NDIS cancellation policy for allied health providers

A participant texts at 7.40 am to say they cannot do this morning's session. Your therapist is already in the car, the slot cannot be filled at that notice, and the hour is gone. Whether you can be paid for any of it depends on three things you settled long before that text arrived: what the NDIS pricing rules say about short-notice cancellations, what your service agreement says, and whether your records can show what happened.

Having a cancellation policy of some kind is the easy part. The harder part is having one that lines up with the NDIS rules, is written into every participant's agreement, and is applied the same way by every person who answers the phone. This post walks through the shape of the rules, the wording that matters, and the habits that make a cancellation claim straightforward instead of awkward.

What the NDIS treats as a short-notice cancellation

The NDIA's Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits guidance sets out when a provider may claim for a support that did not go ahead, and from 2026-27 the maximum prices sit in the NDIS pricing schedule. The detail changes between editions, so read the current versions before you rely on anything below. The shape has been fairly stable:

• A short-notice cancellation is one where the participant cancels with less notice than the NDIA's rules require, or does not turn up at all. A no-show is treated as a short-notice cancellation. The notice period has been expressed in clear business days rather than hours, so a Monday-morning cancellation of a Tuesday visit can still count as short notice.
• The amount you can claim is a share of the agreed price for the support, up to the price limit. That share has changed over the years, so confirm the current figure rather than working from memory or an old policy document.
• The support item follows the one you would have claimed had the session gone ahead. The 2025-26 guidance had you claim that item marked as a cancellation; the 2026-27 pricing schedule lists separate cancellation items for therapy supports. Check which the current rules want.
• Conditions apply. Recent editions have included conditions such as not being able to find other billable work for the practitioner in that time, and the practitioner being paid for it anyway. Check the current list; it is what a plan manager or auditor will test your claim against.

Two further points catch practices out. First, not every type of support carries the same cancellation rules, so a policy written for therapy sessions may not cover everything you deliver. Second, the rules govern what you may claim from NDIS funds. They do not oblige you to charge, and you may decide to waive a first late cancellation or one caused by a hospital admission. That is a business decision, and it is fine, as long as you make it consistently.

What your service agreement needs to say

Your right to charge a participant, or their plan, for a late cancellation comes from the agreement you made with them. If the agreement is silent, you are starting a conversation about money with someone who never agreed to pay it. Put the policy in writing, in plain language, before the first session. A workable cancellation clause covers:

• How much notice you need, and how the participant can give it: phone, text, email or the patient portal.
• What counts as a no-show, including the practitioner arriving at the door and getting no answer.
• What you will charge, expressed as a share of the session fee, and that it will be claimed from their NDIS funds in line with the NDIA's rules.
• Any exceptions you will apply, such as a hospital admission or a sudden change in their support needs.
• That you will try to rebook the session and, where possible, offer the freed time to someone else.
• How the policy applies to plan-managed participants (the invoice goes to the plan manager) and self-managed participants (the invoice goes to them).

Read the clause aloud to the participant or their support coordinator at intake. If it sounds like a penalty, rewrite it. It is a statement about a scarce hour of a clinician's time, and it reads better that way.

Recording the cancellation properly

A cancellation claim stands or falls on the record. When a plan manager queries it, or the participant's family asks why a session appears on the statement when nobody came, you need to be able to show:

1. When the participant cancelled, by what channel, and who took the call or read the message.
2. The reason given, in the participant's own words where possible.
3. Whether the practitioner had already travelled, and whether the time was refilled.
4. Which cancellation rule was applied, and by whom.

Write this down at the time, not at the end of the week. A note that just says “cancelled”, with no time and no reason, is very hard to stand behind three months later.

Claiming a short-notice cancellation

How the claim reaches the money depends on how the participant's plan is managed. For a plan-managed participant you invoice the plan manager. For a self-managed participant you invoice the participant. For an agency-managed participant you claim through the NDIS provider portal, which is open only to registered providers. The fields a plan manager needs on that invoice are covered in our guide to NDIS invoicing requirements for allied health.

On the invoice, make the cancellation obvious. Use a line description such as “Short-notice cancellation, 45-minute session booked for 25 October 2026”, with the support item, the date the session was booked for and the amount claimed. Do not dress it up as a delivered session. A plan manager who has to guess will ask, and a line that looks like a session that never happened is the kind of claim that gets recovered later.

Watch for patterns, too. A participant who cancels every second week is telling you something about the time of day, their health or their transport. A good practice raises it with them and their support coordinator rather than simply billing it.

How AspireOS handles cancellations

In AspireOS, cancellation and no-show fees are rules you set yourself, by notice period, funder and service, and the price book can hold a separate cancellation code for each funder alongside the service's normal item code. Nothing is charged automatically. When a visit is cancelled from the Calendar's visit sheet, staff choose the rule that applies, so the decision is made and recorded at the moment it happens. You can cancel a single visit, a weekly run or all upcoming visits in one step.

Three other pieces help. NDIS service agreements are drafted from your own template and signed online, so the cancellation clause is in front of every participant before the first visit, and the patient portal shows any cancellation fee before a patient asks to cancel. A cancellation raises a task and tells admins how many waitlist patients match the freed time. And the To invoice tab in Finances lists late cancellations and no-shows that were never charged, so the ones that slipped through are visible rather than lost. There is more on the NDIS side on our page for NDIS providers.

You can start free, load your own cancellation rules and service agreement template, and follow a cancelled visit through to its invoice before you change anything for your participants.