Lumary Virtual Assistant: a VA who keeps the service agreements and claims moving

Nobody who runs an NDIS provider on Lumary needs the word “admin” explained to them. You chose an enterprise platform because the operation outgrew spreadsheets: participants, plans, service agreements, rostering and claiming all in one place, sitting on Salesforce underneath. And then, because the platform holds everything, every one of those jobs lands back on the same desk, yours. A new participant’s service agreement to build against their budget. A plan that was reviewed last week, so the agreement and dates need correcting before the next claim. A bulk payment request to prep for PRODA. A handful of rejected lines from the last run still sitting unworked. That is why “lumary virtual assistant” is a thing people type into Google at 8pm: the software has a screen for every one of those jobs, and right now you are the only one driving them.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your Lumary

The week starts with the data the rest of the platform depends on. The participant record is the spine of everything downstream in Lumary, so it gets a pass: contact details, plan start and end dates, managed status (plan-managed, self-managed or NDIA-managed), nominee and goals all kept current. This is not busywork. A wrong plan end-date is exactly what silently stops a claim three weeks later, and the cheapest place to catch it is here, before anything has been delivered against it.

Then service agreements, the job that quietly eats an owner’s evenings. Your VA builds the agreement against the right participant, the right support categories and the allocated budget, checks the line items and rates land inside the plan’s funding, and keeps each agreement current when a plan is reviewed or extended. What they never do is decide what supports a participant should receive; they assemble the agreement you have decided, and flag to you anything that doesn’t add up against the budget rather than quietly pushing it through.

Rostering next, on the data side. Shifts entered against the correct support item, worker availability and unavailability kept accurate, clashes and gaps surfaced to your coordinator. The allocation call, who works which shift with which participant, stays with the coordinator who knows the people. The VA keeps the underlying data clean so the coordinator is deciding from a true view, not a stale one.

Then the part that protects every dollar you are owed: claiming. Your VA prepares the bulk payment request file from finalised service deliveries, checks every support item number and rate against the current NDIS price guide before the file goes anywhere, and produces it ready for upload into the PRODA myplace provider portal. Whether they do the actual upload or prep it to a single click is entirely your call, and plenty of providers keep PRODA access to themselves while still handing the whole prep across. When the NDIA returns rejected or part-paid lines, which it will, your VA works the list: each rejection matched back to its service delivery, the cause identified (a lapsed plan, the wrong item, an exhausted budget category), and the line brought back to you with the fix already attached rather than a raw CSV forwarded with a shrug.

Invoicing runs alongside claiming. For plan-managed and self-managed participants, invoices are generated out of Lumary on your cycle, sent to the right plan manager, and the outstanding ones worked to a follow-up cadence you have signed off. The billing rules in NDIS are fiddly enough that this is genuinely its own skill, which is why we treat NDIS claiming and invoicing as a specific task rather than generic admin.

Weekly, the quieter upkeep that keeps you out of trouble. Worker and credential records kept current: NDIS Worker Screening clearance, first aid, police checks, all tracked so an expiry surfaces before it lapses, not after someone out of clearance has already delivered a support. And the reporting pulls you rely on, budget utilisation, unclaimed service deliveries, upcoming plan end-dates, run on a schedule and put on your desk, because a participant burning through their funding in month two of a twelve-month plan is a conversation you want in month two, not at the review.

The honest bit

A few things to know before you budget, because we would rather you hear them here than after the first month.

Lumary is licensed per Salesforce user. That means the VA’s login is a real seat on your subscription, not a free reception account the way some clinical platforms hand out. On an enterprise account that is a rounding error; on a smaller provider’s subscription it is a line worth pricing before you commit. We will size it with you.

It is also a configured enterprise platform, which is a double-edged thing. The upside is precision: because it sits on Salesforce, we can scope exactly what the VA can see and touch down to the field. The downside is that every Lumary instance is configured differently for the provider that runs it, so there is no single “Lumary screen” a VA arrives already knowing in your exact layout. The first week is spent learning your configuration, your support items, your agreement templates, your claiming routine, not learning NDIS admin from scratch. That is why the ramp is supervised, and why we are upfront that the pool of VAs with hours in this specific platform is narrower than for the everyday tools.

And Lumary will not make the decisions for you. It holds the participant’s budget and it will warn when something doesn’t reconcile, but it does not decide what supports a participant gets, it does not write the clinical record, and it does not authorise a claim. Those are people decisions, and they stay people decisions. The platform is the filing cabinet and the calculator; the judgement is yours.

What stays with you

This is an NDIS operation, so the line is drawn in ink, and Lumary’s permission model is what enforces it. The VA does operational and administrative work only. The clinical record stays entirely with the people who deliver the care.

Progress notes and case notes are written by the workers who delivered the support, never by the VA, and we would decline a brief that asked otherwise. Care plan content, behaviour support detail and anything clinical sit on records and fields the VA’s login is restricted from at the object and field level, so they are not visible, not editable and not exportable through that login. Decisions about which supports a participant receives, what goes into a service agreement, how a plan’s funding is interpreted, and the authorisation of any claim, all stay with you. Anything that is clinical, safeguarding-shaped, or smells like a participant-plan decision escalates to you under a written rule, not a verbal understanding.

The same line runs through our NDIS plan management page and our allied health page: the VA never delivers a support and never writes a care note. They make sure everyone who does is rostered, claimed, invoiced and renewed on time, and that the participant record behind all of it is true.

What it costs and where to start

Lumary work lands on our admin tier at $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, usually 10-15 hours a week, which for most providers is somewhere between $500 and $1,100 a month across service agreements, rostering data, claim prep, rejection chasing, invoicing and compliance upkeep. Heavier reporting or analysis sits on the specialist tier at $18-25. The one extra cost specific to Lumary is the Salesforce licence for the VA’s login, which we size with you before placement so there are no surprises.

Placement runs 7-10 business days. The first 5-7 days are supervised inside your Lumary before any solo work, learning your configuration and your claiming routine rather than learning NDIS admin from scratch. The first 30 days carry a recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and you can walk away on 14 days notice. The $500 deposit is refundable and comes off your first month.

If you want the wider picture, the NDIS plan management page covers the industry side, providers running care-management platforms like ShiftCare have their own page, and the VA cost guide walks through every number. Otherwise book a discovery call with Jenn. She takes every one herself, she has placed 87+ VAs into Australian businesses since 2024, and if your operation isn’t ready for one she’ll tell you before taking a dollar. Bring your unclaimed-deliveries report and your list of plans coming up for review; the hours are in there, and we’ll dig them out.