One week to the 1 October SIL deadline: what the register shows, and what changes on the day

1. What actually happens on 1 October

The mechanics are set out in the NDIA's SIL claims and payment changes notice of 24 June 2026, and they run through payments rather than through anyone knocking on doors.

Since 1 July 2026 every SIL support has been claimed under a new item code, 0138 — Assistance with Supported Independent Living. Plan managers may only pay a 0138 invoice if the provider is registered under that group, or is an unregistered provider that was delivering SIL before 1 July and has lodged an application to register. That transitional door is what closes on 1 October:

• An unregistered SIL provider who was delivering before 1 July and has applied can keep claiming under 0138 while the application is assessed. The NDIA encourages putting the registration or application number on every invoice.
• An unregistered SIL provider who has not applied by 1 October can only claim for services delivered up to 30 September 2026.
• From 1 October, plan managers should reject invoices from SIL providers who are not registered and have not applied. A provider whose claim is rejected on registration grounds is told to contact the Commission.

Two things follow. First, the deadline is about lodging, not finishing: a certification audit takes months and the transitional rule exists precisely because it does. Second, the wording matters. In our 6 September status check we read the amending Rules themselves, and the transitional provision says an application made before 1 October 2026, where every guidance page says by. We are not offering a view on how that would be read; the safe target is an application lodged and time-stamped before the day, not on it.

On the participant side, the NDIA's guidance to participants is plain: your SIL provider must be registered or apply to register by 1 October; if they do not, the NDIA will help you move to a registered provider, and your plan and funding do not change. Providers are asked to talk to their participants early and say which way they are going. A provider that has not had that conversation yet should have it this week.

2. The register, one month out

ProviderScout re-reads the NDIS Commission's public provider register every month; the figures below are from the pull of 1 September 2026, and power the registration check tool. They cover every provider the register lists as Approved, whether or not they deliver SIL.

Source: NDIS Commission provider register, status “Approved”, as scraped 1 September 2026. Bands are calculated from the “period of registration is in force until” date on each record.

Two readings of that table are wrong and worth heading off. The 1,638 rows past their date are not 1,638 lapsed registrations: a renewal lodged before expiry keeps a registration in force while the Commission decides, and in earlier snapshots dozens of past-date rows cleared within a fortnight as renewals came through. The honest label is “check with the Commission”. And the 3,220 providers whose period ends within six months are not at risk of anything unless they leave the renewal audit too late; the point of the number is that renewal, unlike a first registration, has a hard edge — if the period ends before a renewal is lodged there is no renewal path, only a fresh application and a full new audit.

Scale matters for the third reading. On 4 September the Commission said it had written to more than 285,000 unregistered providers identified through plan payments. Against 27,177 registered providers, that is the shape of the scheme: registration is the exception, and mandatory registration is arriving in waves precisely because the register covers a small fraction of the businesses that get paid.

3. How many of the providers on ProviderScout are not on the register

ProviderScout lists about 26,000 providers. Roughly two thirds of those profiles were built from the Commission register, so checking them against it would be circular. The other 9,507 were found independently — business listings, provider websites, participant-facing directories — and that is the only set where “not on the register” means something. On 24 September we re-ran our cross-reference of those 9,507 against the 1 September register.

• 4,480 matched a register record.
• 5,027 listings, representing 4,398 businesses, did not — 52.9% of the independently sourced set.
• 916 of the unmatched are near-misses: a register record with a very similar name and location exists, but below our matching threshold. If every one of those were in fact the same business, the unmatched share falls to 43.2%. The honest range is therefore 43% to 53%.
• 1,223 unmatched listings advertise a support we treat as a first-wave proxy — SIL, daily personal support or the home-living tags that usually travel with them. That is a proxy, not a determination: whether the mandate catches a business turns on the Rules' definition of SIL, not on a directory tag.

A further 149 listings carry no state and are excluded from the table. Shares are of the independently sourced listings in each state, before the near-miss adjustment.

Which supports the unmatched businesses advertise says more than the state split does. The largest groups are allied health: occupational therapy (1,138 listings), physiotherapy (952), speech pathology (943), psychology (649), then support workers (748), community nursing (738), transport (595), assistive technology (424) and support coordination (355). For every one of those, registration is still optional under the current Rules — an unmatched allied-health practice is almost certainly operating lawfully with plan-managed and self-managed participants, and mandatory registration for support coordination was consulted on and paused. Three categories are deliberately left out of that list: specialist disability accommodation, specialist behaviour support and plan management, where only a registered provider can deliver the support at all, so an unmatched tag there is far more likely a matching failure or a loosely applied tag than a real gap.

The number that bears on 1 October is therefore not 5,027; it is the 1,223 unmatched listings that advertise a first-wave support, discounted for the proxy's coarseness. We name no business as unregistered anywhere on this site on the strength of this analysis. A directory tag is not a finding; the register is.

4. If you deliver SIL and have not applied: this week

1. Confirm the definition catches you. Do not assume every home-based support arrangement is SIL: the NDIA’s own participant guidance says it is not SIL where the participant chooses and manages their own support workers, and the Rules’ definition turns on support for all or most of the day. Work through am I affected?, and get advice if your arrangement is borderline.
2. Lodge before 1 October, not on it. For an unregistered provider that was delivering SIL before 1 July, the NDIA guidance says an application lodged in time lets it keep claiming under 0138 while the Commission assesses it — so a complete application in the Commission’s portal, time-stamped before the day, is the target. The audit comes afterwards. The application walkthrough covers the seven steps.
3. Put the application number on your invoices once you have it. The NDIA encourages it because it lets a plan manager pay without a query.
4. Tell your participants which way you are going. The NDIA is asking them to ask you; it is better that they hear it from you first.
5. Book the auditor early. The Commission says every auditor on its approved list provides services Australia-wide, and lead times are the part of the timeline you do not control. The audit types and cost guide explains which audit applies.
6. If a claim is rejected after 1 October on registration grounds, the NDIA's instruction is to contact the Commission, not the plan manager.
7. Update your ProviderScout listing. Participants and coordinators are checking registration status now. If your profile is out of date, claim it free and we will correct it.

5. If you are a plan manager or support coordinator

From 1 October the NDIA's instruction is to reject 0138 invoices from SIL providers who are neither registered nor applied. The check is the Commission's register for registered providers, and the application number on the invoice for those in transition. ProviderScout's registration check reads the same register, one month behind, and is a convenience rather than a source of truth: for a payment decision, use the Commission's page on the day.

How to verify this information

• NDIA: SIL claims and payment changes from 1 July 2026 (24 June 2026) — the 0138 code, the plan-manager payment rule, the 30 September claiming cut-off, the reject instruction from 1 October.
• NDIA: Mandatory registration — SIL and NDIS digital platform providers — the participant view and the “talk to your participants early” ask.
• NDIS (Provider Registration and Practice Standards) Amendment (Mandatory Registration and Other Matters) Rules 2026 — the transitional provision and its “before 1 October 2026” wording, as read for our 6 September status check.
• NDIS Commission provider register — the source of every registration figure above; check a specific provider there, not here.
• NDIS Commission: find an auditor — the current list of approved quality auditors.

ProviderScout is an independent directory. It is not affiliated with the NDIA or the NDIS Commission, does not lodge applications for providers, and has no commercial arrangement with any registration consultant or auditor.