Funders
How DVA allied health payments land in Xero
DVA allied health claims go through the same Medicare Online channel as bulk bill, and Services Australia pays the practice on the department's behalf. About three quarters are adjudicated inside 15 seconds, the rest inside two business days. DVA pays in its own payment runs, so the run lands in a DVA clearing account of its own, posted BAS excluded. The revenue behind it is GST free.
Key facts
- Who pays
- Services Australia, adjudicating and paying on the department's behalf into the bank account the practice nominated4
- Claim types
- DVA Allied Health for allied health, community nursing, psychology and speech pathology, and DVA Paperless for specialists and GPs2
- Adjudication
- About three quarters answered inside 15 seconds, the rest from hours to two business days1
- Deposit shape
- Payment runs separate from Medicare bulk bill, each carrying its own run number3
- Breakdown file
- The payment report, generated 48 hours after the claim is processed, with a run number against each claim3
- Rejections
- One rejected item declines the whole invoice, so a run falls short by whole claims1
- Travel
- No reimbursement on the first 10 kilometres, and the approved amount can differ from the quoted one7
- GST treatment
- GST free under s38-60 where the same service to the patient would be, because DVA is an Australian Government agency, with a report the department asks for taxable unless it is a natural part of that service11
- Accounts in the allied health template
- 402 Clinical services, DVA, with the run held in 101 DVA clearing9
How the money moves
A DVA claim leaves the practice system as one of two claim types. DVA Allied Health covers allied health, community nursing, psychology and speech pathology. DVA Paperless covers general practitioners and specialists. Both travel the same Medicare Online channel a bulk bill claim uses, and Services Australia adjudicates and pays them on the department's behalf.
Nothing is collected at the desk. The invoice sits unpaid in the practice system until the claim is adjudicated, and the money then arrives as an electronic transfer to the bank account the practice nominated for that provider. So the practice carries the whole fee as a receivable for as long as the claim takes, and the bank line, when it lands, covers a set of claims rather than one invoice.
The waiting time is two paths, not an average
DVA adjudication splits in two. Tyro Health's developer documentation puts about three quarters of claims on a synchronous response inside 15 seconds, and the rest on asynchronous processing that runs from hours to typically two business days from submission. Claims carrying miscellaneous, general catch all or special items go to a DVA case manager, as does any claim that cannot be processed instantly, and that review happens in business hours.
The split matters more than the average. A practice that lodges on a Friday afternoon can see most of the day's claims settled before the staff leave and a handful still open the following Tuesday. Averaging the two hides the tail, and the tail is what leaves invoices sitting open at month end.
Why DVA gets its own bank line
DVA money and Medicare bulk bill money come from the same agency through the same channel, and they still arrive as separate deposits. Services Australia pays them in separate payment runs, and every claim on a payment report carries the run number of the deposit it belongs to. Two claim types lodged on the same afternoon can land on two different days for two different amounts.
That is why the canonical allied health template gives DVA its own clearing account, 101 DVA clearing, rather than sharing account 100 with Medicare. One clearing account per payment run source is what lets a bookkeeper answer whether a run has landed yet, and the Medicare bulk bill page covers the run that arrives beside it.
The report that splits the run
The payment report is the only document that breaks a run into claims, and it appears after the money. Services Australia generates it about 48 hours after it processes a claim, so a practice that asks too early gets a run number reading as not run rather than an error to chase.
| Column | What it settles |
|---|---|
| Invoice number and claim ID | Which practice invoice the paid amount belongs to |
| Servicing provider name and number | Which practitioner earned it, which the canonical template carries as a tracking category rather than as its own account |
| Charge amount and paid amount | Whether the claim was paid in full, and by how much it fell short if not |
| Run number | Which bank deposit the claim belongs to |
| Date paid | The date the receipt carries, which is not the date the bank line appears |
One report covers bulk bill and both DVA claim types together, so the run number is what separates a DVA deposit from a Medicare one rather than the report itself. Zanda's guide says the reports stay available for six months after the payment date, which is the window a practice has to reconcile a run nobody looked at when it landed.
A bank deposit that agrees to the report total proves the payment run landed, not that every claim was coded correctly, assigned to the right provider, or ready to become revenue.8
A rejection takes the whole invoice
A DVA claim fails as a whole. Tyro Health states it plainly, and the consequence is that a run falls short by whole claims rather than by one item inside a claim. Each of those claims sits on the processing report with its own reason, which is where the difference between the report total and the claims lodged is explained.
If multiple service items are claimed and one item is rejected the whole invoice will be marked as Declined.1
In the books a declined claim is not a write off and not a discount. The invoice stays open, no payment is posted against it, and the claim is corrected and lodged again. The canonical template says the same thing: the rejected claims component of the DVA rail posts nothing at all and carries the reason instead of an account code.
Travel is the one DVA line that settles at a different amount
One DVA line settles at an amount nobody knew in advance, and it is the reason a DVA invoice can sit open after the deposit has cleared. Travel is claimed as its own item on a home visit, and Cliniko's help centre states that DVA does not pay travel reimbursement on the first 10 kilometres travelled, so the billable travel item has to reflect that exclusion.
- The figure the practice system quotes before lodgement is an expected reimbursement, not an approved one.
- The amount DVA approves can land above or below it, and either way the invoice stays open. Approved high, the payment is not allocated at all. Approved low, it is allocated and leaves a balance.
- Closing it means repricing the travel item to the approved amount, then allocating the payment by hand.
- In the books that difference sits on a claim that was approved, which is a different event from a claim that was declined.
A page that says DVA declines whole invoices and stops there leaves this out. It is the variance a bookkeeper chases at the end of the month, and it is the one place where a DVA deposit is short without a processing report line to explain it.
The GST treatment
DVA treatment is GST free on the same test as the identical service delivered to the patient. The provision is s38-60, and the ATO states its test plainly: if the service is GST free when provided to the patient, it is also GST free where the practice is contracting with an Australian Government agency. A report or an assessment the department asks for is a different supply. The ATO treats a report as GST free only where a Medicare benefit is payable for it or the report is an ordinary and natural part of the GST free service, so a report the department asks for on its own is taxable.
The payer does not decide the treatment on its own. The test turns on whether the service would be GST free to the patient, so a service that is taxable privately stays taxable when the department pays for it. The ATO does let the supplier and the agency agree not to treat the supplies as GST free, which is worth confirming before the map is approved. That is why the standing map holds a row per service category rather than one row per funder.
Only the allied health template names a DVA revenue account of its own. The other two canonical templates reach account 400 through their practice default row, at the same tax rate, which is why the card draws all three rather than one merged posting.
The Xero pattern that leaves one bank line
The pattern that survives a review is a clearing account per payment run source, held as a bank type account in Xero so the run can be matched as a transfer.
- Each invoice is receipted to DVA clearing on the date the payment report says the department paid it, not the date the bank line appears.
- The bank line for the run is matched as a transfer out of DVA clearing.
- The clearing balance is money DVA has approved and the bank has not yet delivered, and it returns to nil once every run has landed.
- A balance that will not clear is a claim receipted but not yet paid, a run banked but not yet receipted, or a travel item still carrying its quoted amount.
Keeping DVA clearing apart from Medicare clearing costs one account and settles the question a shared account cannot answer: which run is still outstanding. It also keeps the two report types reconciling against their own balances, which is the check a practice can run without opening the practice system.
What Ledger Map does with it
Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved before anything syncs. A DVA line resolves to its account and its tax rate through that map, the payment run is posted as one balanced document set against DVA clearing with the claims underneath it, and one exact match is left in the bank feed for a person to accept.
Nothing on this page is a treatment Ledger Map chose. The account and the tax rate come from the canonical template the practice starts from, and anything the map cannot resolve becomes a question with the options laid out rather than a silent posting. How it works shows the map and the approval step it goes through.
Questions
How long does DVA take to pay an allied health claim?
Adjudication is the documented part: about three quarters of claims get a response inside 15 seconds and the rest take from hours to two business days. The department publishes no timeframe for the funds themselves, so treat the gap between approval and the bank line as unknown until the practice has watched a few of its own runs.
Why is my DVA deposit smaller than the claims I lodged?
Usually because whole claims were declined, since one rejected item declines the whole invoice, and each of those sits on the processing report with a reason. Travel is a separate cause and does not always run short: DVA can approve more or less than the practice system quoted, and either way the invoice stays open until the travel item is repriced.
Can DVA share the Medicare clearing account in Xero?
It can, and it still balances. The canonical allied health template keeps them apart, on 101 for DVA and 100 for Medicare, because the two are paid in separate payment runs and a shared account cannot say which run is outstanding. The practice decides that trade off when it approves the map.
Is DVA income GST free?
For treatment that would be GST free supplied to the patient, s38-60 extends the same treatment when the practice contracts with an Australian Government agency. A report or an assessment the department asks for is a different supply, GST free only where a Medicare benefit is payable for it or it is an ordinary and natural part of the treatment, so on its own it is taxable. The treatment follows the service rather than the payer, and the parties can agree not to treat the supplies as GST free.
Where does the DVA payment report come from, and how long can I get it?
It is requested from the practice system once Services Australia has processed the claim, 48 hours in. Zanda's guide says the reports stay available for six months after the payment date, which is the window for reconciling a run nobody looked at when it landed.
Sources
Open questions
- The department publishes no payment timeframe for allied health claims, so the timeline carries no duration on the funds stage. Two dva.gov.au pages timed out when they were fetched for this page, so the department's own supplier payment terms are recorded here as unverified.
- The claim that a DVA run arrives as its own bank line rests on the separate claim types and the run number rather than on a published statement. One payment report covers bulk bill and both DVA claim types together, so the report does not separate them.
- The bank narration for a DVA payment run is not confirmed by any primary source, so the matcher learns descriptor patterns from the practice's own bank feed rather than holding a string.
- The travel reimbursement rule, including the first 10 kilometre exclusion, is stated by a practice management vendor rather than by the department, and no DVA fee schedule page could be read to confirm it.
- The Nookal online claims article refused a second read, returning 403 on the drafting pass and again on 3 Sep 2026. The one fact it carries, that payment goes to the bank account the practice nominated, rests on the registry read of 29 Aug 2026 and is cited nowhere else on this page.
- Automatically allocate Medicare bulk bill and DVA payments to invoices
Zanda. Retrieved 2 Sep 2026.
secondary
- Department of Veterans' Affairs claiming including travel reimbursement
Cliniko. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026. Source updated 11 Oct 2023.
secondary
- Reconcile Medicare bulk bill and DVA rebates for allied health
Invoice Data Extraction. Retrieved 2 Sep 2026. Source updated 14 May 2026.
secondary
- GST and health, supply of services through a third party
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- GST and health, medical services
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
Review
Last reviewed 4 Sep 2026 by Shane
General information for Australian allied health practices, not tax advice. Confirm a treatment with your BAS agent or accountant before you post it.
Guided onboarding
Run one real month before you go live.
Sign up, connect Zanda and Xero, and replay a month you already closed. The map is reviewed with whoever owns the books, and nothing posts until you approve it.
Every practice starts from a template. Nothing posts until the map is approved.