Every July, two things land on the same day for NDIS providers: a new SCHADS award wage and a new NDIS pricing schedule. It’s tempting to glance at both, see numbers moving in roughly the same direction, and assume they cancel out.
For 2026–27, that assumption will quietly erode your margin.
From a financial-review lens, the FY27 changes aren’t a uniform uplift - they’re a two-speed result. Your cost base rises across the board. Your prices only rise on part of the board. The gap between those two facts is where this year’s profitability is won or lost.
The Roster of Care (ROC) is an important planning document used by SIL providers to map support hours, staffing ratios, participant needs, and funding assumptions. The ROC shows precisely how and when support is provided for each participant in each supported accommodation facility, starting from weekday day shifts all the way through sleepovers and even to public holidays.
That’s the part operators consistently underestimate. A wage increase is horizontal. It touches every labour hour you pay for. Whether that hour is billed as personal care, support coordination, plan management oversight or a therapy session, the cost of producing it just went up.
Here’s where the symmetry breaks. The NDIA’s 2026–27 pricing schedule did not lift every cap in step with wages. It moved in three distinct bands:
|
Service line |
FY27 price change |
|
Direct support work - SIL, self-care, community access, group, sleepover, high-intensity |
~ +4.8% |
|
Support Coordination - all levels |
0% — frozen |
|
Plan Management - monthly fee |
0% — frozen |
|
Most allied health / therapy - OT, physio, speech, counselling and others |
0% — frozen |
|
Psychology |
~ +8.6% |
|
Positive Behaviour Support - practitioner |
~ +8.6% |
Read that table again with your cost base in mind. The wage increase is horizontal. The price increase is vertical — it lands on direct support work and two clinical lines, and nowhere else.
SIL and core supports - margin-neutral, at best. The ~4.8% on support-worker line items is essentially the wage flow-through. You keep margin only where your actual labour cost growth lands below that figure. If your rosters carry avoidable overtime, double-counted leave loading, or sleepover-to-active-shift creep, the price increase gets eaten before it reaches your bottom line. The lever here isn’t price - it’s roster design and award discipline.
Allied health, coordination and plan management - direct compression. Cost up, price flat. There is no pricing headroom to absorb the wage rise. The only levers left are utilisation (billable hours as a share of paid hours) and the accuracy of what you capture and claim. A therapist who moves from 55% to 65% billable utilisation does more for your FY27 margin than any rate negotiation can - because the rate didn’t move.
Psychology and Positive Behaviour Support - the bright spots. These two clinical lines rose ahead of the wage increase, and well ahead of their frozen peers. If you hold or are building practitioner capacity here, FY27 is the year that capacity became more valuable on a relative basis. It’s worth a deliberate look at your service mix
None of this is a reason for alarm. Providers who plan for it will be more profitable in FY27 than FY26. The difference is whether you’re managing to the detail or to the headline. Practically:
Re-price every service agreement that can move - and update your line items. Even the frozen lines need correct, current item numbers and the right billing codes. Under-claiming is silent margin loss, and it compounds quarter on quarter.
The SCHADS increase lifts your costs everywhere. The NDIS schedule lifts your prices only on direct support work, psychology and PBS. Anyone budgeting a flat ~5% uplift across the whole P&L will overstate FY27 revenue and walk into compression they never priced for.
Strong, profitable NDIS businesses won’t be the ones with the highest rates — those are set for you. They’ll be the ones who see their numbers clearly enough to make a calm, deliberate decision about rosters, utilisation and service mix while everyone else is still reading the headline.
That’s the work. Appoyo is here to make it visible.
Thinking about how the July changes land across your own service lines? Appoyo brings your rostering, workforce, payroll and billing into one view - so margin by service line is something you manage in real time, not reconstruct at year-end.
Is the Appoyo ROC tool free to download?
Yes. The tool can be downloaded free of charge. No registration is needed.
Will it be updated with the release of the new NDIS price guide?
Yes. Appoyo will update the tool annually with new pricing issued by the NDIS. Follow Appoyo or bookmark this page for information about the FY2028 version.
Can this tool be used for properties with multiple participants?
Yes. The tool supports up to ten participants, each with individual needs level, price level, and plan dates.
What if I operate in a different state or territory?
The tool automatically selects your region based on state and postcode, and includes options for providers to adjust according to relevant state-specific requirements.
Is this the same as the old NDIS ROC tool?
While it covers the same requirements as the previous NDIS ROC tool in terms of the submission process and generates equivalent reports based on current pricing, it is not a government-produced tool. It is created by Appoyo.
The NDIS has moved on from its ROC Excel tool. Appoyo is here to fill that gap.
Want to go beyond the spreadsheet? Appoyo can help SIL providers turn ROC data into real staff rosters, match shifts to funding, track actually delivered supports, and reduce the gap between what was approved and what was worked.
Download the free Appoyo SIL Roster of Care tool today, share it with your team, and bookmark this page for future financial year updates.