Funders
How TAC and CTP insurer payments land in Xero
TAC and CTP invoices are paid by the insurer that owns the claim, not by a claiming platform, so the money arrives one remittance at a time from a different debtor. TAC's provider guidance puts its remittances in a Westpac payments portal rather than in an email. No payment timeframe could be obtained from either scheme. The revenue leg is GST free. The insurer clearing leg is BAS excluded.
Key facts
- GST treatment
- GST free income where the same service to the patient would be, under s38-60 for a compulsory third party or statutory compensation scheme operator4
- The provision behind it
- Section 38-60, Third party procured GST free health supplies, sitting in the compilation of the GST Act current from 1 January 20267
- The taxable exception
- A report the insurer asks for, which the ATO's worked example treats as taxable because the insurer is the recipient of that supply and the report is not a natural part of the treatment the patient received6
- Revenue account in the allied health template
- 408 Clinical services, CTP and TAC, at the GST Free Income rate8
- Revenue account in the psychology template
- 406, the same account name and the same tax rate on a different code8
- Clearing account in the allied health template
- 109 Insurer clearing (TAC, CTP, icare direct), fed by one gross paid component at BAS Excluded8
- Clearing account in the psychology template
- 105 WorkCover and CTP clearing, fed by the same single gross paid component at BAS Excluded8
- Fee taken out of the deposit
- None. Neither of the two templates that carry an insurer rail gives that rail a fee leg8
- Insurers Tyro Health Online settles
- nib Direct, Comcare, icare, QBE and WorkSafe Victoria, settled every business day for transactions approved the day prior. TAC is not on that list1
Who actually pays a TAC or CTP invoice
A compensation invoice looks like a private invoice with a claim number on it, and then behaves nothing like one. The practice is not billing the patient. It is billing whichever body carries the claim: the Transport Accident Commission in Victoria, or the compulsory third party insurer that wrote the policy in New South Wales. That body is the debtor, it checks the treatment against the claim before it pays, and it pays on a schedule of its own.
The claiming channel and the payer are two different questions, and conflating them is where the reconciliation goes wrong. A claim lodged through HICAPS Digital or through Tyro Health still leaves the insurer as the debtor. Tyro Health Online's own settlement list names nib Direct, Comcare, icare, QBE and WorkSafe Victoria, and TAC does not appear on it. So a practice on a claiming platform can still be waiting on a TAC payment that does not pass through the platform.
One scheme in Victoria, many debtors in New South Wales
Victoria has a single statutory insurer for transport accidents, so a Victorian practice deals with one debtor, one invoice format and one remittance channel. New South Wales does not. A motor accident claim sits with the insurer that wrote the policy, or with the state's own long term care arm once the injury passes a certain threshold, and each of those is a separate debtor with its own remittance layout and its own idea of when to pay.
- Aged receivables in Xero age by contact, so a practice that wants receivables by payer needs the insurer as the Xero contact and the patient in the reference field.
- Each insurer runs its own remittance layout and its own payment run, which the mechanics row carries as unverified rather than as a schedule to plan around.
- A practice with claims across several insurers has several open receivables that look identical on the invoice and behave differently in the bank.
- One clearing account per rail still works, because the account answers the question of how much has been approved but not yet banked, whoever the insurer is.
Where the remittance lives when none arrives by email
This is the part that catches practices out. TAC's provider guidance says its remittances are online, delivered through a Westpac payments portal, and that a provider is registered into that portal off the back of its first payment rather than at sign up. A practice waiting for an emailed remittance can therefore wait indefinitely while the remittance sits in a portal nobody has logged into.
- A bank payments portal the insurer publishes remittances into, which someone at the practice has to be registered for.
- The claiming gateway's own remittance page, where the claim went through HICAPS Digital or Tyro Health, and the Tyro Health page carries the bank lodgement reference the bank line will show.
- An emailed or posted remittance advice from the insurer, which is what a smaller New South Wales insurer is most likely to send.
The lag neither scheme publishes
Most funders in the map have a lag a practice can plan around. Compensation insurers do not. No payment timeframe for allied health treatment could be obtained from the Victorian scheme or from a New South Wales insurer, so the mechanics row carries that field as unverified. The honest answer is that the lag is whatever a practice's own payment history says it is, which is worth measuring in the first quarter of billing a new insurer.
| What a bookkeeper asks | What the sources say | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| How is it lodged? | Digital claiming where the scheme supports it, otherwise an emailed invoice carrying the person, the accident date, the claim number and the practice's business number | Unverified |
| How does the money arrive? | Electronic funds transfer from the individual insurer, one remittance at a time | Unverified |
| Where is the breakdown? | A remittance advice from the insurer, or the payments portal for the schemes that use one | Unverified |
| How long does it take? | Not published by either scheme | Unverified |
| What happens to a rejection? | Treatment beyond the approved allowance is refused before payment rather than reversed afterwards | Unverified |
| How is it treated for GST? | GST free under s38-60, with reports and assessments taxable | Primary |
What a compensation invoice has to carry
An invoice missing one field goes into a queue rather than into a payment run, and the practice hears nothing. The regulator's guidance for motor accident treatment invoices asks for the same four identifiers every compensation scheme wants, and they double as the keys a remittance is matched back on.
- The injured person's name, which is how the insurer finds the claim.
- The date of the accident, which is how the insurer knows the treatment falls inside the claim.
- The insurer's claim or reference number, which is the only field a remittance is reliably keyed on.
- The practice's business number and address, plus GST where any line is taxable.
The GST treatment under s38-60
Section 38-60 is the provision that keeps compensation treatment GST free. Where a service is GST free provided to the patient, it stays GST free when the practice is contracting with an insurer, an operator of a statutory compensation scheme, a compulsory third party scheme operator or an Australian Government agency. The supplier and the recipient can agree not to treat the supplies as GST free, which is why the canonical template asks a BAS agent to confirm no scheme has opted out. The provision is titled Third party procured GST free health supplies, and it sits in the compilation of the GST Act current from 1 January 2026, so this is live law rather than a transitional measure.
If Medicare, NDIS, Workers Compensation or private health insurance pays you, then it is as if the patient paid you and it is a Yes.9
The three canonical templates agree on the tax rate and differ on the code. The allied health chart puts CTP and TAC revenue in 408 and the psychology chart puts it in 406, both under the same account name, while the NDIS plan managed chart spells out no compensation row at all and reaches 400 through its practice default. That is a chart of accounts difference rather than a tax question, and it is the reason this page shows a posting per template instead of one merged code that no template holds.
Reports and assessments are the exception
The funder does not make a supply GST free on its own. What matters is who the supply is made to, and the ATO's test is plain: the recipient is whoever engages the practitioner. A treatment session is supplied to the patient and the insurer pays for it, which is the case section 38-60 covers. A report the insurer asked for is engaged by the insurer instead, and the ATO's own example holds such a report outside GST free treatment: no Medicare benefit is payable for it, the insurer is the recipient, and the report is not a natural part of the service the patient received.
So one insurer can produce two kinds of revenue in the same month, and the difference is the service rather than the payer. That is why the map keeps a row per service category under a funder instead of one row per funder, and why a medico legal report billed to a compensation insurer does not follow the treatment row.
The clearing account pattern that leaves one bank line
The two templates that carry an insurer rail handle the money the same way, with one clearing account and one component. The allied health chart runs it through 109, Insurer clearing, covering TAC, CTP and direct insurer payments. The psychology chart combines compensation payers into 105, WorkCover and CTP clearing, on the reasoning that these are an occasional share of a psychology book rather than a caseload. Neither rail takes a fee out of the deposit, so the gross paid amount is the whole of the bank line.
- Each invoice is receipted to the insurer clearing account on the date the insurer paid it, which the remittance gives and the bank line does not.
- The deposit is matched as a transfer out of the clearing account, so the bank feed keeps one exact match rather than a pile of part payments.
- The clearing balance is the money an insurer has approved but not yet banked, read one insurer at a time.
- A balance that will not clear is either a remittance nobody found or a payment nobody matched, and both are worth chasing while the claim is still open.
Approval comes before payment, not after
Compensation schemes refuse treatment beyond the approved allowance before they pay for it, rather than clawing it back later. That makes a short deposit a different animal from a short NDIS remittance: there is no negative line to post and nothing to reverse. The invoice simply stays open, and the practice is left holding a receivable for sessions the insurer did not agree to fund.
It also means the reconciliation question is about receivables rather than about adjustments. Compare the receivable per insurer against the treatment the claim actually authorises, and the gap is visible before it becomes a write off argument months later. The same shape shows up on the WorkCover Queensland page and on workers compensation more broadly.
What Ledger Map does with it
Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved once before anything syncs. A compensation line resolves to its account and tax rate through that map, each insurer deposit becomes one balanced document set against the clearing account with the invoices underneath it, and the bank feed is left with one exact match. Where the map cannot resolve a line, it becomes a question with the options laid out rather than a silent posting.
Nothing on this page is a treatment Ledger Map chose. The accounts and the tax rate come from the canonical template the practice starts from, the unverified fields stay marked as unverified, and the practice approves the map before the first invoice moves. Where an insurer settles through a gateway instead of paying directly, the Tyro Health page carries that rail.
Questions
Who pays a TAC invoice, the TAC or the claiming platform?
The insurer that owns the claim pays it. A claiming platform lodges the invoice and can carry the remittance, but the deposit comes from the scheme itself. Tyro Health Online's settlement list covers nib Direct, Comcare, icare, QBE and WorkSafe Victoria, and TAC is not among them, so a TAC payment arrives outside the settlement Tyro Health runs each business day.
Where do I find a TAC remittance advice?
TAC's provider guidance says its remittances are online, published through a Westpac payments portal, with a provider registered into the portal after its first payment rather than at sign up. If no remittance reaches the practice inbox, the document usually exists in that portal already. Both TAC provider pages refused an automated fetch, so treat this as the scheme's reported wording.
How long does a CTP insurer take to pay an allied health invoice?
No payment timeframe for allied health treatment could be obtained from the Victorian scheme or from a New South Wales insurer, so the mechanics row behind this page carries that field as unverified. The practical answer is to measure the practice's own history per insurer over the first quarter of billing them, and to check any figure quoted elsewhere against the insurer's own wording.
Is TAC and CTP income GST free?
Treatment is GST free where the same service supplied to the patient would be, because section 38-60 covers insurers, statutory compensation scheme operators and compulsory third party scheme operators. A report the insurer asks for is taxable, because the insurer is the recipient of that supply and the report is not a natural part of the treatment the patient received. The supplier and the recipient can agree not to treat supplies as GST free, so confirm no scheme has opted out.
Should each CTP insurer be a separate contact in Xero?
Xero ages receivables by contact, so receivables by payer only work when the insurer is the Xero contact and the patient sits in the reference field. With several insurers on one caseload that means several contacts, each with its own open balance, while one clearing account per rail still answers how much has been approved but not yet banked.
Sources
Open questions
- No payment timeframe could be obtained from either scheme, and both TAC provider pages refused an automated fetch again on 3 Sep 2026, so the payments portal mechanics rest on the scheme's reported wording rather than on a page read in full.
- Whether any compensation scheme has agreed with providers not to treat supplies as GST free under s38-60 was not checked, and the allied health template asks a BAS agent to confirm it per practice.
- The ATO's worked example of a taxable insurer report is a medical practitioner's report, so the allied health version of the same conclusion rests on the recipient test the ATO states for a listed health service rather than on an example of its own.
- The New South Wales regulator's provider page refused an automated fetch on 2 and 3 Sep 2026, so the invoice content list is drawn from a recorded snippet of it rather than the page itself, and any fee schedule the regulator sets for allied health treatment under the scheme was not established either way.
- The state's long term care arm for serious motor accident injuries is described here from scheme background rather than from its own page, which refused an automated fetch.
- Which insurers a given practice reaches through a claiming gateway rather than directly is not published by either the scheme or the gateway.
- The Federal Register entry confirms the title of section 38-60 and that it is in force from 1 January 2026, but the fetch returned the subdivision contents rather than the operative text, so the wording described here is the ATO's summary of the provision rather than the section read from the register.
- The current top five results and the live answer engine response for this query were not re-measured, because the session's search budget was spent before the query could run, so the differentiator rests on the earlier research pass recorded in the brief.
- Tyro Health Online settlements
Tyro Health. Retrieved 29 Aug 2026. Source updated 16 Feb 2026.
primary
- Invoicing for CTP treatment services
State Insurance Regulatory Authority NSW. Retrieved 2 Sep 2026.
unverified
- 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: recipient of the supply
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- GST and health: medical services, including medical reports
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999, section 38-60
Federal Register of Legislation. Retrieved 2 Sep 2026. Source updated 1 Jan 2026.
primary
- Is my psychology or allied health service GST free
Allied Health Accounting. Retrieved 2 Sep 2026. Source updated 18 Sep 2024.
secondary
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.
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