Budgeting: service planning, signature & live tracking FAQs - Last updated 29/10/25
Our new SaH rates are showing GST in budgets, but we don’t charge GST. Why is this happening?
Answer: This usually happens because the Registered GST column in your SaH visit rates has been set to “GST”. When this is selected, Lookout assumes GST is included in the rate and automatically removes it when calculating the budget. That’s why, for example, a rate of $109 may appear in the budget as $99.09.
To fix this, check whether this setting was intentional. If your organisation doesn’t use contractors, it’s unlikely that anyone will be charging GST. In that case, you can update your SaH visit rates so that both tax types are set to GST Free.
How does the bulk generate budget tool work? Is it based on the roster?
Answer: When generating Budgets in bulk, Lookout will create a draft budget for each of the selected Members, based on the visits, purchase orders and services scheduled in their roster.
https://support.thelookoutway.com/en/articles/budget-tool
I’m assuming that if we enable the TPP margin feature and then create budgets in bulk, the updated margin amount will be applied into the budgets — is that correct?
Answer: If you create a service plan manually, because you aren’t selecting a specific third-party supplier when creating the budget, we can’t pull in the TPP margin you apply to each supplier. However, you can enter a provisional amount to cover this when adding a service to the budget e.g. budgeting approx $500 for physio, assuming this covers the cost of a physio plus the margins/overheads to deliver this care.
If you generate a budget from the roster, it will include whatever rate was applied to the rostered item or PO, including any applicable margins.
Do they have to sign? What if you are sending a draft budget for review? Or just a minor changes as an FYI?
Answer: No, you don’t need to collect a signature to use budgets or live tracking. To track against a budget in live tracking and analytics, simply set its status to ‘approved’. This is separate from collecting the member’s signature, which is optional depending on your process.
If you build a budget from the roster, can you still manually add other services? That way you can build off the existing roster but still service plan/adjust.
Answer: Yes, you can generate a budget from the roster and still manually add, remove, or edit services after generation.
When sending it out for signature, will it operate like BoldSign? Will it send reminders and will it expire? Can you re-send if they lose the email without having to re-generate another budget?
Answer: It doesn’t send reminders, but you can re-send the budget as many times as needed.
What exactly is the bulk budget generate doing – generating based on rostered visits? Or copying from the existing live budget?
Answer: It copies the member’s roster, including visits and POs with estimated delivery dates that fall within the budget’s chosen date range. For POs to be included in the budget’s service plan when generating from the roster, they must have both a delivery date and a service attached.
How does budget tool handle open PO's in prior periods ... in opening balance or load as future expense?
Answer: In terms of real-time tracking, a purchase order (line) is considered “forecast” until it is invoiced for. In that regard it’s precicely accurate to the context of actual/forecast - albeit with the fact that you could have a forecast purchase order line, that’s three months old! To expand on that context more generally. Until a tracked expense has a genuine invoice line to point to, it’s considered forecast.
What level of detail will be available in the care app that the Member/AR/Billing Recipient will be able to see? From a live tracking perspective?
Answer: They will be able to access a PDF version of their budget. They don’t have access to any of the live tracking data - this is an internal tool only at the moment.
Q: How do I create a budget for waitlisted Members with interim funding?
Answer: When a Member is receiving interim funding, their budget will show less than the full subsidy amount for their classification, for example, only 60% of the usual funding when porting the data from the ACPP. Although this is interim funding, the system doesn’t label it as such. Instead, it appears as a standard ongoing budget, just with a reduced income amount.
As the Aged Care Provider Portal updates, Real-time Tracking will reflect the latest subsidy data. When the Member is approved for full funding, the remaining amount (e.g. the extra 40%) will be automatically added to their available income during the quarter.
You don’t need to do anything right away, but you can choose to either edit the existing budget to reflect the change or create a new one if you’d prefer to show the full allocation clearly.
Please note: Lookout doesn’t currently send notifications when this happens, and the original budget service plan won’t update automatically; it reflects the values at the time the budget was created.
Q: Do I have to manually create or generate ongoing budgets every quarter for SaH Members?
Answer: For the moment, yes. We’ve promised in the forums a way to make it so the budget continues ongoing, so you don’t need to worry about this administrative overhead every quarter for all of your Support at Home Members.
This functionality is still to be developed and has not yet been released. In the future, ongoing budgets will allow service allocations from one quarter to carry over automatically into future quarters. The system will update income details to reflect any changes in subsidies, supplements, or client contributions between quarters, while also respecting the carryover logic.
This means you won’t need to manually create or bulk generate budgets every quarter for each Member if their service plan remains the same. New budgets will only be required if there are changes to the Member’s needs or service plan, which will then need adjustment or the creation of a new budget, and Member approval. We will provide updates as this functionality becomes available.
Q: Will Lookout notify me when a Member is under or over-utilising their budget?
Answer: This functionality is coming. The team plans to develop a panel on the Care Managers’ dashboard that will indicate if any Members are over or under-utilising their budgets.
In the meantime, you can make full use of the analytics dashboards. For more information, view our Support at Home transition dashboard article.
Q: Why don’t the budget service plans adjust when I add services to the roster, or when a Member’s contribution percentage or subsidy changes, etc after creating one?
Answer: Budget service plans reflect the details at the time they were created and saved. They are not dynamic, and this is intentional - they represent what was generated at that point in time: the funding they’ll receive, the services allocated, and the agreed hourly rates for that specific period of time.
If the budget plan automatically updated with every roster change or contribution adjustment, it would create a “moving goal post”, making it unclear whether you’re compliant with what was agreed.
If a Member’s circumstances change, you should modify the existing budget or create a new one to accurately reflect the updated plan.
However, the real-time tracking area is dynamic. It updates income based on changes in subsidies or supplements from the Aged Care Provider Portal and shows how you’re tracking against the original service plan allocations from the budget plans. For example, if the budget plan allocated $500 for Service A, the real-time tracking will show whether you are under or over that allocation for the period. This is how you’re able to determine your overall funding utilisation from an operational perspective as things change.
Q: I want to see how funds are tracking against each funding source (e.g. ongoing budget vs. Commonwealth unspent funds). How can I do this?
Answer: We plan to provide more granular detail in the real-time tracking area in the future. Currently, all available funding is aggregated into a single value as ‘total income’, showing the total income available to spend across all sources. You can otherwise navigate to the Member’s ‘Finances’ tab and go to ‘Accounts’ to see the balances of their subsidy & supplement account, their Commonwealth unspent funds, and their client contribution account after 1 November.