Finance Intelligence

Sunday 18 October 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Finance Reads: An Operator Shelved 760 Aged Care Places Because They No Longer Clear Its Investment Threshold Five operational reads from the week — a funding gap showing up as a capital decision rather than a margin, eleven childcare centres closing on about two days' notice while fifty-three others find buyers, invoices sixty days late at twice last year's rate, a fraud charge six and a half years after the first alleged invoice, and a new service agreement template worth reading as a revenue document. Monday's post looked at what a care minute is now worth in funding, and what it costs to deliver. This week the gap between aged care funding and aged care costs turned up somewhere else entirely — not in an operating result, but in a decision to stop building. 1. Opal HealthCare put 760 places on hold, and said the developments don't meet the investment threshol...

Tuesday 13 October 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) From Thursday, an NDIS Claim Older Than 90 Days Can Sit for Up to 28 Days Before It Is Paid. Here's the Weekly Report That Sees It Coming An unbilled-services ageing report is a cash-flow control, not a billing chore — and it is now the cheapest insurance an NDIS provider can buy. On 5 October the NDIA published a short notice with a disproportionate consequence. From 15 October 2026, claims submitted more than 90 days after a support was delivered get extra integrity checks, and those claims may be held for up to 28 days while the checks are done. The agency may ask for more information or evidence before an older claim is paid. Read that as a finance person rather than a billing person. Nothing about your entitlement has changed. What has changed is the timing distribution of your receipts. A claim that used to convert to cash on a predictable cycle can now take up to...

Sunday 11 October 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Finance Reads: Fewer Companies Failed Last Financial Year, and the Bigger Ones Were More Likely to Keep Trading Five operational reads from the week — ASIC's latest insolvency numbers and what they say about scale, a 64-centre childcare operator being sold out of administration, an NDIS regulator leaning harder on informal action, and the NDIS line item that could decide whether a protected support stays protected. Start with ASIC, where the same pressure produced different outcomes depending on how big the company was — and the gap is measurable. 1. ASIC's insolvency numbers improved — and smaller companies were still more likely to go straight to liquidation ASIC published Issue 41 of its Corporate Insolvency Update on 1 October. In FY2025-26, 14,153 companies entered external administration for the first time, down 4% from 14,722. The insolvency rate eased to 0.38% ...

4 October 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Finance Reads of the Week: $2.83 Billion Cut From NDIS Plans at Reassessment, and Category Cuts Began on Thursday Four operational and compliance reads for NDIS, aged care and SME finance teams — including a reassessment trend that may now matter more to an FY27 forecast than the price schedule. Three of this week's four items are NDIS or aged care. Read the first closely even if you think you know the story: the reassessment numbers are now large enough, and moving fast enough in one direction, that a revenue forecast built off historical plan values may be modelling a mix that no longer holds. 1. $2.83 billion cut from reassessed NDIS plans — and the mix of outcomes is shifting fast NDIA data reported by the ABC on 30 September shows $2.83 billion cut from participant plans reduced at reassessment between 1 July 2024 and 31 March 2026, against $11.11 billion added to plans th...

Wednesday 30 September 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) $24 Million Recovered for Disability Support Workers — and the Regulator Mostly Went Looking Rather Than Waiting Fifth in a series on the in-house versus fractional finance function. SCHADS award underpayment risk is rarely one bad pay run. It is the same small error repeating, which is exactly what a single-person payroll function is worst placed to see. The Fair Work Ombudsman published its 2025-26 recoveries on 14 September. The headline was $453 million returned to more than 181,000 workers, a 27 per cent increase on the year before. Underneath it sat a figure that matters more to anyone running a disability or community services provider: $24 million recovered for 10,546 disability support workers , with 53 compliance notices accounting for $8.1 million and three enforceable undertakings signed. The structural point is in how the money was found. In the disabil...

27 September 2026  •  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Finance Reads of the Week: Two Support at Home Changes Land on 1 October, the NDIS Records Duty Is Now Law, and Thriving Kids Starts in Four Days Five operational and compliance reads for aged care, NDIS, childcare and SME finance teams — including two separate funding mechanisms hitting the same date that need two separate lines in your model. This week's round-up is unusually date-driven: four of the five items turn on 1 October, which is Thursday. If you run an aged care or paediatric therapy service, this is the week modelling assumptions get tested rather than discussed. Start with the first item — it changes your debtors ledger without changing your service price, and that combination tends to get missed. 1. From Thursday, personal care under Support at Home stops being something clients contribute to at all From 1 October 2026, all personal care services on the Suppor...