What your Support at Home statement should show

A statement is the only document that tells you whether what was promised is what happened. It is also the one most likely to sit unopened in a pile on the sideboard, because it looks like an invoice and reads like a spreadsheet.

It is worth twenty minutes a quarter. This page is a checklist for those twenty minutes.

This is general information, not financial advice. Aged care contributions are means tested and the rates are set nationally, so for your own figures ring your provider or My Aged Care rather than relying on anything published here.

Before you start

Have two things next to you. The statement, and the price list you were given when you signed up. Almost every problem worth finding is a difference between those two documents, and you cannot find it with only one of them.

If you have never been given a written price list, that is the first thing to ask for.

The six things to look for

1. Every service listed is one you actually received.

Go line by line against the week. A visit that was cancelled, a shift that was cut short, a shopping trip that did not happen. Cancellation fees may be legitimate depending on your agreement, but they should be named as cancellation fees, not billed as delivered care.

2. The hours match the visits.

Not just how many visits, how long each one was. An hour billed for a visit that reliably runs forty minutes is the most common discrepancy families find, and across a quarter it adds up to real money.

3. The rate is the rate you were quoted.

Check the weekday rate, then check the exceptions separately: weekends, public holidays, overnight, and travel. Higher rates for those are normal. Higher rates that nobody mentioned are not.

4. Care management and administration are shown as their own lines.

You should be able to see what portion of your budget went to coordinating your care rather than delivering it. If that is folded invisibly into an hourly rate, ask for it separately. It is a fair thing to charge for and a fair thing to see.

5. The opening and closing balances make sense.

The amount available at the start, the amount drawn during the period, the amount left at the end. Those three numbers should reconcile without you needing a calculator. If they do not, that is the question to ask first.

6. What happens to what is left.

Unspent funds are handled under national rules that change, so do not assume either that money rolls over or that it disappears. Ask your provider to tell you the current position in writing, and check it against myagedcare.gov.au.

Five questions worth asking every quarter

Take these to your provider, or to your Care Lead if you have one.

1. Are we using the budget on the things that matter most right now, or just on what we set up at the beginning?
2. Is anything in here we could stop, and is there anything we should be adding?
3. What is our current balance, and are we tracking to use it or to underspend it?
4. Has any rate changed since we started, and were we told?
5. If needs have grown, do we need a reassessment rather than a rearrangement?

That last one matters. Rearranging a budget that is genuinely too small is a holding action. If the level of need has changed, the answer is a plan review, not more careful accounting.

Signs something is wrong

Take these seriously rather than assuming you have misread it.

• Charges for services on dates when nobody came
• A rate that changed without notice
• A large unexplained administration or exit charge
• Round numbers everywhere, with no relationship to actual visit lengths
• No statement at all, or a refusal to provide one in writing
• An explanation that changes each time you ask

If asking politely twice has not produced a plain answer, you can raise it with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, which takes complaints about providers and can do so without your name attached.

Keep the statements

File them together, in order, somewhere you will find them. A single statement shows you a quarter. Four of them show you a trend, which is the thing that actually tells you whether an arrangement is working or slowly drifting. Our documents worth sorting before you need them covers where these fit alongside everything else.

If you are still working out what the budget can cover in the first place, start with what a Support at Home budget can be spent on, and the Support at Home glossary explains the terms the statement will use.

If a line on your statement makes no sense and you want a second pair of eyes, ring us. A person will answer, and we are happy to read it with you even if you are with another provider.