Changes in financial reporting from 1 November 2025 – Webinar

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘Changes in financial reporting from 1 November 2025’, ‘agedcareengagement.health.gov.au’, ’23 September 2025’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Eleanor Browne:

Thank you all for attending today’s webinar. I’m Eleanor Browne, Assistant Secretary, Market Intelligence Branch from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing and I will be chairing this event.

I’ll begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands on which we are virtually meeting today. I am based in Canberra on the lands of the Ngunnawal people. I acknowledge and pay my respect to their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region. I also extend that acknowledgment and respect to other families with a connection to this region and any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who are here with us on the call today.

I’ll start with a bit of housekeeping before we get into the content for today’s webinar. There is no option for attendees to turn on their video or microphone during today’s session. There will be a Q&A session at the end of the webinar. And I’m aware that some people may not be able to access the Q&A function in the live session. If you are able to please do submit your questions in the function. You might need to click on the Q&A icon at the top of your screen to activate the function before submitting any questions. If you don’t have the opportunity to ask your question today please do feel free to email us your question at acfrqfrqueries@health.gov.au. We’ll attempt to respond to as many questions as possible today and all questions and answers including any that we don’t get to will be published in an FAQ document on our website. 

We’ve also received a number of questions through the registration process and ahead of today’s session and will respond to some of these in the Q&A session at the end today as well. We do sometimes receive questions that aren’t clear or aren’t directly relevant to this webinar and some questions might be technical or complex. So if we aren’t able to answer your question during today’s session we’ll follow up and respond through the FAQ document to be published on the website.

We know there are a lot of changes to financial reporting in 25-26 especially for providers transitioning to Support at Home. So today’s webinar is the start of sharing these requirements with the sector and we will continue to support you on these new requirements throughout the financial year including through our FAQs, resources and future webinars. You may have seen that we have now published the non-uploadable templates and the definitions for the QFR Quarter 2 and the ACFR 25-26 as well as a fact sheet which explains the changes for the 25-26 financial year. We’ll post links to these resources in the chat but there are also links to these resources on the webinar landing page in addition to the slides for this webinar.

We’d also like to seek your feedback on content you’d like to see repeated in later financial reporting webinars or questions you would like to see answered in more detail in future webinars. You can use the questions function or the survey at the end of the webinar to provide this feedback. This session is being recorded and will be published on our website in the coming days.

Before I hand over to today’s speakers I’d like to give a brief overview of what we’ll be talking about today. Before we get into the financial reporting requirements for 25-26 I just want to give some brief context on why we collect the information we collect from aged care providers and how we use this information. There are many reasons we collect financial information from the sector. These include to support pricing and policy decisions to inform viability assessments and market monitoring, and to inform a range of sector publications including our Quarterly Financial Snapshot, our Annual Financial Report on the Australian aged care sector and the information we publish on My Aged Care which is important in supporting consumer choice. 

We know there are a number of changes that we’ll be introducing today for the first time and for some providers this will be a significant period of transition both to the new Act itself and to the updated reporting requirements that this entails. And we also acknowledge that these resources are being released later than we would normally release them noting the 25-26 financial year has already commenced. And we retain our commitment to notifying the sector as early as possible of future changes to financial reporting before the commencement of the next financial year.

When we update our reporting requirements we seek to balance the impact on providers with the purpose or purposes for which we collect this information and we’ll continue to look for opportunities to refine these collections over time. We’ll also continue to work with the sector to provide earlier updates to financial reporting requirements in future and to engage with you over the year ahead to support you as you adapt to these changes.

We are presenting this webinar to update you on financial reporting changes resulting from the new Aged Care Act commencing on the 1st of November 2025. There are changes to the way you will report financial information in the Quarterly Financial Report for Quarter 2 and the Aged Care Financial Report for the 25-26 financial year. This session will be most useful for those responsible for completing or reviewing the QFR and the ACFR on behalf of providers. We’ve just published the Quarter 2 QFR and ACFR templates and the definitions on the Department’s website and we’ll shortly publish the FAQ documents. We have also published a document called ‘Guide to Financial Reporting Changes from 1 November 2025’ which documents the information we will talk through with you today.

So finally before I hand over to Kate and Jarrod to run you through the changes in detail I want to provide a high level overview at the outset to help you navigate these changes. If you currently have financial reporting obligations under the current Act you will continue to have obligations under the new Act. Because the new Act commences midway through Quarter 2 and partway through the 25-26 financial year Quarter 2 reporting and the ACFR Report for 25-26 will be submitted in the registered provider format rather than as an approved provider. Providers who currently submit QFR reporting through GPMS will continue to do so.

At a high level changes to reporting requirements include for residential aged care there will be some new income and expense items, definitional changes, the introduction of the new Care Minutes Performance Statement and changes to the annual prudential compliance reporting. We’ll come back in a future webinar to outline requirements for the new Care Minutes Performance Statement and changes to the Annual Prudential Compliance Statement which will not be covered in today’s webinar. 

For Home Care and the Short Term Restorative Care providers transitioning to Support at Home the changes are more significant particularly for the ACFR which will now be based around the new Support at Home Service List and the removal of some fields in the QFR. And Jarrod will run us through this in detail today. We will walk you through these changes in this session. We know there is a lot of content and we’ve only just released the updated templates. We plan to hold another webinar in the first half of next year to revisit the changes to the ACFR for 25-26 so this won’t be the only opportunity we have to talk them through.

At the end of the webinar I’ll also cover off on the supports we have in place to assist with the completion and submission of your financial reporting and business supports more broadly if you require assistance transitioning to the new Act. Thanks again for joining us. I’ll now hand over to Kate to get us started.

Kate Stewart:

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Approach to financial reporting in 2025-26’, ‘Kate Stewart’, ‘Market Intelligence Branch’]

And good afternoon. My name is Kate Stewart and I am the Director of the Financial Reporting Strategy and Projects section. My team is responsible for agreeing the changes to the QFR and ACFR each year and for ensuring the changes are updated in the IT systems.

I wanted to start by pointing out the obvious and I’m sure it’s something you have all thought about. A commencement date of 1 November for the new Aged Care Act and Support at Home Program is one month into Quarter 2 and four months into the 25-26 financial year which makes things challenging from a financial reporting perspective. I hope you are aware and understand that the implementation was deferred until 1 November to allow more time for key operational, digital and legislative work to be finalised and to support providers to ensure they were ready. The focus was on ensuring the new Act and Support at Home Program were ready for older Australians and their families.

The deferral did result in complexities for financial reporting that we have had to work through which has delayed us being able to communicate to you about the 25-26 year reporting. We will continue to support you by responding to your queries and updating guidance materials. We will also continue to align and refine the QFR and ACFR data collections over the next few years.

There are elements of the legislation supporting the new Aged Care Act that are still being finalised. What we are presenting to you today covering financial reporting for 25-26 will be set out in the Transitional Rules. We are giving you advanced information on what will be included in the Rules and any variation will be communicated to the sector if required.

Even though the Aged Care Act 1997 and the new Act are both relevant legislation within the QFR Quarter 2 and ACFR 25-26 reporting periods providers will be required to complete only one QFR and one ACFR for the relevant reporting period. From QFR Quarter 2 onwards and in the ACFR 25-26 onwards providers will be required to complete reporting under their new registered provider structure. We are aware that for a small number of providers the transition from approved provider to registered provider will involve a change in organisational structure. In these circumstances we encourage providers to consider how this will impact their financial reporting.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Changes from Quarter 2, Quarterly Financial Report 2025-26’, ‘Kate Stewart’, ‘Market Intelligence Branch’]

I’ll now talk you through the changes to the QFR.

At a high level if you currently have QFR reporting obligations you will continue to have these obligations under the new Act. If you are a registered provider delivering residential aged care or Home Care Packages or the Support at Home Program you are required to submit a QFR in Quarter 2 25-26 onwards. If you are a registered provider delivering Multi-Purpose Services Program and/or the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Program you will continue to complete food and nutrition reporting only in the QFR.

In Quarter 2 providers will report one year to date financial statement as a registered provider that covers the entire quarter. If you are a Home Care Packages Program provider and you transition to the Support at Home Program you will complete one form that covers one month of the Home Care Packages Operations and two months of the Support at Home Operations. The form will be re-labelled to Support at Home. Government providers are not required to complete the viability and prudential compliance questions and the year to date financial statements.

In Quarter 2 QFR forms Declaration and Guidance Materials you will see updated terminology to align with the new Act and change to being a registered provider, as well as the start of Support at Home. There have also been changes relating to the introduction of the new Financial and Prudential Standards. Questions relating to your organisation’s liquidity have been removed from the questions section. At the bottom of the year to date financial statements page there were previously two formulas which calculated a liquidity ratio and a capital adequacy ratio. These have been removed as the calculations did not align to the new Standards. Providers are encouraged to download a liquidity calculator available on the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s website to assess their liquidity status each quarter. We’ll be working with the Commission to look at how this will be integrated into the QFR over the coming years.

For residential aged care providers there are minor changes resulting from the change to allocating residential aged care places directly to older people from the 1st of November 2025. The Amortisation and Impairment of Bed Licences expense item has been removed from the year to date financial statements and Bed Licences has been removed from the definition of Intangible Assets. Available Bed Days has also been renamed to Operational Bed Days. This is purely a naming change and does not change how you calculate the bed days.

Support at Home providers will notice several sections and data items which have been removed from the QFR. We have removed the question that asked what business structure does your organisation use to deliver aged care services, where you had to select from options such as in house delivery, franchisee, franchisor, brokerage and so forth.

You do not need to report the one month of home care and two months of Support at Home data split by aged care planning regions as aged care planning regions are no longer applicable under the new Act. Instead you will report information at the total Support at Home program level in one column.

You also no longer have to report labour worked hours and non-worked hours in the QFR. These hours will be reported in the ACFR but only for direct employees. You will still have to report labour costs per employee category and the lowest average and highest hourly rates of pay.

In order to align the labour costs reporting in the QFR which is by worker type to the Support at Home Program we have updated the definitions of the labour costs to include the relevant Support at Home service list items.

This table shows the worker types such as RN, EN, personal care worker, aligned to the Support at Home service list items which I have summarised from the definitions. When you complete your reporting you will need to refer to the definitions. The personal care worker labour cost definition includes assistance with self-care and activities of daily living, assistance with the self‑administration of medication and continence management that is non-clinical. You will note the ‘Other’ direct care labour cost item includes nursing assistants, other types of allied health not included in the allied health item above, social support and community engagement, home maintenance and repairs and domestic assistance among other things.

In the calculation of labour costs you can also now include staff travel to and from care recipients’ homes and staff time completing administrative tasks or paperwork before and after a care visit. I encourage you to look at the definitions and guidance materials to familiarise yourself with these changes.

You will still complete your QFR reporting in the Government Provider Management System, GPMS, however from the 3rd of November there are going to be two GPMS portals. You will continue to use the GPMS Approved Provider Portal to submit your QFR for Quarter 1 and to resubmit prior reports from when you were an approved provider. You will use the new GPMS Registered Provider Portal to submit your QFRs from Quarter 2 onwards under your new registered provider. There are support resources available on the GPMS web page and you can contact the Department Helpdesk for assistance logging in.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Changes to the Aged Care Financial Report 2025-26’, ‘Kate Stewart’, ‘Market Intelligence Branch’]

I will now cover the changes in the ACFR for 25-26.

At a high level if you currently have ACFR reporting obligations you will continue to have reporting obligations under the new Act. If you are a registered provider of residential aged care or the Support at Home Program you are required to submit an ACFR. Providers who delivered services under the Home Care Packages Program or the Short Term Restorative Care Program between the 1st of July and 31st of October 2025 will still be required to report information in the 25-26 ACFR.

This table shows the form name and data collection level to report on by program. For most forms you will report one form as a registered provider covering the entire financial year. For example you will complete one consolidated segment report for your registered provider for 25‑26. Government providers do not have to complete the consolidated segment report, registered provider reporting, movement schedules, financial support statement, or submit and publish the general purpose financial reports. I will pause briefly now to allow you to read through this slide.

In the ACFR for 25-26 there will be three separate income and expenditure statements for the Home Care Packages Program, the Short Term Restorative Care Program and the Support at Home Program. If you delivered services under either the Home Care or Short Term Restorative Care Program prior to 1st of November you need to complete the respective statement. If you transition to delivering services under the Support at Home Program from 1st of November you also need to complete the new Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement.

Using an example a Home Care Packages Program provider who transitions to the Support at Home Program will need to complete both the Home Care Income and Expenditure Statement for the first four months of operations and the Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement for the remaining eight months of operations. 

The Home Care Income and Expenditure Statement contains the same line items as the 24-25 statement however you will not need to report these final four months of the program by aged care planning region. You can report at the total program level. The Short Term Restorative Care Income and Expenditure Statement is the same as the 24-25 statement. There is a new format in the Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement which Jarrod will tell you about in the next section of the webinar.

Please attribute income and expenses received or incurred to the relevant program. For example if you receive an invoice in December that relates to services performed in October under the Home Care Packages Program and even if you did not accrue the expense in October this still should be reported as an expense under the Home Care Income and Expenditure Statement.

I will now explain changes in the ACFR for 25-26. Similar to the QFR there are changes to terminology and references relating to the new Act and registered provider in the ACFR. For residential aged care providers there are a number of changes. Similar to the QFR Amortisation and Impairment of Bed Licence expense data items have been removed and the definition of Intangible Assets has been updated to remove Bed Licences. Available Bed Days has also been renamed to Operational Bed Days. 

We are working with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to determine the changes to the Annual Prudential Compliance Statement and Permitted Uses Reconciliation with regards to the new Financial and Prudential Standards. We are also working with the Residential Care Division regarding the implementation of the new Care Minutes Performance Statement which is being introduced under the new Act. We will provide further guidance about these as soon as we can and will discuss these at a future webinar.

This slide shows further changes for residential providers. We have added an item to the residential income form under hotel services to report income received through the Higher Everyday Living Fee which is a new fee arrangement starting 1st of November. You will also answer a question to report how many residents were paying Higher Everyday Living Fees, Additional Service Fees or Extra Service Fees as at the end of the year. The relating expense items to report expenses relating to the provision of extra and additional services have been renamed to include expenses relating to the provision of Higher Everyday Living and will be split between non-agency staffing costs and consumables and contracting.

Two new expense items called staffing retention, travel costs for non-agency and agency have been added to report travel related expenses for direct care staff that are paid for by the provider, such as transport to and from the provider’s accommodation and the residential care facility. These go together with two new staff housing expense items introduced in the 24-25 ACFR to recognise the additional costs some providers incur in relation to providing housing and travel in order to retain staff. Consistent with reporting guidance for providers in the QFR the ACFR will also have a definition change for residential aged care providers whereby staff training costs can be included in labour costs.

I will now hand over to Jarrod to talk you through the new Support at Home reporting.

Jarrod Bowd:

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Support at Home financial reporting in 2025-26’, ‘Jarrod Bowd’, ‘Market Intelligence Branch’]

Thanks Kate, and good afternoon. My name is Jarrod Bowd and I’m the Director of the Financial Insights and Publication Section. My team is responsible for the publication of the sector wide results in the Financial Report on the Australian Aged Care Sector and the Quarterly Financial Snapshot. And I thank proprietors for the data you report which informs both publications.

Over the next few slides I’m going to walk you through key Aged Care Financial Report changes to the Support at Home Program.

As Kate advised earlier Support at Home Program providers will have a Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement to complete in the 25-26 ACFR. The statement will cover eight months between 1 November ’25 and 30 June ’26. The statement will be significantly different to the Home Care Income and Expenditure Statement with the statement expanded and redesigned to align with the Support at Home service list.

The Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement focuses on the service being delivered to a care recipient as opposed to the type of care worker delivering the service. This is a significant structural change from the Quarterly Financial Report and the current ACFR’s Income and Expenditure Statement for Home Care providers. To reiterate the reporting focus will be on the service being delivered.

The Department recognises that reporting data on the service delivered will require providers to redesign data collection approaches. Although this may initially present challenges the Department is confident that the transition to report income and expenses on the type of service delivered will result in providers using the data more readily for business intelligence and benchmarking purposes.

To assist with the transition to the new reporting requirements labour hours in the 25-26 ACFR for Support at Home providers will only need to be reported for internal direct care employee staff. This means there is no need to report labour hours for agency staff and subcontracted or brokered client services.

Labour costs will however still need to be reported for these cohorts.

Lastly there will be more granular reporting of allied health, labour costs and hours which I’ll talk to further in an upcoming slide.

This slide aims to provide assurance that although the QFR and ACFR will look very different for providers in relation to income and expense reporting the Department has tried to remain consistent on many key elements. For example consistent with the QFR there won’t be a requirement in the ACFR to report by aged care planning region. In addition the definition for expense items in the ACFR will include staff salaries associated with travel and administrative tasks just like the QFR.

This slide focuses on how income is to be reported in the 25-26 ACFR and the Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement. The table on the right hand side aims to complement the explanation. Let’s see how this one goes.

Firstly the income items have been designed to align with the Support at Home participant contribution categories. Rather than the one line item for Commonwealth subsidies and supplements which is currently the case in the Home Care Income and Expenditure Statement there will now be six line items which I’ve shaded green in the table.

Rather than separate line items for the Basic Daily Fee and the Income Tested Care Fee participant contributions are to be recorded across five line items which I’ve shaded blue in the table.

Because there are no participant contributions for clinical support services there is one less participant contribution item then for Commonwealth subsidies and supplements.

There’s no longer a need to report package management income given there’s no longer package management. Care management income will be split across three items shaded orange in the table. Please note there are slight definition differences between the three items so please be assured that you won’t be double counting income across multiple items.

Participant top ups and private clients is also a separate line item and no longer a component of the client fee other line item for income.

Lastly the definition for other income now picks up grants and providers are to report the grant amounts received such as through the Support at Home Thin Markets 25-26 Grant and New Aged Care Act Transition Support Grant where applicable for those providers that receive the grant. To reiterate any grants that a Support at Home provider receives is to be recorded against other income.

Now to expense reporting. Expense categories in the Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement will align with the Support at Home Service List. This is a fundamental shift whereby rather than reporting expenses across worker type, which under Home Care covered worker types such as registered nurses, personal care workers, other, allied health care workers, there will now be separate line items for service list items. I’ll provide an example in the next slide to demonstrate the change.

Employee superannuation and on-costs will be a new expense line item added to administration and support. There will be two line items rather than just the one. One of the line items for reporting employee superannuation and on-costs is for administration and non-care staff. The second item for reporting will be for care staff.

Currently for Home Care reporting employee superannuation and on-costs are collected against labour costs by worker type in the QFR and ACFR. As the ACFR’s Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement is being restructured to align with the Support at Home Service List superannuation and on-costs would create a challenge for providers to attribute to a service list item where an employee may work across multiple service list items. Reporting against a single line item will hopefully make it easier.

There’s a separate expense item under other expenses for participant top ups and private clients just like we had I guess for the income. So that’s a common thread between the two. Care management labour costs and hours would be split by those undertaken by clinical staff and those undertaken by non-clinical staff.

Whilst expenses cover employee care staff, agency care staff and external subcontracted or brokered client services, labour hours will be reported for employee care staff only.

This slide aims to show how a provider is to report labour costs in the QFR from Quarter 2 versus the ACFR.

In the QFR from Quarter 2 labour costs are still to be reported against the worker type. In the table in the slide personal care workers and other employee staff have been used as an example.

Now shifting to the right side column and reporting in the 25-26 ACFR for Support at Home providers, labour cost reporting will be determined by the service provided such as personal care or domestic assistance.

Tracking down the table the labour cost definition is similar across both the QFR and ACFR however with one slight difference with the superannuation excluded in the ACFR definition with superannuation and other employee on-costs to be reported under administration and support expenses.

Consistent with current reporting guidance we ask Support at Home providers in both the QFR and ACFR to not include costs associated with staff amenities, staff recruitment, agency staff, worker compensation premiums and payroll tax.

This slide shows an example for how Support at Home labour hours is to be reported in the ACFR and QFR. In terms of the QFR from Quarter 2 25-26 labour hours are no longer required to be reported. In contrast for the Support at Home Income and Expenditure Statement in the 25-26 ACFR labour hours are to still be reported but only for employee care staff only and to be reported against the service being provided.

This one will be a big one for Home Care providers but those who I guess provide residential care will be familiar. In the 25-26 ACFR Support at Home providers will be asked to breakdown expenses and hours against six different allied health cohorts. Those cohorts include physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, podiatrists, dietetic care and other allied health.

In the ACFR and QFR to date Home Care providers are being asked to provide a total figure combining all allied health activity. With no differentiation between the type of allied health the data has had its limitations in terms of informing policy design. So the breakdown is a necessary step particularly in the context of pricing items.

Although the focus of this webinar is to advise providers on upcoming reporting changes to the ACFR and QFR given providers are currently in the process of completing their 24-25 ACFR I thought it would be timely to cover one data quality issue that is easy to correct.

For Home Care we see a high number of providers allocating 100% of their income against direct care services or subcontracted services. As a result of the 100% allocation of income to care these providers are likely to be displaying inaccurate information on My Aged Care because there’s no allocation towards administration or other non-care items.

Although not privy to the individual monthly statements that providers have with their care recipients it’s unlikely that any provider would record that all of their care recipients have 100% of their package allocated to direct care components.

For providers who charge care recipients for care management and/or package management please record data in the ACFR against care management service fees and package service fees under income.

For expense reporting in the ACFR if you have staff engaged in care management work please record expenses under care management and for package management under administration and support.

I will now pass back to Eleanor to talk through available support.

Eleanor Browne:

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Further information and available support’, ‘Eleanor Browne’, ‘Assistant Secretary’, ‘Market Intelligence Branch’]

Thanks Jarrod and thanks Kate. I want to acknowledge here that it’s a lot of change and we’ve covered a lot of content in the session already today. We know providers are going to need time to adapt to the new requirements and we’re here to support you through that. We’ll also continue to review and update our supporting materials throughout the financial year. So as questions pop up throughout the financial year you’re able to send them through to us and we can update our materials so that that advice is available to everyone.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission also acknowledges that this is a significant change and of course that there is a lot of change underway in the sector at the moment. The Commission expects that providers will do their best with financial reporting and the Commission will apply a risk based and proportionate regulatory principle as they do with a focus on education to support providers to fulfil their reporting obligations. And over the year ahead we will have a focus on that education and support to assist providers to adapt to these changing requirements.

There are a number of Helpdesks that you can reach out to for guidance depending on your query. The My Aged Care Service Provider Assessor Helpline which you can see in the purple box on the left is specifically for any problems that you have logging on to GPMS and accessing the QFR. Many of you will have dealt with Forms Administration previously and they can assist and continue to support you with general reporting queries. Their details are in the blue box. 

For questions relating to content we’ve covered today to do with changes to reporting and the new Support at Home reporting we have a Financial Reporting Operations Team Helpdesk available to email which you will see in the green here. And finally if you have specific questions about residential labour costs and hours and care minutes reporting there is a dedicated Helpdesk which is in the orange right hand box here. And if you’re not sure where to start ACFRQFRqueries@health.gov.au will receive your query and we’ll make sure that it is actioned by the right area.

If you do need further assistance I’ll just remind you of our business advice and capability supports that are available including the Business and Workforce Advisory Service and the Service Development Assistance Panel. Both of these programs are available for residential and Home Care, Support at Home providers with the Service Development Assistance Panel, SDAP, available to providers in rural and remote areas. There’s further information on the slides here but I encourage you to look into these programs if you think they would be right for your organisation and there are contact details available in the resources on the screen.

That’s it for the content of today’s session and we’ve now got some time for Q&A. We’ve received some questions ahead of the session today and you might have seen some of those coming through as we’ve been talking. We’ll cover some of those questions here and I can see our moderators have been busily working to respond to questions where we can. If we’re not able to get through to your question today, and we may not be able to get through all of them, we will group these questions up and respond to them through our FAQ and webinar resources after today’s event. So if you don’t hear your question responded to please know that we’ve seen it and we will come back to you.

I can also see in terms of the questions popping through that we’ve received some questions about the templates and the definitions. Just to confirm that they have now been published on the Department’s website and they are available. I think we’ve posted them in the chat and they will be re-sent around to participants today with the webinar resources. This webinar will of course be recorded so if you do have any questions you’ll be able to refer back to it. And I’ve seen some questions popping through in the chat that refer to specific questions about your organisation or your organisation type including for example around calendar year reporting. Please do reach out to us directly if you’ve got a question that relates to your specific organisation type that we haven’t covered in the session today.

Okay. Now I can see that we have answered some questions already in the chat. I might go to a question that we received ahead of time. And Jarrod this is a question for you about wages.

Q:        How will the wages section with highest, lowest, average be treated? Will that question be removed?

Jarrod Bowd:

Yeah. Thanks El. Good question. So for context the hourly wage rates we’ve been asking in the QFR now for nine quarters. So it commenced in the fourth quarter of 23-24 for both residential care and Home Care Package providers. I guess initially it was designed and set up that question to be able to monitor whether or not Fair Work Commission wage increases I guess flowed through from providers through to their staff. In some ways we’re close to the end I guess of the Fair Work Commission pay increases but the data itself for the wage has improved significantly. So to let providers know I guess for the first three quarters we did see teething issues in terms of providers understanding how to report the maximum, minimum, and trying to derive the average. But over the last six quarters the quality of the data has improved. We’ve been able to detect I guess in particular states and territories where Enterprise Bargaining Agreements for nurses have gone up etcetera and come into play. So the data itself has been very, very useful.

Conscious on the flipside to that we are asking roughly 1,400 providers four times a year to report on their maximum, minimum and average and in some cases possibly some providers, particularly in Home Care may have more than 1,000 personal care workers that operate across more than 50 aged care planning regions. So very difficult I guess from a coordination perspective. So in short not looking to remove it at this stage but there definitely will be I guess active consideration in terms of wage, those questions, and probably the frequency to which we ask those questions. But for the time being we’ll continue to collect the hourly wage data.

Eleanor Browne:

Thanks Jarrod. And I think important to reiterate that we do continue to review over time the questions that we’re asking for of providers and continue to look at whether this information is still needed so that we can update and refine these reports over time.

Kate I might go to you next. We’ve got a question here around consultation.

Q:        What consultation did the Department do ahead of deciding on this approach?

Kate Stewart:

Yes. Thanks El and thanks for the question. We did consult with providers, Ageing Australia, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission and the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority ahead of developing the QFR and ACFRs for 25-26. And as El said we want to continue consulting with providers on changes to financial reporting in future years. Thanks. 

Eleanor Browne:

Thanks Kate. I can see a question here and I think this will be front of mind for a lot of providers transitioning to Support at Home. And Kate I’ll go to you on this one.

Q:        Why do we have to report labour hours costs for Support at Home in one format in the QFR and a different format in the ACFR?

Kate Stewart:

Yes El. I can certainly understand that question. The format for reporting the labour in the QFR has continued in the same format as there presently is for Home Care Packages reporting. And we still require that data in the QFR so that the Department can monitor the new Support at Home Program in the short term because the more detailed data that we’ll be collecting in the ACFR will not be submitted by providers until 31st of October 2026. 

So we understand that this reporting may be challenging providers and we do not expect that the sum of the labour costs from the four QFRs to exactly match the labour costs in the ACFR. We will then look at aligning the reporting in future year though.

Eleanor Browne:

Thanks Kate. I’ve got some feedback here from Peter Cooper. Thank you for sending this through. And I can see you’ve got a lot of likes on your comment so I’ll read it out and then respond.

Q:        Feedback. We feel the changes applying from 1 November 2025 are an unrealistic expectation that providers can make significant changes to financial and payroll systems to be reporting ready.

And I want to acknowledge Peter that there is a lot of change happening in the sector at the moment and in financial reporting specifically and that we have covered a lot of content and a lot of change in the session today. We know that providers will take time to respond to and adapt to these requirements and we are here to support with our materials and our queries and helpdesks throughout the year as you need it.

And just to note that the Commission also acknowledges that there is a significant amount of change underway and expects providers to do their best. But we know that there will be a period of transition and of course the Commission as I mentioned towards the end there will apply that risk based proportionate approach. And the focus really will be for this first financial year in particular focusing on educating and supporting providers to understand the new requirements and to comply with those and to adapt to those over time. So thank you for your comment and I’m sure for many on the call you’ve captured the sentiment well. And we do acknowledge there is a lot of change that we’ve run through today.

Just going back to other posts.

There’s a question here just right at the top from Cecile. 

Q:        Just looking at the QFR Quarter 2 template for Support at Home. Do you still require reporting at an area level?

I can answer that one. We have removed the requirement to report at the aged care planning region level in the QFR as that’s a concept that no longer exists under the new Aged Care Act.

Jarrod there’s a question here about billing. And questions are popping around on my screen so I will try and work through them methodically if you haven’t yet heard yours come up.

Q:        How will providers leverage billing and monthly statement information under the Support at Home Program to assist with completing the ACFR?

Jarrod Bowd:

Yeah. Thanks El.

So I guess contextually from a background perspective Home Care providers have been required I guess to provide monthly statements to their care recipients since July 2015 when consumer directed care came into Home Care. Over time, in 2019 I think it was, the Department updated definitions so that providers could report monthly against the definitions and then also provided I guess a monthly statement template that providers could follow. To date I guess it’s focused always on filling out those statements on the service being delivered. So I can understand a lot of providers through feedback to date on the ACFR and QFR have always had some difficulties when trying to utilise their monthly statements to then report in the ACFR and QFR for Home Care when trying to report against the worker type rather than the service delivered.

Obviously Support at Home now we’re moving in the ACFR to reporting on service being delivered. The Department’s published a Support at Home monthly statement so providers will be able to in a lot of instances I guess when they’re filling out their monthly statements for both income that comes in and also the expenses that are going out, be able to I guess align that reporting in setting that reporting up into their ACFR. So it sounds simplistic from myself saying this but it should be a lot easier to apply your monthly statements and your billing data a lot more than what’s currently the case for Home Care in the QFR and the ACFR.

Eleanor Browne:

Thanks Jarrod. I can see a couple of questions I might just bundle up Kate that I think you can cover that are for MPS and NATSIFAC providers. So the first question is:

Q:        Do these reports cover MPS as well, and what are the impacts to NATSIFAC providers?

Kate Stewart:

Yes. Thanks El. So yes they do cover MPS as well. In the QFR providers of multi-purpose services will continue to complete the food and nutrition reporting only. And in the ACFR MPS providers will continue to complete the annual prudential compliance statement only. So their reporting obligations do not change under the new Act. For NATSIFAC providers they will still just be completing the food and nutrition reporting only in the QFR similar to what they do now.

Eleanor Browne:

Thanks Kate. Okay. A question here from Mandy. And Kate this one will be for you.

Q:        If we are doing a quarterly report how will the one month of October reporting work with the two months of November to December under Support at Home changes?

Kate Stewart:

Yes. So that’s where in the QFR Quarter 2 there will be one form for you to report both the one month of the Home Care Packages and the two months of the Support at Home Program in the one form in the one QFR. And that will be in the registered provider GPMS portal and you will report it in your registered provider format.

Eleanor Browne:

Thanks Kate. Look we’re getting pretty close to time but I think we’ve got time for one more question. I can see there’s a similar question here from Elaine about the ACFR. 

Q:        So for ACFR 2026 where there will be four months under Home Care Packages and then eight months under Support at Home will these need to be submitted in two separate GPMS portals?

Kate Stewart:

Okay. Thanks for that. So firstly for the ACFR 25-26 it will still be on the forms administration portal and you will just submit one ACFR for the entire 25-26 financial year. Within the ACFR there will be though two separate Income and Expenditure Statements. So there will be one Income and Expenditure Statement for the Home Care Packages Program covering the first four months of operations and that will be in the existing – can you still hear me?

Eleanor Browne:

Yep.

Okay. It looks like Kate may have frozen.

We are actually getting very close to being out of time. So I will hope that I haven’t frozen and you can still hear me and we’ll wrap up the session for today. It’s really fantastic to see so many questions coming through. And no doubt you’ll have more questions after today’s session as you have time to look through the templates, the definitions and the resources that we have posted on the Department’s website. As I said we’re very happy to receive further questions from you and of course for those questions that we weren’t able to get to we will come back to you with responses to those in our FAQ document following the session.

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Thank you for your time today. I’ve got a couple of final announcements before we close. We encourage you to stay up to date with issues affecting aged care and subscribe to our aged care newsletters and mailing list. Thank you again for your attendance today. We would really appreciate it if you could take about a minute to answer the survey. You can see the QR code there on the screen. It takes approximately one minute and there are four questions. And we’d really appreciate your time. This helps us improve our webinars. And feel free to also share any suggestions on what you’d like to hear more about specifically in terms of financial reporting over the remainder of this financial year.

This concludes our presentation for today. Please note that a recording will be available alongside our additional QFR and ACFR guidance material and we’ll notify attendees when this information is published. Thanks again for your time. Good afternoon.

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