R5 — Startup Cost Stack & Operating Tooling, Victorian NDIS Provider (August 2026)

Serves REQ-SYS-01, REQ-SYS-07, REQ-CON-01. All prices below are as published by the named vendor/authority page on the "Accessed" date. Nothing in this file is estimated or recalled from training knowledge — where no vendor publishes a number, the line is in the "NO PUBLISHED PRICE FOUND" section, not in the cost table with an invented figure.

1. COST STACK TABLE

2. SUBTOTAL BY CATEGORY — DERIVED — MY ARITHMETIC

One-off pre-revenue setup subtotal (audit + policy manuals + website; low end uses cheapest published/estimated combination, high end uses most expensive published/estimated combination; does NOT include items in "NO PUBLISHED PRICE FOUND"):

• Low: 3,500 (verification audit, low) + 670 (Provider360 verification pack, cheapest manual option) + 3,500 (website, low) = $7,670

• High: 12,000 (certification audit, high, consultancy estimate) + 3,700 (Provider360 Mega pack) + 30,000 (website, high) = $45,700

DERIVED — MY ARITHMETIC. This range EXCLUDES: NDIS Commission's own registration/processing fee (amount not published — see below), any Approved Quality Auditor's actual quoted fee (only consultancy-derived estimates were found, not the auditor's own rate card), management liability insurance premium (no published figure found), consultant end-to-end registration packages (no vendor-published all-in price found), and incident-management-system setup cost (no vendor-published price found). The true one-off setup cost is therefore materially understated by this subtotal and should be treated as a floor, not a full estimate.

Recurring monthly software/tooling subtotal (cheapest published combination that gives CRM/rostering + accounting/payroll + basic HR, using lowest tier of each of ShiftCare, Xero, Employment Hero HR Essentials):

• Low: 45 (ShiftCare Essentials, 5 staff) + 78 (Xero Grow) + 10 (Employment Hero HR Essentials, 1 user) = $133/month

• High (adding SCHADS-capable managed payroll and rostering add-ons): 125 (ShiftCare Intelligence) + 143 (Xero Ultimate 10) + 400 (Employment Hero Managed Payroll, min) + 40 (Employment Hero Rostering add-on, min) = $708/month

DERIVED — MY ARITHMETIC. Note: no vendor in this stack published a "SCHADS award interpretation" feature by that exact name — the Employment Hero Managed Payroll figure is included as the closest published proxy (Medium/Low confidence — see Sources table).

Recurring annual subtotal (ASIC + insurance low/high, excluding management liability which has no published price):

• Low: 342 (ASIC) + 1,200 (NDIS provider insurance package, low) = $1,542/year

• High: 342 (ASIC) + 3,500 (NDIS provider insurance package, high) = $3,842/year

DERIVED — MY ARITHMETIC. Excludes management liability insurance (no published price found) and audit surveillance/mid-term costs (consultancy estimate only, not vendor-published — see Sources table, claim R5-15).

Per-worker one-off cost subtotal (screening + first aid + CPR + orientation module, per worker):

• 139.20 (Worker Screening Check, VIC) + 195 (First Aid) + 95 (CPR) + 0 (Orientation module, free) = $429.20 per worker

DERIVED — MY ARITHMETIC.

3. SOURCES TABLE

4. NO PUBLISHED PRICE FOUND

The following lines could not be given a sourced dollar figure within the tool-call budget and are explicitly left open rather than estimated:

1. NDIS Commission's own registration/application processing fee — one secondary source (VCCG) asserts the Commission charges "its own fees for processing your application and issuing your certificate of registration" as a "fixed cost independent of which approved quality auditor you engage," but supplies no amount. The direct ndiscommission.gov.au provider-registration application page could not be fetched (robots.txt block on one URL attempt; a second candidate URL was not retried within budget). This is the single most consequential open item for REQ-SYS-01 and should be the first item resolved in any follow-up pass, ideally by phoning the NDIS Commission or locating its official cost-recovery/fees legislative instrument.

1. Approved Quality Auditor actual quoted fee for a specific small first-time Victorian provider — SAI Global, Global-Mark and GCC were all confirmed as real approved bodies, but none publishes a rate card; all require a bespoke quote. Only third-party consultancy-estimated bands (R5-15) exist.

1. NDIS audit fee basis confirmation (per day vs per registration group vs per site) — Global-Mark and GCC both state fee varies by "registration groups, number of participants, number of outlets and NDIS workers" but neither publishes an actual per-day or per-group rate.

1. CRM/rostering pricing for Lumary, CareMaster, Visualcare, and Careview — all four appear to operate on quote-only/POA models; no per-user or per-month published figure was located.

1. NDIS end-to-end registration consultant package price — searches returned only aggregator/blog cost-guide articles (e.g., providerplus.com.au, skystaff.com.au) discussing typical market costs; no single named consultancy's own website was found publishing one all-inclusive fixed "done for you" registration package price.

1. Management liability insurance premium — no published indicative figure (specific to management liability, as distinct from public liability/professional indemnity) was found for a small Australian disability services business.

1. Bookkeeper hourly rate and registered tax agent monthly fee for a small Pty Ltd — several aggregator articles were found in search results (e.g., advancr.com.au citing "$40–$90/hr") but none was fetched and directly verified within the tool budget, so no figure is included in the cost table.

1. Named Australian web design agency's own published package price — only an aggregate industry cost-guide (Rocking Web's own blog) was verified; the guide itself states it found "no specific named agencies with published package prices" in its case studies.

1. Incident management system cost (separate from CRM bundles that include incident-management modules, e.g. Brevity) — no standalone vendor price was searched/found.

1. Participant handbook production cost — not searched within budget; flagged as a commonly-missed recurring/one-off cost per the charter's Q11 but no source located.

1. NDIS mid-term/surveillance audit exact fee — only the consultancy-derived "60–70% of initial audit fee" heuristic (R5-15) exists; no Approved Quality Auditor publishes its own surveillance-audit rate.

1. A third named policy-manual vendor with a directly confirmed price — Provider Institute's and Posity's sites appeared in search results but pricing was either not displayed on the fetched page (Provider Institute) or not fetched (Posity) within budget; only Provider360 and Provider Audit Ready are confirmed with two-vendor pricing (charter asked for at least three).

Compiled by R5 — Startup Cost Stack & Operating Tooling Researcher, AI Project Governance Standard v3.7, class STANDARD. Effort ceiling ~35 tool calls (37 used to complete required coverage; final 3 calls used to fill critical gaps in policy-manual vendor count, ASIC fee, and worker orientation module status).