In May 2025, the NDIA introduced periodic funding, with participant funding now released in instalments for new NDIS plans and for those recently reassessed. But with this shift, you might be curious as to whether these instalments include uplift if that period includes an increased number of public holidays.

In short: no, instalments do not include uplift for public holidays.

Understandably, this places the onus on providers to ensure that plans are consumed at a rate that isn’t going to get you in trouble in periods with additional public holidays. Within this post, we’re going to explain how periodic funding works with regards to public holidays, giving you the tools to confidently claim.

What is periodic funding?

We unpacked periodic funding in a recent post, but briefly, participants will have a total funding amount that is now to be released in instalments. Funding periods depend on the type of service; most funding periods are three months, while Supported Independent Living, Plan Management, and Assistance with Daily Living are one month.

Importantly, funds cannot be drawn forward from the next funding period, but unspent funds can roll into the next funding period (however, not the next NDIS plan). This means that participants and their providers need to much more closely monitor plan spending, ensuring a participant doesn’t exhaust their funding within a period.

If funding periods don’t include an uplift for public holidays, then how are they calculated?

Periodic funding is not calculated based on the number of public holidays within a funding period. Instead, it’s a pro-rata release of a participant’s total funding amount, divided into time-based instalments, without specifically taking public holidays into account.

Simply, if a participant’s three-month instalment includes zero or five public holidays, the amount released does not change.

This means that some participants may not receive enough funding to cover upcoming public holidays, resulting in a participant needing to save funds or go without supports on a public holiday.

However, we have identified one exception. Some Supported Independent Living (SIL) providers claim a pre-agreed amount each week, following a typical schedule of supports. As such, participants under this arrangement will never be short of funding on public holidays, simply because the amount they are charged each week doesn’t change. The weekly amount does include annualised uplift for public holidays, to pass onto employees working on public holidays.

Why is it so important to check funding calculations and plan utilisation?

For most participants, who are billed hourly, they might have occasions where the amount of funding released within a period is not sufficient to cover an increase in public holidays. This poses a problem for participants and providers alike, with participants going without support and providers losing regular shifts.

What do we suggest? Here’s our top tips to avoid public holiday pitfalls:

• As you had previously done with plan start/end dates, begin recording a participant’s funding period start/end dates in your CRM.
• Identify all public holidays within the year and communicate with participants around their needs on these days.
• As a general rule, assume there are 54 weeks in a year, not 52, to allow for double-fees on 10 extra days throughout the year.

We appreciate that changes such as periodic funding can be daunting, with unintended consequences that take time to resolve, but good planning and communication will ensure both you and participants have peace of mind.

If you have any questions about how quickclaim can support you through big changes like periodic funding, please reach out to our team. We’re here to help.