| ASM-001 | The 2026-27 NDIS national price limits apply to Victoria without a state differential. | Every revenue figure in the model depends on the price limit that applies in Victoria. | Medium | If Victoria carries a differential, every revenue and margin figure in the model is wrong by that differential. | NDIA, by reading the raw 2026-27 support catalogue rather than a summarised extract | Open |
| ASM-002 | A community-based disability support worker in Victoria sits in the SCHADS Social and Community Services stream at Level 2. | The classification determines the base wage and therefore the whole cost side of the model. | Medium | A Level 3 classification raises the casual rate from $45.28 to $50.61, cutting gross margin per hour from $21.30 to roughly $15.15 — a 29 percent margin loss. | A workplace relations adviser, or a direct read of MA000100 Schedule B | Open |
| ASM-003 | The business will not exceed the Victorian payroll tax threshold in its first two years. | Payroll tax is excluded from the on-cost stack on this basis. | Medium | Crossing the threshold adds roughly 4.85 percent to the wage bill above it, cutting margin per hour by about $2.20. | State Revenue Office Victoria — the threshold itself could not be confirmed from a primary source | Open |
| ASM-004 | The disability and social-assistance WorkCover industry rate is close to the 1.8 percent Victorian state average. | The industry-specific rate sits in a Special Gazette that could not be read. | Low | A rate of 3 percent instead of 1.8 percent adds about $0.54 per hour, cutting margin by a further 2.5 percent. | WorkSafe Victoria, or a broker quote | Open |
| ASM-005 | Bookkeeping and accounting for a small Pty Ltd costs $300 per month. | No vendor publishes a price; the model needs a figure for fixed overhead. | Low | Every $100 per month of error moves break-even by about five billable hours per month. | Any Victorian bookkeeper, by quote | Open |
| ASM-006 | A lean professional website and brand identity costs $2,500 rather than the $3,500-$30,000 published industry range. | The published range is too wide to model; a lean single-operator build is the realistic case. | Low | A $10,000 website adds roughly nine months to payback at the base-case margin. | Any Australian web agency, by quote | Open |
| ASM-007 | Plan managers pay a compliant invoice within 14 days of submission. | The payment lag sets the working-capital requirement. | Low | A 30-day lag roughly doubles the working capital needed to cover wages before revenue arrives. | Any established Victorian plan manager | Open |
| ASM-008 | Non-billable administration runs at 0.25 hours for every billable hour delivered. | Admin load is the single largest hidden cost in a small provider and no source publishes a benchmark. | Low | At 0.40 hours per billable hour the contribution per billable hour is NEGATIVE $2.07 — every hour sold loses money, and no volume of loss-making hours ever covers a fixed cost, so break-even ceases to exist. At 0.10 hours it is $15.46 and the business is comfortably viable. This one input spans viable to unviable. | Ability Roundtable benchmarking, or an operating provider willing to share its ratio | Open |
| ASM-009 | The 1 October 2026 grace period for SIL registration applies only to providers already operating, not to a new entrant. | It determines whether SIL is open to Zaid at all before certification is complete. | Medium | If a new entrant may also rely on the grace period, the SIL pathway opens roughly nine months earlier than modelled. | NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, by direct enquiry — this is ACT-005 | Open |
| ASM-010 | The NDIS Commission charges no separate application fee beyond the auditor's fee. | No fee is published and one consultancy asserts a Commission fee exists without naming an amount. | Low | An unbudgeted Commission fee is a direct addition to the one-off capital requirement. | NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, by direct enquiry — this is ACT-006 | Open |
| ASM-011 | Zaid will operate the business himself full time rather than as a passive investor. | Owner-operator status changes both the labour cost and the drawings the business must fund. | Low | A passive-investor model requires a paid manager, adding roughly $95,000 per year of fixed cost and moving break-even by about 370 billable hours per month. | Zaid — this is ACT-001 | Open |
| ASM-012 | Zaid's personal living costs are not funded by the business during the pre-revenue period. | Runway is modelled as business cash only. | Low | If the business must fund living costs from month one, the runway requirement rises by the full amount of those costs. | Zaid — this is ACT-002 | Open |
| ASM-013 | Support coordination work would be delivered by Zaid personally at a billable utilisation of 55 percent. | Support coordination margin depends almost entirely on billable utilisation. | Low | At 35 percent utilisation the support coordination model returns about $59,089 a year net to the owner instead of about $98,664 — a 40 percent fall for a 20-point drop in utilisation. Utilisation, not volume, is the whole business. | Zaid, against his own availability; benchmark data not published | Open |
| ASM-014 | General operating overhead — phone, internet, subscriptions, professional memberships, local travel — runs at $200 per month. | No vendor publishes this; the model needs a figure for fixed overhead. | Low | Every $100 per month of error moves break-even by about five billable hours per month in the core-supports model. | Zaid, from his own quotes once trading | Open |
| ASM-015 | The first participant is won in month 4 of trading, and volume ramps to 380 billable hours a month by month 12. | No published benchmark exists for time-to-first-client for a new NDIS provider (RSK-009), and the whole cash curve depends on it. | Low | A month-8 first client removes four months of contribution — roughly $7,000 — and pushes payback beyond 18 months. This is the least evidenced number in the study and the one most worth stress-testing. | An operating Victorian provider willing to share its own ramp, or a support coordinator willing to say how they pick new providers | Open |
| ASM-016 | The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission's registration categories that cover personal care and domestic assistance can be applied for without a full quality audit at entry. | Determines whether the aged care entity's entry cost is a fee or an audit, a difference of several thousand dollars and several months. | Low | If a full audit is required at entry, the aged care one-off cost rises by roughly the NDIS certification audit band and the start date moves out by three to six months. | The Commission, by working the registration fee calculator through to a quoted figure for the specific categories chosen | Open |
| ASM-017 | An NDIS Worker Screening Check is accepted in place of an aged care worker screening check for a worker moving between the two entities. | Two entities sharing a workforce only saves money if the screening is not paid twice. | Low | If the checks are not reciprocal, worker screening cost doubles for every shared worker and the shared-workforce argument for two entities weakens. | SRC-057 read in full, or the Commission asked directly | Open |
| ASM-018 | The Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards can be evidenced by a bought policy manual plus the provider's own records, without external consulting. | The difference between a $4,997 manual and a consulting engagement is the single largest swing in the aged care entry cost. | Low | If consulting is needed, add $10,000 to $25,000 to the aged care one-off cost, which more than doubles it. | A registered small provider who has been through entry registration under the new Act | Open |
| ASM-019 | Support at Home participants can be acquired without paid marketing, through My Aged Care assessor and discharge-planner relationships alone. | Every client-acquisition cost in the model is zero. If that is wrong, the ramp slows and the runway shortens. | Low | If paid acquisition is needed, both the ramp and the fixed cost change, and break-even moves out by an unmodelled amount. | Two or three small Victorian providers, asked how their first ten clients arrived | Open |
| ASM-020 | The average assessed classification budget across the client base is $30,000 a year, close to the Level 4 figure of $29,696.40. | This single number sets revenue per client, hours per client and therefore the whole aged care case. | Low | At a $20,000 average the contribution per client falls from $1,002 to $639 a month, a 36 per cent reduction. At $12,000 it falls to $348. The business still breaks even on clients but needs roughly three times as many. | The first five real referrals, by recording their assessed classification | Open |
| ASM-021 | Care management consumes 1.5 hours of coordinator time per client per month. | Care management is a revenue line worth 10 per cent of the budget; its cost decides whether that line is profit or wash. | Low | At 3 hours the care-management line roughly breaks even instead of contributing; at 1 hour it contributes more. It does not change the sign of the result. | Timesheet data once ten clients are being served | Open |
| ASM-022 | Fifteen per cent of the participant budget is collected as a participant contribution rather than paid by government. | A contribution the participant pays is a contribution that can go unpaid. | Low | The exposure is small: the whole bad-debt allowance is $7.50 a client a month. A wrong share does not move the decision. | The Support at Home Program Manual's contribution schedule | Open |
| ASM-023 | Two per cent of participant contributions are never collected. | Bad debt is real in any co-contribution scheme and its absence from a model is an omission, not a saving. | Low | At 10 per cent bad debt the allowance rises from $7.50 to $37.50 a client a month, which is immaterial against a $1,002 contribution. | Aged debtor data after two quarters of trading | Open |
| ASM-024 | The aged care entity reaches twelve clients by month twelve, and the NDIS entity reaches 380 billable hours a month over the same period. | Every revenue projection in the business plan rests on this ramp. | Low | The ramp is the least evidenced part of the plan. A ramp half this fast pushes cash break-even from month ten to beyond the modelled lifecycle. | There is no way to verify it before trading. It is a target, and the plan says so. | Open |
| ASM-025 | An NDIS participant of the kind this business would serve uses 15 hours of support a week. | It is the basis on which the NDIS business is compared with aged care per client rather than per hour. | Low | A lower figure narrows the gap between the two businesses; a higher one widens it. At 34 hours a week the two contributions are equal. | The Victorian participant average package data in SRC-044, converted to hours | Open |
| ASM-026 | Aged care registration is granted in the categories applied for, without a condition that restricts the services the model prices. | A registration granted with conditions is a different business from the one modelled. | Low | Conditions on personal care would remove the largest revenue line and the model would have to be rebuilt. | The registration decision itself; unknowable before applying | Open |
| ASM-027 | Care management and rostering software for the aged care entity costs $120 a month at the modelled client volume. | A per-client software price scales with growth in a way a flat price does not. | Low | At $300 a month the fixed cost rises by $180, which moves break-even by roughly a fifth of a client. Immaterial. | A vendor quotation at twelve clients | Open |
| ASM-028 | The owner's foregone employment income is $60,000 a year, and it is charged against the venture as an opportunity cost. | Without it the return on investment is a number that ignores the largest input the owner actually contributes. | Medium | At $90,000 a year of foregone income the three-year return falls from 52.4 per cent to 14.9 per cent: total cost $365,726.60 against the same $420,113.58 of benefit, a net of $54,386.98. The decision becomes marginal rather than clear. | Zaid, from his current or most recent employment income | Open |
| ASM-029 | Maintenance and compliance over three years costs $7,520: an NDIS mid-term verification audit, an aged care registration renewal or audit, and one first aid recertification cycle for eight people. | Maintenance is the cost that is always forgotten in a startup model and always arrives. | Low | A doubling of this figure changes the three-year net by $7,520 against a computed net of $144,386.98, which is a five per cent movement. It does not change the decision. (V6 found $145,621 typed here and in a trade study score rationale; no function produced it.) | The NDIS Commission's surveillance audit schedule and the Commission's renewal fee calculator | Open |
| ASM-031 | Care management and administration in the aged care entity are performed at a Social and Community Services Level 3 rate of $50.61 an hour base, not at the SCHADS Schedule F Home Care Level 3 rate of $45.29. | It is the cost side of the ten per cent care-management pool, which is the structural advantage the whole aged care case rests on. | Low | If the role can genuinely be filled at the Schedule F rate, the contribution per client RISES by about $43 a month and the aged care case gets stronger. The higher rate was chosen deliberately because IHACPA prices care management between $116.22 and $126.83 an hour, which implies a role well above a home carer, and because a modelling choice that flatters the recommendation deserves more scrutiny than one that does not. | A position description and a real hire, or SCHADS Schedule F read in full for the care-manager classification | Open |
| ASM-030 | Support at Home payments arrive about seven days after claim through Services Australia. | The payment lag sets the working capital the aged care entity must hold against its wage cycle. | Low | At a thirty-day lag the aged care working capital rises from $4,173 to roughly $17,900, which is a material addition to the capital requirement. | Services Australia's aged care claiming documentation, or a provider already claiming | Open |