FROM SOFTWARE COST TO COST-SAVING ENGINE

Quantifying the Return on Investment of the CareMaster Product Suite for NDIS Providers

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Australia’s disability services sector is under unprecedented financial pressure. Nearly half of NDIS providers reported operating at a loss in 2024–25, while more than three-quarters delivered substantial unfunded services, averaging over $460,000 per organisation. In this environment, sustainability is no longer driven by marginal efficiency improvements. It requires structural reductions in administrative overhead.

This paper outlines how the CareMaster product suite delivers measurable Return on Investment (ROI) by transforming administration from a cost centre into a cost-saving mechanism. Through payroll automation, SCHADS Award management, rostering optimisation, invoicing, and intelligent allocation, CareMaster enables providers to reduce manual processing, lower overtime costs, and redirect administrative effort back into service delivery.

CareMaster is positioned not as another piece of software to manage, but as a critical financial lever that directly addresses the operational pressures threatening provider viability.

THE SECTOR CONTEXT: WHY ADMINISTRATIVE EFFICIENCY IS NOW CRITICAL

The 2025 State of the Disability Sector Report highlights a system under sustained financial and operational stress:

• Nearly 50% of providers reported a financial loss in the last financial year

• 81% of providers report they cannot continue delivering services at current prices

• 84% of leadership teams spend excessive time managing NDIS changes

• Administrative and compliance burdens are a leading contributor to burnout and inefficiency

In response, more than 90% of providers are actively pursuing productivity improvements through digital transformation. However, fragmented systems, spreadsheet-based workarounds, and manual processes continue to erode the returns of these investments.

The challenge is no longer whether to digitise, but whether digital systems are actually reducing labour costs and operational risk.

CAREMASTER’S CORE VALUE PROPOSITION

CareMaster shifts from being a software expense to a cost-saving mechanism.

Rather than adding complexity, CareMaster consolidates rostering, payroll, SCHADS Award compliance, invoicing, and workforce management into a single operational backbone. This reduces duplication, manual intervention, and compliance exposure while improving scalability.

“CareMaster fundamentally changes the economics of administration. The value is not just faster processes, but the removal of entire categories of manual work.”
— Andrew Sturt, CEO, CareMaster

ROI PILLAR 1: DIRECT PAYROLL ADMINISTRATION SAVINGS

Payroll is consistently one of the most labour-intensive back-office functions for NDIS providers. Complexity driven by SCHADS Award rules, transport claims, allowances, and disconnected systems often results in heavy manual reconciliation.

CareMaster delivers payroll savings through:

• Automated SCHADS Award interpretation

• Integrated payroll and invoicing workflows

• Direct integrations with systems such as Xero and KeyPay

• Elimination of spreadsheet-based reconciliation and duplicate data entry

Indicative outcomes include:

• Reduction in payroll processing time of approximately $X days per month

• Elimination of 8+ hours per week of manual payroll work identified in customer research

• Reduced risk of underpayments, overpayments, and compliance corrections

“Before CareMaster, invoicing was a weekly bottleneck requiring constant manual checks. Now it is largely exception-based rather than process-driven.”
— Finance Manager LinkCT, Usman Shamim

ROI PILLAR 2: STREAMLINED ALLOCATION AND AUTOMATION

Manual allocation of travel, transport, and service components introduces hidden costs through billing errors, claim rejections, and administrative rework.

Customer research consistently identified poor data validation and manual allocation as a major source of inefficiency and financial leakage.

CareMaster addresses this through:

• Automated travel and trip allocation

• Intelligent defaults with built-in validation

• Reduced reliance on spreadsheets and external tools

• Fewer downstream billing failures and claim corrections

The financial impact includes:

• Reduced rejected claims and delayed cash flow

• Lower administrative effort spent on data cleanup

• Reduced compliance and audit risk associated with incorrect billing

“Automated allocation removed hours of manual checking every week and significantly reduced billing errors.”
— Operations Manager, NDIS Provider

ROI PILLAR 3: ROSTERING OPTIMISATION AND WORKFORCE EFFICIENCY

Rostering inefficiencies directly drive overtime costs, staff burnout, and poor utilisation. Customer discovery sessions consistently revealed that rostering knowledge is often concentrated in one or two individuals, creating operational risk and limiting scalability.

CareMaster’s rostering and optimisation capabilities include:

• SCHADS-aware rostering rules

• Improved staff-to-client matching

• Reduced dependency on manual decision-making

• Faster response to unplanned absences

Operational benefits include:

• Reduced overtime expenditure

• Improved workforce utilisation without increasing headcount

• Reduced operational risk caused by single points of failure

“Roster Optimisation moves rostering from tribal knowledge into system intelligence, which is essential for scale.”
— Elisha Anderton, CareMaster

INSIGHTS FROM CAREMASTER CUSTOMER RESEARCH

Across six in-depth customer discovery sessions involving providers with 20 to more than 500 staff, a consistent pattern emerged:

• Extensive use of spreadsheets, Power Platform tools, and third-party systems to compensate for manual processes

• Payroll and billing teams spending full days each week on reconciliation and corrections

• Leadership teams constrained by administrative overhead rather than strategic growth

These findings closely mirror sector-wide data showing that administrative burden and unfunded effort are now structural risks to sustainability.

CareMaster directly addresses these constraints by:

• Enforcing data validation at the point of entry

• Automating compliance-critical workflows

• Consolidating fragmented systems into a single operational platform

FINANCIAL FRAMING: COST AVOIDANCE, NOT JUST PRODUCTIVITY

In the current NDIS environment, ROI must be measured not only in productivity gains but in cost avoidance, including:

• Avoided payroll errors and back-payments

• Avoided audit remediation and compliance rework

• Avoided growth in finance and administration headcount

• Avoided staff turnover driven by rostering inefficiency and burnout

With average unfunded services exceeding $460,000 per provider annually, even modest reductions in administrative overhead can materially change financial outcomes.

CONCLUSION

CareMaster enables NDIS providers to operate sustainably at scale by structurally reducing administrative labour rather than simply accelerating it.

In an environment of constrained pricing, rising compliance obligations, and workforce pressure, long-term viability depends on removing manual administration from the operating model.

CareMaster is not a discretionary software expense.
It is an investment in financial sustainability.

“Our focus is helping providers stay viable by fundamentally changing the cost structure of administration.”
— Andrew Sturt, CEO, CareMaster

Source: National Disability Services (NDS), State of the Disability Sector Report.
https://nds.org.au/about/state-of-the-disability-sector-report

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