To apply for or renew registration with the NDIS Commission or ACIA, all providers undergo an audit against the relevant Standards. We will assess your organisation against the components of the Standards that are relevant to the services and supports you deliver. Auditors will also undertake their activities in a way that takes your organisation’s size, scope, and service delivery risk into consideration.

Your organisation will undergo either a ‘verification’ (NDIS only) or ‘certification’ (NDIS or ACIS) quality audit.

As part of the application for registration or renewal, it is the your responsibility to engage an approved quality auditor to assess your organisation’s compliance with the Standards.

The cost of your audit is dependent on:

• the type and number of modules you are registering for
• the number of staff you have
• the number of participants or clients you have
• the number of outlets you have
• As a company owned by people who have come from within the industry, we keep our costs as low as we can.

As auditors, our role is to assess the quality of your policies and procedures and your service provision, so we are not able to consult during your preparation or audit process. We will provide feedback on areas needing improvement and our aim is to make the audit process a pleasant and educational experience.

Usually you will provide all the documents requested according to the NDIS Verification Documentation Requirements booklet and our auditor will review them without you being present. At the end of the audit, the auditor will either provide a list of items which were missing or did not meet standard, or will advise you that everything was present and correct. If you have more items or information to provide, we ask you to do so within 5-7 calendar days.

Typically a stage 1 audit is undertaken by an auditor without you being present. They go through a document review to check all the policies, documentation and requirements are met to enable the Stage 2 process to be undertaken. By moving to the Stage 2 which may be remote or in person, it is where you demonstrate application and processes consistent with the documents provided in stage 1 and against the standards and registration groups that you have nominated. If the auditor feels at stage 1 there are significant gaps, they may recommend delaying stage 2 or resubmission of the stage 1 self assessment and documents as significant work is involved based on the information they have received.

At that time the auditor has a short period (usually 5 working days)to write up the report and combine it with the other auditor(s). This is then submitted to an independent and senior auditor for peer review to validate that the information contained in the report supports the outcome recommended. Once finalised we will send feedback to you for comment. Once agreed we submit the findings and report to the Commission and / or scheme owner as well as providing the final report and certificate to you if we have not already done so. This will not usually occur until the outstanding balance on the account is paid.

In assessing your registration application, the NDIS Commission will consider the outcomes of the audit and conduct a suitability assessment of your organisation and key personnel.

The NDIS Commission assesses the suitability of NDIS providers and their key personnel to deliver NDIS supports and services.
This includes whether you or your key personnel have:
• previously been a registered NDIS provider
• had a banning order in place
• any past convictions
• been insolvent under administration
• had adverse findings or enforcement action taken by any relevant authorities
• been the subject of findings or judgement in relation to fraud, misrepresentation, or dishonesty
• been disqualified from managing corporations

They will contact you if they need more information. They will then make a decision and contact you to let you know if your application has been successful and the reasons why or why not.

Some applications take longer to process than others. The timeframe depends on various factors, including the size and scale of your organisation, as well as the complexity and range of the supports and services you deliver. Generally, the timeframe for completion of the registration will be no longer than 12 months; for many NDIS providers, it is a much shorter period.
If you have applied for renewal of registration prior to the date of expiry, your registration will automatically be extended until the Commissioner makes a decision on your application for renewal. Once you have engaged an auditor and you provide them with a reference number and your scope of audit document, the auditor has nine months from the expiry date on your certificate of registration to complete the audit and report back to the Commission.

Both schemes have a standard 3 year cycle for certification.

For NDIS, if you have had a verification audit, you will need to be audited at 3 years

For NDIS, if you have had a provisional audit, you will need to be audited within 3 months of commencing service provision and possibly again at midterm (18 months)

For NDIS, if you have had a full certification or recertification, you will need to be audited at 18 months or midterm

For ACIS, if you have had a full certification or recertification, you will need to be audited at 12 months or you an apply for special consideration to move to 18 month surveillance

All auditors have to undertake a formal auditing qualification, as well as training against the standard being certified. Then they have to be assessed by the Auditing body (us) to ensure they have the experience and qualifications for each element within the standard. They need to maintain many compliance requirements including; insurances, training and audit logs, performance appraisals, peer auditing reviews and checks like working with children and police check. An audit team will usually consist of a lead auditor and may include a support auditor and or trainee. Where technical experts are required they may also be a part of the audit team. Sometimes JAS-ANZ or the scheme owners may attend the audit as part of our compliance requirements. All auditors before accepting your audit must sign a declaration of no conflict of interest or bias, prior to the audit being allocated to them.

Generally yes, but it is important to understand that a Provisional assessment may result in a short noticed review of all remaining audit elements at any time. The Commission can trigger an unscheduled audit at any time, so it is important that you maintain your systems and processes continually.

You should contact us to schedule the upcoming audit up to 6 months in advance to support your planning processes. Usually, governance and any outstanding issues from previous audits are covered in these but that is dependent on the standard being assessed.

Yes you can, you simply need to authorise us as your new auditing company and we will need to undertake a few checks including accessing your previous audit report. We may additionally request additional documents at this time to validate the report findings.

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