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Support at Home Changelog

Welcome to our changelog, where we share what’s new or improved in Lookout, specifically related to Support at Home.

 

⚠️ For attention

  • Services Australia will not accept claims where services are not billed in increments of 0.25 hours for services charged on an hourly basis. We have updated the claiming process to identify non-0.25 values earlier during the billing run, allowing invoices to be corrected before publication. Any invoice containing values that are not in increments of 0.25 will now trigger a billing run error and cannot be published until corrected.

    Editing values directly in the CSV is supported only for invoices that had already reached the claiming stage prior to 11 December, when this update was made. Moving forward, hourly services should be billed in 0.25-hour increments.

  • For drafted and published billing runs generated on or before November 11th, an issue with client transport line items has been identified and resolved. If you are receiving errors regarding client transport unable to be invoiced, please regenerate the billing run and it will resolve the issue.
  • The viability supplement (MMM4–5/ARIA) no longer applies under Support at Home. Only an MMM6–7 assistive-technology supplement (50% AT boost) will remain. For transitional budgets created before November 17th, providers may need to remove obsolete viability loadings. </aside>
  • ~5% of member data is not yet synced, likely due to issues with Care recipient ID. We are exploring ways to display affected members in the admin, so that providers can work with Services Australia to rectify
  • For drafted and published billing runs generated before November 6th, an issue has been identified and resolved. Some invoices within the billing run may have included incorrect care management line items. We have deployed a fix and run a migration to remove these additional lines from your current draft or published billing run.
  • For AT-HM, based on the business rules released in October, we’re exploring a solution to charge administration and coordination costs as separate line items using the appropriate wraparound code. To learn more, review our AT-HM under Support at Home article.

Week commencing 22nd December

✅ Improvements

  • The source and description columns for time tracking logs on the budget live tracking page are updated with the correct content.
  • Care management summary totals in statements now include invoices issued on the last day of the statement period.
  • Draft billing runs no longer create invoices for care management if an invoice already exists for this care management in another draft billing run.

Week commencing 15th December

✅ Improvements

  • Claim totals now show the correct payment amount.

➕ New Features

  • The option to mark an ongoing budget as an interim budget has been added. By default, the subsidy will be reduced to 60% of the original amount. An input field is available to overwrite the default subsidy amount if necessary.
  • Members with an interim funding source will now see the tag "Interim 60%" next to their name. Similar tags have been added throughout the budget live tracking and funding source screens.
  • Any unaccounted differences in payment amounts on payment statements will now create transactions in the Client Contributions account.
  • We’ve added the ability to exclude invoice lines from Support at Home claiming at multiple points in the workflow. This includes excluding individual invoice lines during invoice editing, excluding invoice lines in bulk from the Support at Home claims screen, and configuring visit rates and purchase order lines to automatically generate invoice lines that are excluded from claiming.
  • We’ve added support for importing items that are excluded from Support at Home claiming. This includes importing invoice lines, visit rates, and purchase order lines that are marked as excluded from claiming via the Invoice Import.
  • We’ve added new fields to support excluding items from claiming across multiple dimensions. This includes the excluded_from_claiming field in the Membership Invoice Lines dimension, the exclude_lines_from_claiming field in the Visit Rate dimension, and the purchase_order_item_exclude_lines_from_claiming field in the Purchase Order dimension.
  • We’ve added support in the API for excluding items from claiming across multiple endpoints. This includes the excluded_from_claiming field on the Invoice Line endpoint, as well as the exclude_lines_from_claiming field on both the Purchase Order Line and Rates endpoints.

Week commencing 8th December

✅ Improvements

  • Ensure that when users add or remove claim items, they remain on the current claim tab instead of being redirected to the ‘All Unclaimed Invoices’ tab.
  • End-of-life budgets no longer display the care management allocation on the live tracking page. However, if there are EOL and ongoing budgets, then only the ongoing care management allocation will be shown.
  • The Support at Home CSV claim export will now format the prescribed item correctly in line with the government-provided specifications.
  • Updated the estimated client contribution logic to match Services Australia’s rounding approach, significantly reducing the occurrence of one-cent variances in claims.
  • Updated the statement settings under the Finance settings page to show a new Support at home statement message field. This will use the existing message you were using for HCP.

➕ New Features

  • Entry date and Cessation date have been added to the Support at Home funding scheme form.
  • Introduced a new billing run validation that flags SAH invoice lines with quantities that breach Services Australia requirements (15-minute increments for hourly services and whole-number quantities for all other services).
  • Support at Home Entry date and Cessation date have been added to the membership data export.

Week commencing 1st December

✅ Improvements

  • For members on HCP (in transition), the new budget funding scheme defaults to "Support at Home", and the budget period defaults to within the current quarter.
  • The default viewing period range for budget real-time tracking has changed from monthly to quarterly.
  • The live dashboard funding sources breakdown will now display expenses for a particular funding type (Ongoing/AT/HM) when no funding sources are available from Services Australia. Previously, it would flag as an overspend (spending money that wasn’t funded), but would not be able to display within the Services Australia breakdown panel.
  • Correct passed start and end times (when present) to rate selection for service plans. This means rate selection can adhere to durations within a particular time period (as per rate configuration expectations). Please note: This is not the full list of “rate variants” across repeating service plans, but rather a more accurate singular rate selection in general.
  • We have correctly excluded the home care account and provider-held funds from the upstream sources of budget plans within the new budget creation flow.
  • An issue where other rates were not selectable unless the default value was deselected has been fixed for budget service plans.

➕ New Features

  • The budget summary and PDF export now include a breakdown list of all entitlements that fall under the Services Australia funding source.
  • Funding insights to support at home memberships (dashboard widget, membership filters, membership insight banner and synced funding source breakdown).

Week commencing 24th November

✅ Improvements

  • The CHSP Services Tracking Dashboard in Analytics has been removed. It has served its purpose (to track CHSP-related visits, invoices, and purchase orders after July 1, 2025) and is no longer needed.
  • Care management 10% calculation for budget plans from synced Services Australia funding sources is calculated correctly. Specifically 10% of the subsidy only - excluding unspent funds.
  • Members on Support at Home creating new budgets will now be prompted to choose between building a budget directly from a funding source or creating one from scratch.

➕ New Features

  • Data exports filterable string fields can now filter based on whether the field is an empty (empty string ‘’) or blank (no value).

Week commencing 17th November

✅ Improvements

  • “Integrate with the Aged Care Provider Portal” will now show, and be “Disabled” if we can’t access the Aged Care Web Services APIs, even if the device is active. “Test Connection” will resolve this if it succeeds.
  • We have now fixed the issue with the Budget service plans that contained a delivery window coinciding with a public holiday, which were incorrectly included in the total units on the Budget Summary page.
  • Viability supplements MMM (except 6 & 7), and ARIA Score are now removed for Support at Home budgets.

Week commencing 10th November

✅ Improvements

  • When travel is included in a visit, invoices for SaH memberships will now be processed without errors. Travel-related charges will simply be excluded from invoice generation.
  • We have now included HCA balance as part of the total income in the live dashboard.
  • All time tracking modals now include the option to track time spent on nursing for Support at Home members. After selecting “Nursing,” users can choose the specific type of nursing and then the applicable rate.
  • The Home Care Account (HCA) funds and Provider-held Commonwealth funds (PCOM) displayed in funding sources will now make a best-effort estimation when there is no value received from Services Australia.

➕ New Features

  • You can now set notifications delivery preferences for Support at Home statements (email and/or post).
  • PCOM and HCA balances are now displayed for budgets created via funding sources. They will appear under the Income and Summary tabs.
  • An HCA balance input field is now available in budgets for applicable Support at Home classifications. We've also updated descriptions to reflect the priority the funds are drawn from (PCOM > HCA).
  • We’ve added two new activity options to make care management logging easier: Budget: Created/Reviewed and Agreement: Created/Reviewed. These serve as a quick way to record care management linked to budgets and agreements.
  • Time tracking now includes the ID, full name, and email address of the user who created each log.
  • Historic client contributions are now displayed in a dedicated section within a member’s list of funding sources.

Week commencing 3rd November

✅ Improvements

  • We’ve updated the wording in a Member’s Budget real-time tracking. In the Care Management Budgeted Expenditure section, “Home support ongoing” is now labelled “10% care management pool.”
  • Client transport can now be added as previously, to HCP-funded visits occurring before the 1st of November.
  • Package management fee insights have been removed from the membership dashboard and membership index listing, as they are no longer relevant under the SaH framework.
  • Updated the API to correctly return the ID of the mapped SAH membership plan assigned to a membership.
  • Ensured service plans are sorted by start date and time to maintain chronological ordering.
  • Improved the budget planning performance to support a significantly larger number of service plans.
  • Enhanced budget planning validation messages to provide clearer details on invalid inputs.
  • Projected Care Management Fees (CMF) and Package Management Fees (PMF) have been cleaned up to ensure they no longer display or appear as unallocated in budget planning for any period on or after 1 November.

➕ New Features

  • Introduced a ‘Test Connection’ feature within the PRODA integration, allowing users to verify connectivity with PRODA and Aged Care APIs.
  • Enabled the ability to bulk update client transport rates for completed employee visits.
  • Users can now indicate that tracked time is not billable care management by selecting the “No Charge” checkbox. The default rate option is now “Please select a rate,” and a rate must be chosen unless “No Charge” is selected.

Week commencing 27th October

✅ Improvements

  • We’ve resolved a bug that caused rate variants to be incorrectly assigned when recalculating visit variants from the Membership Plans list.
  • The Budget interface has been updated to make it easier to use. Actual and forecasted amounts are now combined and displayed as a single, clear value. When viewing expenses, you can also use a new filter to quickly search for either actual or forecasted expenses.
  • Billing runs now make visit invoices even when the visit travel has errors. Previously, errors while making travel invoices would prevent visit invoices from being generated by the billing run. This allows users to deal with travel issues separately from visit issues.

  • The EACH-D top-up supplement has been added to the list of SAH supplements for budgets with grandfathered SAH classifications. HCP budgets that include the EACH-D top-up supplement will also be automatically synced during the budget creation process.

➕ New Features

  • We’ve updated the Log Activity modal to include time-tracking fields! When you log a new activity, it now appears right at the top of the feed with a handy link to its time tracking log.

Week commencing 20th October

✅ Improvements

  • Helper Prices Editor: Improved clarity and usability, including a new search bar.

  • Schedule rules can now be filtered by excluding services and exact matching services.
  • Filter Members by their Support at Home mapped status. Utilising this new filter, along with the funding scheme filter set to 'HCP Support at Home transition', will make bulk mapping more straightforward.
  • Budget summaries and PDF exports now display item and cost unit types.
  • For Members under the “HCP (Support at Home transition)” funding scheme, the dynamic service unit price on purchase order lines will use the SAH pricing component for estimated or actual deliveries on or after November 1, 2025.
  • Stop the generation of care and package management fees for HCP on or after 1 November 2025.

➕ New Features

  • Modified Monash Model & Aria Scores: Now included as supplements in grandfathered SAH classifications.
  • Time tracking now has additional features:
    • It allows users to enter an optional external system ID for cross-referencing.
    • Now specifies the person involved. This defaults to and will generally be the member, but can be anyone with a membership role.
    • Time tracking for NDIS support co-ordination and SaH care management now allows time to be logged without an invoice line being created.
  • Visits can now be filtered by excluding services and exact matching services.

Week commencing 13th October

✅ Improvements

  • Funding Scheme Labels: Updated label to simply “HCP” for any Home Care Package memberships that exited or will exit before Support at Home begins.

  • Terminology Update: Department of Human Services became Services Australia in 2019, so we’ve renamed DHS number, wherever it was referred to, to Care Recipient ID.

➕ New Features

  • Support at Home Budget Plans: Can now be created individually or via bulk tooling. for more information, visit our support article: Support at Home Budget planning

Week commencing 6th October

➕ New Features

  • Service and rates can now be added ad hoc to Support at Home funding scheme type membership plans

  • Unit Types: Support for “item” and “cost” unit types within service planning (previously only “hours”).

  • PO Index Filtering: New filters for Funding Scheme and Mapped to SaH added to the PO index. Also added:

  • A new column has been added to the PO index for external ID/Support at Home code for Support at Home transition visibility of mapping.
  • A notification post was sent to all Lookout users and shared on the forum: Click here to read the announcement