Budgeting and tracking your NDIS funds

Key points

• Budgeting how your NDIS funds will be used means you will have no surprises and can be confident your funds will last until your plan is renewed
• You will need to understand how funds from your core, capital and capacity building sections can be used
• If you have a plan manager, they might have an app that shows you what your funds are looking like or you can use the NDIS’ budget calculator

Tracking how your plan is progressing against how much time is left before your next review, as well as budgeting out how you will use that funding, can give you the confidence that the right amount of money is going to the right supports to help you achieve your goals.

Where to start

In order to understand the funds in your plan and how much is in your budget, you will need to know what your Core, Capital and Capacity Building support budgets are.

This is so you can see how each of these types of funding can be used and what you have left to spend, and then plan out how it will cover what you need.

For example, you need to know what funding is allocated to therapy in your Capacity Building budget, which is funding that cannot be used to purchase assistive technology you might need.

Once you know what funding you have and how you can, as well as how you want to, use it, you can put together a plan.

Separate out any funding that is dedicated to a specific purpose, such as the amount approved for your home modifications to install grab rails in the bathroom.

Then think about any supports you know you will need regularly – such as transport to medical appointments, cleaning your house fortnightly, or personal care daily.

Remember that this funding does need to help you pursue your goals and live a fulfilling life, so certain supports may be more important to spend funding on than others.

To learn more about what happens when you find out you have too much funding left, read our articles, ‘Why do I have leftover NDIS funds?’ and ‘What can I spend leftover NDIS funds on?’

If your calculations about your NDIS budget show you don’t have as much funding left as you thought you would or your tracking of funds has not worked, you can find tips on what to do next in our article, ‘Help! I’m running out of NDIS funding’.

Helpful tools

It’s becoming more and more common for plan management providers to have applications that display how much of your funding has been spent in a way that is easy to understand, for example as a pie chart.

You might find this useful if you have a plan manager, as even though they manage the financial side of your plan it is still up to you to keep track of spending.

It is important to be aware though, that these apps will only be as up-to-date as your paperwork, so if you have an outstanding invoice for a service it may not be included when you check.

If you don’t have a plan manager who can break down the finances for you, it might be useful to check the tracking of your funds using the NDIS budget calculator.

This calculator can show the amount of funding left in your plan or the number of hours of support you can afford.

The my NDIS app also has a function that shows the timeline of your current plan, your budget and the funding which you have available in each support category.

This is useful for checking balances, but it can’t be used to allocate funding to future supports, you will still need to do this planning yourself or work with support people like your plan manager and support coordinator, a family member or a friend.

Your Local Area Coordinator or Early Childhood Early Intervention Partner can also help you to budget and track your funding.

How do you keep track of your NDIS funding? Tell us in the comments below.

Related content:
Help! I’m running out of NDIS funding
Why do I have leftover NDIS funds?
What can I spend leftover NDIS funds on?
Assistive technology funding under the NDIS