NDIS changes in 2026: advising clients on surviving the cuts

The 2026 NDIS changes have hit a sector that was already stretched. Nearly half of providers are running at a loss, insolvencies have jumped since 2023, and the government has flagged more cuts without saying what they'll be or when.

For accountants and bookkeepers with NDIS clients, the danger is that none of this shows up clearly in a client's books until it's well advanced. So we ran a live session on it — what's changed, why NDIS businesses fail differently to other small businesses, and the specific numbers to check before the next round of cuts lands.

Here are the moments worth your hour. A link to access the replay is below.

An NDIS business can't reprice, and that changes everything 

Badi Ceren, an accountant who works with NDIS providers and runs one himself, framed the core problem in a way most operators never do: when your costs rise, you can't pass them on. Prices are capped by the annual price review, so every new wage, software or compliance cost comes straight out of an already thin margin. 

The 2026 update lifted core supports by 4.75%. In the session, Badi walks through why that doesn't stretch nearly as far as it sounds. 

The one-hour-of-support math that stops people cold 

This was the moment that landed hardest. Start with what the NDIS pays for an hour of support, subtract what it actually costs to deliver once wages, super, portable long service leave and payroll tax are counted — and watch the margin nearly disappear. 

Then add the structural traps: the minimum shift rule that forces you to pay for hours you can't bill, and the unpaid admin buried in every new participant. Badi shows the full calculation live, along with the “qualified shift” rule his own business had to invent to stop losing money on the work it took on. 

Getting paid isn't just about doing the work 

For an accountant this idea is familiar told in a harder key. Under the NDIS, delivering the support is only the start, the invoice codes have to be exact, the participant's plan type has to permit the service, and a valid service agreement has to exist before support begins. 

That service agreement is the quiet killer, and there's a GST trap sitting right next to it that catches providers claiming GST-free status when they shouldn't. Both are covered in the session, with the specific things to check in a client's file. 

Two businesses that nearly didn't make it 

The session includes two real turnarounds. One provider kept caring for a high-needs participant after the funding stopped, and watched unpaid invoices climb past $451,000 while revenue was still growing. Another built up a serious ATO debt without any single disaster, one small compromise at a time, until the ATO quietly became its main financier. 

Different stories, near-identical warning signs. Des Byron walks through exactly what went wrong, what turned each business around, and why the recovery had to start well before any formal restructuring. 

The six questions to put to any NDIS client 

The session closes with a short health check, and six questions an adviser can take straight into a client conversation. They range from “is revenue rising while cash stays flat?” to “if you lost your highest-value client tomorrow, what would happen?” If the answers don't look good, that's the conversation to have now, not after the cuts land.

Watch the replay 

The free 1-hour session covers what we know about the reform package, the compliance detail, the two case studies, and a Q&A session on registration costs and options for distressed providers.

Watch the NDIS Under Pressure replay here

Bonuses for watching the webinar replay:

• You receive access to Surviving the NDIS Cuts: A Provider's Playbook which covers the key financial indicators to check, the operational habits that keep NDIS businesses on track, and includes a ready-to-use checklist for your next client review.

• A CPD certificate is available via the quiz linked with the recording, so it's worth sharing with anyone on your team who works with NDIS clients.

Badi Ceren joined Des Byron and Jarvis Archer of Business Reset for this session. Badi specialises in tax, compliance and financial management for NDIS businesses.