Support Coordination vs Plan Management: What Each One Does

Published by SESI Care Services · Updated August 2026 · 2-minute summary

Quick answer: Support coordination helps you understand your NDIS plan, find and set up providers, and build your confidence to manage supports yourself. Plan management is bookkeeping — a plan manager pays your providers’ invoices and tracks your budgets. They are different services, funded from different budget lines, and you can have both. Neither one costs you anything out of pocket: the NDIA funds them in your plan. SESI Care Services provides support coordination Australia-wide; we do not provide plan management.

Key takeaways

• Support coordination = help using your plan. Plan management = help paying for your plan.
• Both are funded from Capacity Building, on separate lines: Support Coordination and Improved Life Choices.
• Plan management is added to your plan when you ask for it — it does not reduce your other budgets.
• 2026–27 prices: support coordination $100.14 per hour (Level 2); plan management $104.45 per month.
• Plan management is one of three ways to manage funds, alongside agency-managed and self-managed.
• SESI offers support coordination by phone and video across Australia, and does not offer plan management.

What does a support coordinator do?

A support coordinator is a person who works with you over time to turn a plan document into real supports. Funded under Capacity Building – Support Coordination, the role covers:

• Explaining what each budget in your plan can and cannot be used for.
• Finding providers that match your goals, and setting up service agreements.
• Connecting you to mainstream and community services outside the NDIS — housing, health, education.
• Helping when things go wrong: a provider lets you down, your needs change, a crisis happens.
• Preparing you for plan reassessments with evidence of what is working and what is not.
• Building your skills so that, over time, you can do more of this yourself.

There are three levels. The NDIA decides which one you are funded for based on how complex your situation is:

Level	Name	2026–27 price limit
1	Support Connection	$80.06 per hour
2	Coordination of Supports	$100.14 per hour
3	Specialist Support Coordination	$190.54 per hour

Level 2 is the most common. Level 3 is for people with high-risk or complex situations and is delivered by a specialist, often with an allied health or social work background. Prices are unchanged from 2025–26; see our 2026–27 price guide.

The number of hours is set in your plan — for example 60 hours for the year. Support coordination is not automatically time-limited, but the NDIA does expect it to build your independence, so the hours funded may change at each reassessment as your circumstances change.

What does a plan manager do?

A plan manager is a financial intermediary. Funded under Capacity Building – Improved Life Choices, they:

• Receive and pay invoices from your providers.
• Claim the money from the NDIA on your behalf.
• Keep track of how much of each budget you have used and send you statements, usually monthly.
• Check that invoices match the NDIS price limits.

Plan managers do not find providers for you, attend meetings, or help you work out what supports you need. Some will answer questions about budgets, but their job is the money, not the plan.

The 2026–27 fee is $104.45 per month, plus a one-off set-up fee in the first month. Importantly, this is added to your plan when you ask for plan management at your planning meeting or reassessment — it is not deducted from your Core or other Capacity Building budgets.

Why plan management is really about how your funds are managed

Plan management is one of three ways to manage your NDIS funds, and the choice changes which providers you can use:

	Agency-managed	Plan-managed	Self-managed
Who pays the invoices	The NDIA pays providers directly	Your plan manager	You, then you claim from the NDIA
Providers you can use	Registered only	Registered or unregistered	Registered or unregistered
Price limits apply	Yes	Yes	No — you can pay above the limit
Admin you do	Very little	Approve invoices	All of it
Extra funding needed	No	Yes — added to your plan	No

Plan management is popular because it gives you the provider choice of self-management without the paperwork. From 1 January 2027 the NDIA is reducing the price limits for some unregistered providers of community participation supports by 10%, which is worth weighing if you rely on unregistered providers through a plan manager.

Support coordination vs plan management side by side

	Support coordination	Plan management
Purpose	Help you understand and use your plan	Pay invoices and track budgets
Funded under	Capacity Building – Support Coordination	Capacity Building – Improved Life Choices
How it is funded	Hours per plan	Monthly fee, added to your plan
Who delivers it	A support coordinator you work with over time	A plan management company
Finds providers for you	Yes	No
Pays providers	No	Yes
Attends planning meetings	Yes, if you want them to	No
Builds your skills	Yes — that is the point	No
Can you have both	Yes	Yes

Can I have both a support coordinator and a plan manager?

Yes, and many participants do. They do different jobs, they are funded on different lines, and asking for one does not cost you the other.

A typical arrangement: your support coordinator helps you choose a physiotherapist and a support-worker provider, sets up the service agreements, and checks in monthly. The providers send their invoices to your plan manager, who pays them and sends you a statement. When the statement shows a budget running faster than expected, your support coordinator helps you adjust.

You can also have one without the other. Someone confident with the NDIS but short on time may want plan management only. Someone new to the NDIS who is agency-managed may want support coordination only.

Which one should I ask for?

Ask for support coordination if:

• You are new to the NDIS, or your plan has changed a lot.
• You have several providers, or health, housing and NDIS supports that need to work together.
• You are going through a transition — leaving school, leaving hospital, moving house, a change in who supports you at home.
• You want to understand the system well enough to run it yourself in time.

Ask for plan management if:

• You want to use providers that are not registered with the NDIS Commission.
• You would rather not process invoices and claims yourself.
• You want monthly statements that show where the money is going.

Ask for both if: your situation is complex and you want provider choice without the admin. This is common.

Raise it at your planning meeting or reassessment. For plan management, you simply say you want your plan to be plan-managed; the NDIA adds the funding. For support coordination, the NDIA looks at whether you need help to use your plan — a request backed by specific reasons (new to the scheme, multiple providers, a transition, no informal supports) is more likely to be funded than a general one.

How to check a provider is legitimate

• Plan managers and support coordinators are bound by the NDIS Code of Conduct, and registration with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is being extended to more provider types — check whether yours is registered.
• A support coordinator should not steer you only to their own organisation’s services. Ask how they handle that conflict of interest.
• A plan manager should pay invoices within a few business days and give you access to your balances at any time.

How SESI fits in

SESI Care Services provides Support Coordination by phone and video to participants right across Australia. We also provide Psychosocial Recovery Coaching Australia-wide, and in-person supports across Victoria. We do not provide plan management; if you want plan management, we will help you choose a plan manager and make sure the two roles work together.

Frequently asked questions

Talk to SESI

If you are not sure whether your plan should include support coordination, or you have it and want a coordinator who will actually pick up the phone, tell us what is going on.

Tell us what’s going on: sesi.com.au/referral · Call: 1800 017 374

This guide is general information based on the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits 2026–27 and NDIA guidance current at August 2026. It is not advice about your individual plan. Contact the NDIA on 1800 800 110 for decisions about your plan.