Payment status flow

Where this article starts

By the time you're working a payment, the invoice has already been through approval and the funding workflow. The handover point looks like this:

• Your operations team has reviewed and approved the invoice — it sits at Approved
• The invoice has been submitted to NDIS for funding (via an NDIS submission extract) and the NDIS has confirmed funding — it sits at NDIS Claim Paid
• The invoice is now eligible to be paid to the supplier

This article picks up from there: getting the supplier paid, recording it in Navigator, and handling anything that doesn't go to plan.

If you need a refresher on creating the extract itself, see Payment extracts.

The statuses in order

Below are the statuses an invoice moves through from "ready to pay" to "paid". Most invoices follow the happy path; the alternative branches (refunds, disputes, rejections) are covered in their own sections.

1. NDIS Claim Paid

   NDIS has confirmed they'll fund this invoice. The invoice is now eligible to be added to a bank transfer extract for payment to the supplier. Your starting point.

2. NDIS Claim Disputed

   Used when NDIS has come back with something that doesn't match the original claim — most often when they've capped the price (paid less than claimed). The invoice needs accounts team review before it can move forward. See Partial payments.

3. NDIS Claim Rejected

   NDIS declined to fund the invoice. The invoice doesn't proceed to payment. Your operations team typically handles this — common causes include unrecognised line items, plan exhaustion, or supplier registration issues.

4. In an extract

   The invoice has been added to an open bank transfer extract. The invoice status doesn't change at this point — it's still NDIS Claim Paid — but the extract detail screen shows it as included. Once an extract has been created and you've sent the file to the bank, you have a 10-minute window to delete the extract before it's locked. After that the only way to remove an invoice is to reverse the funding (see Failed and rejected payments).

5. Paid

   The extract has been marked complete and the supplier has been paid. Navigator records the payment date and reference, and a remittance advice email is sent to the supplier (if their contact details and the account's settings allow). For NDIS-claimed invoices where the account itself is the supplier, a payment record is created automatically when the NDIS payment result is uploaded.

6. Refund requested

   A refund has been initiated against a paid invoice but not yet confirmed. The supplier has agreed to send the money back, or the invoice was paid in error and needs reversing. See Refunds.

7. Refunded

   Refund completed and recorded. The invoice is effectively reversed — the funds are no longer counted against the participant's plan, and the supplier payment is settled.

The full list of every invoice status across the whole lifecycle (including approval and review states) is in Invoice statuses.

When the invoice is in an extract

Once an invoice is added to a bank transfer extract, the workflow is:

1. Open the extract in Navigator. You'll see all included invoices, total amount, and the participant and supplier counts.
2. Review the invoices — make sure nothing looks wrong (unusual amounts, suppliers you didn't expect, etc.).
3. Download the ABA file from the extract.
4. Upload the ABA file to your bank's online portal using the bank's normal bulk-payment workflow.
5. Wait for the bank to process — typically same-day for major Australian banks.
6. Mark the extract complete in Navigator (covered next).

Marking the extract complete

"Completing" the extract is the moment Navigator records that the supplier was paid. It does three things in one step:

• Updates every invoice in the extract to Paid
• Records the payment date against each invoice
• Triggers remittance advice emails to suppliers (where contact details and account settings allow it)

To do it:

1. Open the extract.
2. Click Complete extract.
3. Confirm.

Only mark the extract complete after the bank has actually processed the payments — not when you upload the ABA. If you mark complete too early and a payment fails, you'll have to handle it as a refund or a manual correction.

Reconciliation — confirming the payment

Reconciliation is the process of confirming each payment in the extract actually landed in the supplier's account. There are two ways Navigator handles this:

Manual reconciliation (most common)

Once your bank confirms the payments are out, you mark the extract complete in Navigator. That's the manual approach — you've checked the bank, you trust it went through, and you tell Navigator. Most accounts teams work this way.

Result file reconciliation

For NDIS submissions and some bank workflows, Navigator can ingest a result file from the bank or from PRODA. The result file lists each transaction and whether it succeeded:

1. Open the extract.
2. Click Upload result.
3. Choose the bank or PRODA result file.
4. Navigator matches each row back to the invoice using the payment reference and updates statuses individually — successful payments go to Paid, failures are flagged with the error.

This approach is more accurate when an extract contains hundreds of invoices and a small number fail — it tells you exactly which ones, instead of needing to chase them down manually.

Partial payments

A partial payment situation arises when the NDIS has only funded some of what was claimed — typically either because a subset of line items has been approved and others haven't, or because the NDIS has applied a price cap and funded at a lower unit rate than the invoice charged.

Navigator supports these scenarios mechanically, but the broader question of how to handle them is a compliance and process matter, not a Navigator feature. The recommended approach below isn't enforced by the system — it's best practice for NDIS plan management.

Some line items funded, others not

It's tempting to pay the supplier for the approved line items now and deal with the rest later. Not recommended. Paying a portion of the invoice while the rest of it is still unfunded means the amount going to the supplier doesn't match the invoice they issued, which breaks the audit trail.

Better: wait until every line item on the invoice has been funded by the NDIS before paying the supplier. If that's going to take too long and the supplier needs to be paid sooner, the cleaner resolution is to ask the supplier to reissue the invoice split into two — one invoice for the funded line items (which you pay now), one invoice for the unfunded line items (handled separately through dispute or cancellation).

NDIS capped the unit price

The supplier charged, say, $200/hour for an item that the NDIS price guide caps at $180/hour. The NDIS will only fund $180/hour, leaving a $20/hour shortfall.

Don't adjust the invoice total on your end to match the capped amount. The invoice is a legal document; changing it after the fact is a compliance issue.

The correct resolutions, in order of preference:

• Dispute the cap with NDIS. If you believe the cap was applied incorrectly (price changed, region exception, wrong support category, etc.), open a query through your normal NDIS escalation channel. The invoice stays at NDIS Claim Disputed until NDIS responds.
• Ask the supplier to reissue the invoice. The cleanest resolution when the cap stands — the supplier cancels the original invoice and issues a new one at the capped rate. You process the reissued invoice through the normal flow; the paid amount matches the invoice amount.
• Supplier splits the invoice (reimbursement scenarios). If the customer has agreed to pay the excess out of pocket, the supplier should split the original invoice into two: one for the NDIS-funded portion at the capped rate (which Navigator pays), and a separate invoice the customer pays directly. This keeps each invoice matched to its payer.

Don't do: edit the invoice in Navigator to reduce the line-item unit price so it matches the NDIS cap. That makes Navigator's record differ from the supplier's record of what they invoiced. At reconciliation time, those two records need to match.

How Navigator tracks this

There's no single "partially paid" status in Navigator. Instead:

• An invoice with a capped or disputed payment sits at NDIS Claim Disputed until the situation is resolved
• Once resolved — via NDIS re-funding, supplier reissue, or cancellation — the replacement invoice moves through the normal flow and ends at Paid
• The original disputed invoice is reversed or cancelled so the audit trail is clean

Refunds

Refunds happen when a payment needs to be reversed — most often because a payment went out in error, the wrong amount was paid, or a supplier has agreed to return funds. The accounts team owns the workflow.

When a refund applies

An invoice must be at Paid before a refund can be requested. If the invoice hasn't been paid yet, you don't refund — you reject or cancel the invoice instead.

The refund flow

1. Request the refund. Open the paid invoice, choose Request refund. The status moves to Refund requested and the refund-requested date is recorded. The invoice still counts as paid until you confirm.
2. Wait for the funds to land back. The supplier sends the money back to your account, or you process the recovery through your bank.
3. Mark the refund complete. Once you've confirmed the funds are back, return to the invoice and choose Complete refund. The status moves to Refunded and the invoice is effectively reversed — the participant's plan is credited back the funds, the supplier payment is settled out, and the audit trail shows the full sequence.

Reversing a refund

If you mark a refund completed by mistake, or the supplier agreed but then the funds didn't actually arrive, you can reverse:

• From Refund requested — use Reverse refund to undo the request and put the invoice back to Paid.
• From Refunded — same action restores the invoice to its previous state, including re-applying the funding to the participant's plan.

Partial refunds

Navigator doesn't have a native "partial refund" status — refunds are at the whole-invoice level. If a supplier is only refunding part of an invoice (say, one line item out of three), the usual approach is:

1. Refund the entire invoice in Navigator
2. Have the supplier reissue a new invoice for just the portion that should have been paid
3. Process the new invoice through the normal approval and payment workflow

This keeps the audit trail clean and matches what shows up on the participant's plan statement.

Failed and rejected payments

When something goes wrong with a payment — bank rejection, bounced transfer, supplier bank details no longer valid — the recovery depends on where the failure happened.

Failure noticed before the extract is marked complete

If the bank rejected the payment and you haven't yet marked the extract complete:

• Don't mark the extract complete
• If you're within the 10-minute deletion window, delete the extract and start fresh once the supplier's details are corrected
• Otherwise, leave the extract as it is. Use Reverse funding on the affected invoice to remove it from the extract — the invoice goes back to NDIS Claim Paid and is eligible for the next bank extract

Failure noticed after the extract is marked complete

The invoice is now showing Paid in Navigator, but the supplier never received the money. Treat it as a refund-then-repay:

1. Use Request refund on the invoice.
2. Once you've confirmed nothing actually went to the supplier (your bank statement is the source of truth), Complete refund.
3. Update the supplier's bank details if needed.
4. The invoice reverts so the funding is restored. From there, you can resubmit it to a fresh bank extract.

Failures from a result file

If you uploaded a result file and Navigator flagged some payments as failed, those invoices stay at NDIS Claim Paid (they didn't reach Paid) and the error message is recorded against the invoice. Open each one, work out what went wrong (most commonly bad bank details), fix the supplier record, and include the invoice in the next extract.

Day-to-day for the accounts team

A typical week looks like:

• Daily: Check the Extracts screen for any extracts marked complete that have outstanding refund requests. Action refunds when funds land back. Check NDIS Claim Disputed invoices for any that need follow-up.
• One or more times a week: Generate a new bank transfer extract for all invoices at NDIS Claim Paid that have valid supplier bank details. Send the ABA to the bank. Mark the previous extract complete once those payments have settled.
• As needed: Process refund requests, deal with bounced payments, follow up with suppliers on bank-detail issues, escalate disputed cappings to NDIS.

Status filters on the Invoices screen are your main tool — filter to NDIS Claim Paid, NDIS Claim Disputed, Refund requested, or any combination, depending on what you're working on.