The Plan Management Challenge
Northern Rivers Plan Management was founded in 2021 to serve NDIS participants in the Lismore and Byron Bay regions — areas underserved by plan managers based in major cities. Within two years, the firm had grown to 95 plan-managed participants, with invoice volumes reaching 500+ per month across dozens of different service providers.
“Plan management is fundamentally an invoice processing business,” says founder and director Kath M. “You receive invoices, check them against the participant’s plan, approve them, and submit to NDIS for payment. If you can’t do that efficiently, you lose money on every client.”
The Old Way
For the first 18 months, Kath processed invoices manually using NDIS MyPlace and a series of spreadsheets tracking each participant’s plan budget. As volumes grew, she hired a part-time administrator. By late 2022, even with two staff, processing times were blowing out to five or six days — causing frustration from service providers waiting on payment.
Maxpilot Plan Management Tools
After switching to Maxpilot, Northern Rivers reconfigured their workflow entirely. Invoices submitted by email are logged in the system, automatically matched to the relevant participant and support category, and checked against remaining plan budget before approval.
I went from spending 6–8 hours a day on invoices to about 2. The matching is automatic. I’m just doing the approvals now.
Results
Six months after implementation, Kath’s part-time administrator moved to a different role — and Northern Rivers continued operating at the same volume with Kath handling processing alone. Average payment turnaround improved from 5 days to 48 hours. Plan budget utilisation reporting, previously prepared manually each month, is now generated in seconds and sent automatically to participants.