The short answer: ShiftCare is the standout for NDIS-specific rostering because it links scheduling to client records, NDIS line-item pricing and claiming in one place. Deputy is cheaper and rosters well, but it is not NDIS-specific, so you bill elsewhere. Brevity and Lumary bundle rostering into wider provider platforms. The right pick depends on your size, who does your billing, and how much SCHADS complexity your shifts carry. Detail and a comparison table below.
Any rostering app can put a name against a time slot. The reason NDIS providers struggle with off-the-shelf tools is that a support shift carries baggage that a retail or hospitality shift does not: it has to be paid correctly under an award, and it has to be billed correctly against a participant’s plan. Get either wrong and you either underpay staff (a Fair Work problem) or over-claim funding (an NDIS Commission problem). A good NDIS roster sits in the middle and keeps both sides honest.
The award in question is the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award (SCHADS, MA000100). It is one of the more complex awards to interpret because of provisions that turn up constantly in disability rostering. Sleepovers are paid as a separate allowance for each continuous overnight period, with extra pay (a minimum of one hour at overtime rates) if the worker is woken to work. Broken shifts, common in community supports where a worker does a morning and an evening call with a gap in between, carry their own allowance and rules on the maximum span and the break between shifts. Minimum engagement is two hours for each part of a part-time or casual home care or disability shift, so a one-hour drop-in still has to be paid for two. A roster that does not understand these rules will quietly produce timesheets that are wrong, and you find out at the payroll run or at audit.
The second half is funding. The shift you rostered has to map to an NDIS support item at the right price, sit inside the participant’s plan budget, and become a claim you can submit through the NDIA’s systems. Tools built for the sector import the NDIS price guide and let you attach a line item to a service, so the roster and the invoice are the same record. Generic tools do not, which means a second system and a second round of data entry.
So the features that actually separate NDIS rostering tools are: SCHADS award interpretation that covers sleepovers, broken shifts and minimum engagement; participant and plan records attached to shifts; NDIS price-guide pricing and claiming; a worker mobile app with clock-in, progress notes and shift acceptance; and qualification or check expiry tracking so you do not roster a worker whose screening has lapsed. Plain rostering, the part everyone does well, is the easy 20 per cent.
In our experience advising providers, the bigger driver of which tool wins is not features at all, it is workforce churn. The disability sector runs hot on turnover: the National Disability Services Workforce Census 2024 reported overall turnover around 24 per cent and a heavily casualised workforce. If a quarter of your roster turns over every year, the tools that pay off are the ones that make onboarding, availability management and shift acceptance fast, not the ones with the longest feature list.
Pricing below is per staff member per month from each vendor’s own published rates, checked June 2026. Read it as a starting point: real cost depends on staff count, minimums and add-ons, and vendors change pricing often.
| Software | NDIS-specific? | Best for | Published pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShiftCare | Yes | Providers wanting rostering plus NDIS pricing and claiming in one tool | Basic $9, Professional $15, Premium $25 per staff / month (min 5 staff) |
| Deputy | No | Affordable, polished rostering where billing is handled separately | Lite $6.75, Core $8.75, Pro $13 per user / month (AUD, ex tax) |
| Brevity Care | Yes | Small to mid providers wanting rostering, billing and CRM together | Custom (request a quote) |
| SupportAbility | Yes | Registered providers wanting a full client and compliance platform | Custom (request a quote) |
| Lumary | Yes | Larger providers needing scale and integrations | Custom (enterprise) |
ShiftCare is the tool we see most often among small and mid-sized NDIS providers, and it is built for the sector rather than adapted to it. Its published pricing runs in three tiers: Basic at $9, Professional at $15 and Premium at $25 per staff member per month, billed on a minimum of five staff. The split matters because the features providers usually need are not all in the cheapest tier. Basic covers rostering, timesheets, the staff app and progress notes; NDIS invoicing and claiming sit in Professional; and the SCHADS award alerts in the scheduler, plus funds management and NDIS funding-period tracking, sit in Premium. If you are choosing ShiftCare specifically to keep rostering, billing and award compliance in one place, budget for Professional or Premium, not Basic.
Deputy is a strong general workforce tool used well beyond disability, and its rostering, clock-in and shift swapping are genuinely good. Its Australian pricing is Lite at $6.75, Core at $8.75 and Pro at $13 per user per month (excluding tax), with payroll, HR and analytics as paid add-ons. Award interpretation is included, and Deputy publishes a SCHADS interpretation, but two cautions apply. First, it is not NDIS-specific: there is no NDIS price guide, no plan budgets and no claiming, so you pair it with separate billing. Second, award setup is on you. Deputy interprets rules from the configuration you enter, and the awkward SCHADS scenarios (sleepovers worked, broken shifts) are exactly where a misconfigured setup goes wrong, so a periodic manual check of those pay lines is sensible. Deputy is a good fit when you want clean rostering at a low per-head price and already bill through another system.
Both are Australian, NDIS-focused platforms that bundle rostering into a wider system covering client records, case notes, billing and compliance. Neither publishes per-seat pricing; both quote based on your size and modules. Providers choose these when they want one platform of record rather than a rostering tool plus a separate billing tool, and they are most worth it once you are past the size where a point solution starts creating double entry.
Lumary is a larger, Salesforce-based platform aimed at established and scaling providers that need deeper integrations and enterprise support. Pricing is custom and sits above the others. It is rarely the right answer for a provider under roughly 30 staff, and it is often a sensible answer once a provider is managing complex multi-site operations.
Pick the one decision that drives the rest first: do you want billing inside the rostering tool, or separate? If inside, you are choosing among the NDIS-specific tools and price is secondary to whether the claiming workflow fits how you actually invoice. If separate, Deputy’s lower per-head price is real money at scale and worth taking.
Then test on your hardest shift, not your easiest. Build a sleepover with an active call-out, or a broken shift across a morning and evening, and check the tool produces the right pay and the right claim. That five-minute test tells you more than any feature comparison, because the awkward shifts are where money leaks. Confirm current pricing and the exact tier a feature lives in directly with the vendor before you commit, because the line between tiers moves and the feature you need may not be in the plan you are quoting.
For NDIS-specific rostering, ShiftCare is the tool we see most among small and mid-sized providers, because it links scheduling to client records, NDIS price-guide pricing and claiming in one place. Deputy is a cheaper, polished general rostering tool but is not NDIS-specific, so you bill elsewhere. Brevity Care, SupportAbility and Lumary bundle rostering into wider provider platforms. The best choice depends on your staff count, whether you want billing inside the same tool, and how much SCHADS complexity (sleepovers, broken shifts) your shifts carry.
Yes for the rostering itself, which Deputy does well. The limits are that it is not NDIS-specific: it does not hold NDIS plan budgets, price against the NDIS price guide, or submit NDIA claims, so most providers pair it with separate billing. Deputy does include award interpretation and publishes a SCHADS interpretation, but it relies on the configuration you enter, so check the awkward pay lines (sleepovers worked, broken shifts) by hand until you trust the setup. Deputy’s Australian pricing starts at $6.75 per user per month.
Per-seat tools publish their rates: ShiftCare runs $9 to $25 per staff member per month across three tiers (minimum five staff), and Deputy runs $6.75 to $13 per user per month. NDIS invoicing and claiming sit in ShiftCare’s middle tier and SCHADS award alerts in its top tier, so price the plan that actually contains the feature you need. Platform tools like Brevity Care, SupportAbility and Lumary quote custom pricing based on your size and modules. Always confirm current pricing with the vendor before committing.
The NDIS-specific tools aim to, and it is the main reason to choose one over a generic app. The SCHADS award has provisions that catch providers out: sleepovers paid as a separate overnight allowance with extra pay if the worker is woken, broken shifts with their own allowance and span rules, and a two-hour minimum engagement for each part of a casual or part-time shift. No tool removes your responsibility to pay correctly, so test the rules that apply to your shifts before relying on the output.
Some tools offer free trials or limited free tiers for general rostering, but NDIS-specific rostering with billing and claiming is almost always paid. Given disability-sector staff turnover sits around 24 per cent a year, per the NDS Workforce Census 2024, the time saved on onboarding, billing and compliance usually outweighs a per-seat subscription well before you are a large provider.
Sources & vendor links: Information here is drawn from each provider’s official website, reviewed June 2026. Pricing and features change, so verify current details directly: Lumary · ShiftCare · Brevity · SupportAbility · Deputy.
Disclaimer: This article is general information only, current as at the date shown above, and is not financial, legal, clinical or professional advice, nor a recommendation or endorsement of any product, service or provider. Features, pricing and availability change frequently — verify current details directly with each provider before making a decision. All product and company names, logos and trademarks are the property of their respective owners, and their mention does not imply any affiliation with, or endorsement by, NDIS Growth. To the extent permitted by law, NDIS Growth accepts no liability for any loss arising from reliance on this information.A specialist reviews your visibility against the providers competing in your catchment, and sends a written growth plan within two business days. You keep it either way.