations exist whether or not a participant is funded, and they tend to be the ones a first-timer has already handled. It is the scheme-specific layer on top that is new, and that layer is what this site maps.
One page
The one-pager
Your first scheme participant: the setup and the sequence.
The same material as this site, compressed onto one sheet you can keep beside the desk while you set the first one up — what has to exist first, the order the work runs in, and the deadlines that bite. Same sources, cited as footnotes.
- What has to exist before the first support
- The sequence, and the deadlines that bite
- Where the software helps, and where it does not
We email it. Leave your details and it comes to you — no account, no login.