Contractors & invoices
No payroll? Still sorted.
Not every support team is employed. Ability8 handles contractor workers — and pure invoice admin — with the same one-place, evidence-first approach as the full payroll flow.
Two flows, scroll to follow both
Flow one
Contractor support workers
Your worker runs their own business and invoices you for their hours. Ability8 removes the worst part of that arrangement — the invoicing itself.
Same roster, same timesheets
Contractor workers use the exact same flow as employees: shifts on the schedule, timesheets recorded and approved. The agreed hours are the single source of truth — for both of you.
The invoice writes itself
Instead of waiting for your contractor to type up an invoice (and chasing it, and checking it against your records), the app generates it from the approved timesheets — on their behalf, with their details, your details and an automatic invoice number.
- Line items come straight from the agreed hours and rates
- Sequential invoice numbering is handled for you
- Both sides hold the same document, built from the same record
Paid and treated correctly
The invoice becomes a payment with the right treatment for a contractor — no PAYG withholding or payslips where they don't apply — and the cost is allocated to the right plan budget like any other support.
Evidence, filed
The invoice PDF is stored against the payment and the worker, audit-ready. Years later, the question "what did we pay them in March, and for which hours?" is one search, not a shoebox.
Flow two
Invoice-only fund management
Therapists, providers, chemists, equipment suppliers — even if you never employ anyone, the invoices still arrive. Here's the admin loop, from inbox to reconciled claim.
Email it in
Every family gets its own intake email address. Forward a provider's PDF invoice — or photograph a paper receipt — and send it to the app. That's the whole data-entry step.
Read automatically
The invoice is scanned and the details extracted — supplier, date, totals, line items — into a draft payment for your review. You check it, you don't retype it. A whitelist means only senders you've approved can create drafts.
Allocate to your plan
Assign the cost to Core, Capital or Capacity Building and watch the budget bars update. The dashboard shows what's spent and what's left across your current plan — live, not at reconciliation time.
Claim and reconcile
Build the payment request from your records and lodge it through the NDIS portal, then mark the claim reconciled when the money lands. Reports export when your plan manager, accountant or an auditor asks.
Included either way
The records look after themselves
Photograph paper receipts on the spot — they file themselves against the right record
A live dashboard of plan budgets vs actual spend, by category
Reports and Excel exports for plan reviews, accountants and audits
Every invoice, payment and claim linked together and searchable
Questions
Contractors & invoices, answered
Why would the family create the contractor's invoice?
Because the hours are already agreed in the app. Generating the invoice from approved timesheets — a recipient-created invoice arrangement — means no chasing, no mismatched hours and no disputes: one record produces both the payment and the paperwork. Your contractor gets a correct, numbered invoice without doing the admin.
Can I mix employees and contractors?
Yes. Each worker is set up with their own engagement type, and the app applies the right treatment to each — payroll, tax, super and payslips for employees; generated invoices and contractor payments for contractors. Both draw from the same schedule and timesheets.
I don't employ anyone — is the invoice side enough on its own?
Absolutely. Many families use Ability8 purely as the money-and-records hub: email invoices in, allocate to budgets, claim, reconcile and report. The staffing features stay out of your way until you need them.
What if the scanned invoice details are wrong?
Nothing posts without you. The extraction creates a draft for review — you correct any field before it becomes a payment, and your corrections are remembered against that supplier to improve the next one.
From inbox to reconciled claim, without the retyping
Start with the invoice flow today — and if you ever move to employing your own team, the same records carry straight over.