Settings

Set up Charge Item payment rates, ABA details and contractor profiles before creating your first Staff Payment Batch.

Overview

Staff Payments uses:

• a payment rate for each Charge Item you pay contractors for
• the provider bank details used to build an ABA file
• Contractor as the user's employment type
• each contractor's bank account details

Setting Up Payment Rates

Create the Charge Item before adding its payment rate. See Creating and Updating Charge Items.

1. Open Settings > Charge Items.
2. Open Actions and select Manage Payment Rates.

3. Open the Charge Item's action menu and select Update rate.

4. Choose the rate type:

   • Fixed Amount pays the entered dollar amount per billed unit.
   • Percentage of Price pays the entered percentage of the Charge Item price.

5. Enter the rate and select Update.

Paying Different Contractors Different Rates for the Same Support

A payment rate belongs to a Charge Item, not to a contractor. To pay two contractors different rates for the same support, create a separate Charge Item for each contractor and set a rate on each one.

1. Open Settings > Charge Items and select Add Charge Item.
2. Search for and select the NDIS Pricing Arrangement, or enter the Charge Item details manually. See Creating and Updating Charge Items.
3. Update Name to identify the contractor (for example, add their name to the end) and enter a unique Reference, then select Create.

4. Set a payment rate on the new Charge Item. See Setting Up Payment Rates above.
5. Add the Charge Item to the Participant's Service under their NDIS plan so it can be assigned to a Task. See How Charge Items link to Services.

Each contractor now has their own Charge Item and rate for the same support:

Have each contractor bill their work under their own Charge Item. Astalty calculates their Staff Payment using the rate recorded against that Charge Item.

Editing a Payment Rate

A payment rate can be changed at any time. Open the Charge Item's action menu and select Update rate. The drawer shows the current rate and its start date. Enter the new type and amount, then select Update. Astalty emails the Account Owner when a rate changes.

Each task is paid at the rate that applied on the date the work was delivered, not the date of the batch or the date you changed the rate. A batch calculated today therefore pays last month's work at last month's rate.

Astalty records the rate and the calculated amount against each batch item when the batch is calculated, so a Finalised or Paid batch keeps the amounts it was calculated with. Changing a rate never alters them.

When a New Rate Starts

Astalty sets the rate's start date:

Backdating the first rate to 1 July makes every task delivered since the start of the financial year eligible for staff payments, so a batch can pick up older work than you expect.

A batch cannot be calculated while any Task in it has no rate covering its delivery date. Astalty lists the Charge Items missing a rate. The first rate covers work from 1 July of the current financial year. Use Exclude Charge for earlier work that no rate can cover.

Correcting a Rate on the Same Day

Setting a rate again on the same day replaces that day's rate rather than adding a second one, so the rate you are correcting is discarded instead of being kept as a superseded rate. The correction re-rates any work that has not been calculated yet; amounts already calculated onto a batch do not change.

Removing a Rate

Payment rates cannot be deleted. Use Update rate to replace the current rate.

Setting Up Staff Payment Settings

1. Open Settings > Staff Payments.
2. On ABA File Details, select Edit.
3. Enter Account Name, BSB, Account Number, Financial Institution and Description On Your Bank Statement.
4. Select Update.

User Profile Set Up

1. Open Users and select the contractor.
2. Select Edit on their profile.

3. Set Employment Type to Contractor.
4. Select Update User.

User Finances Set Up

1. Open Finance on the contractor's profile.
2. On Bank Account Details, select Edit and enter the account used for ABA payments.
3. On Other Financial Details, select Edit and enter the contractor's Entity Name and ABN when required.

Processing a Staff Payment Batch

Continue with Processing a Staff Payment Batch.