Your provider owes you a statement every month
Under Support at Home, providers are required to send every participant an itemised monthly statement — not as a courtesy, and not on request. Every month, automatically, and by a legal deadline: no later than the last day of the following month (the Manual’s own example — services delivered in August must be on a statement issued by 30 September). A final statement is required when services cease, too. Yet one of the most common problems families describe is statements that arrive months late, or stop arriving altogether — leaving them unable to see where the budget stands, and sometimes holding back care they need because nobody can tell them what’s left. Months of waiting is not a backlog you have to accept; it is a missed legal deadline.
What must be on it
An itemised monthly statement must show, at minimum:
- Every service delivered that month — type (by its service-list name), date and quantity, with third-party-delivered services flagged as such.
- The price charged for each service.
- Your contribution on each service (if any), the monthly total, and what the government paid — the subsidy split is required line by line.
- Your budget position — the balance at the start of the month, what has been drawn, and what remains for the quarter, including any supplements and carryover (and for transitioned families, the HCP unspent funds balances shown separately).
The fine print goes further: care management hours delivered must be visible (the 10% is real money — the work it buys should be too); adjustments and refunds from previous months must appear with the service name and original delivery date (a refund that lands untraceably is not compliant — see the billing-errors guide for why that date matters); and AT-HM funding must be shown in its own accounts, including items ordered and any expiry dates — equipment money quietly lapsing is exactly what that line exists to prevent. There is even an official monthly statement template on the department’s website; if your provider’s statement shows far less, that gap is the conversation.
What the department found when it checked. Its first payment integrity review looked at 262 monthly statements from November and December 2025. Only 21% contained everything the law requires, and 51 of the 60 providers reviewed had statement findings. The items most often missing were the ones in the list above that families ask about most: unspent Home Care Package funds (including how the balance splits between the Commonwealth, the provider and the participant), AT-HM funds, and supplements. Many statements also failed to show when a third party delivered the service. The department is clear that this was the first two months of a new program, that it does not represent all providers, and that many say they have since improved — but if your statement is missing one of these, you are looking at a known gap, not a one-off.
As a sense-check: a full pensioner receiving 3 hours of personal care and 2 hours of cleaning a week at typical prices should currently see a weekly contribution of about $38.50, with the government paying $526.50. If the statement’s numbers look wildly different from what the schedules say they should be, that’s worth querying — the estimator shows what your own plan should cost. The government also publishes a National Summary of Support at Home Prices showing the median and range of prices providers charge — a second yardstick for the same check. One thing to expect on statements from October 2026: personal care delivered on or after 1 October should show no contribution, while personal care delivered in September can still carry one even if it appears on the October statement.
And if you entered home care on or before 12 September 2024 and were paying an income-tested care fee under the old system, run one more check: your grandfathered arrangement includes a fortnightly cap — you should not be paying more in any fortnight than your old fee would have charged (roughly your old daily fee × 14). Tally a fortnight of contributions from the statement and compare. Families are routinely never told this cap exists — if your fortnights exceed it, ask Services Australia in writing to confirm the grandfathered contribution amount payable, including the fortnightly cap. They are required to notify it. The cap has a legal footing you can quote: under the Aged Care Rules 2025 (section 273-10, item 4, made for section 273(2) of the Aged Care Act 2024), your contribution is zero once the contributions charged to you over the preceding fortnight exceed your old daily income-tested care fee multiplied by 14. It applies only if you had an income-tested care fee immediately before 1 November 2025.
If statements have stopped arriving
- Put the request in writing — email, not phone. Ask for all outstanding statements and a current budget position (spent, remaining, any contributions owing), note that each missing statement was due by the last day of the month after its service month, and give a reasonable, firm deadline — say 14 days. One paragraph is enough; you are documenting, not negotiating.
- Ask for the budget position immediately, even before the statements. Providers can see it on their systems today — there is no reason to wait weeks for a number they can read in minutes.
- Don’t ration care while you wait. The provider’s paperwork failure should not shrink anyone’s support. If needs have grown, raise them now — the budget question is theirs to answer, not yours to absorb.
- If the deadline passes: OPAN’s free, independent aged care advocates (1800 700 600) can pursue it with the provider on your behalf, and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission takes complaints about statement failures directly.
The rule is a legal obligation, and enforcement is being stepped up
Giving you this information is a condition of the provider’s registration under section 155 of the Aged Care Act. In May 2026 the government announced a consumer-protections package under which the Commission is to be empowered to take regulatory action against providers who do not issue monthly statements, and to order providers to refund overcharging where it is found. A provider months behind on statements is not experiencing a quirk; they are failing an obligation written into the law. Families who request the record in writing, with a deadline, are the ones who get answers.
One more use for the rule: statement reliability is a provider-quality signal. Before signing with any provider, ask to see a sample monthly statement (blank or redacted) and ask whether they will commit the date of your first statement in the service agreement. A provider with working systems produces both on the spot.
Know what the numbers should be — the estimator computes your plan’s costs from the official schedules.
Estimate the costsRelated: billing errors from the changeover · personal care is contribution-free from 1 October · what unspent Home Care Package funds can buy