You choose your NDIS auditor yourself, from the NDIS Commission's list of Approved Quality Auditors, once your scope of audit is issued. Ask more than one auditor for a free, no-obligation quote on that scope, compare their dates, audit team and independence, then nominate your choice in the Commission's portal. The auditor makes a recommendation; the Commission decides your registration.
Here is how to become an NDIS provider in Australia: apply to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, be audited against the NDIS Practice Standards by an approved quality auditor, pass a suitability check of you and your key personnel, and receive a certificate of registration. The audit is verification for low-risk supports, certification for high-risk or complex ones. Whether you must register depends on what you deliver and how participants' funding is managed.
NDIS compliance, once you're registered, means meeting the conditions of your registration for as long as you hold it, generally three years. Those conditions cover the NDIS Practice Standards, the NDIS Code of Conduct, working complaints and incident systems, worker screening, notifying the NDIS Commission of changes, and quality audits. Your certificate starts these obligations. It does not end them.
An NDIS audit is an independent assessment of your organisation against the NDIS Practice Standards, carried out by an Approved Quality Auditor you choose and pay. A certification audit runs in two stages: an off-site desktop review of your documents, then an on-site visit with interviews of your leadership, your workers and your participants. The auditor recommends. The NDIS Commission decides your registration.
The SIL registration deadline is 1 October 2026, and what falls due that day is a lodged application, not a completed registration. If you were delivering supported independent living before 1 July 2026 and you apply before 1 October, you may keep delivering SIL until the NDIS Commission decides your application. The Rules set no date by which registration must be finished.
New NDIS laws have now passed Parliament, and the NDIS changes for providers arrive in eight waves. The Bill passed on 19 August 2026, the Governor-General signed it on 20 August, and it is now Act No. 66 of 2026. This is law, not a proposal. The first wave starts on 27 August 2026 and brings a seven-year record-keeping duty backed by a civil penalty. The last wave lands in July 2028.
There are nine NDIS Practice Standards modules: the Core Module, seven supplementary modules (1, 2, 2A, 3, 4, 5 and 5A) and the Verification Module (Module 6), holding 70 standards between them. Which apply to you is set by the supports you register to deliver. The counts of four and six you see online are parts of the system: four is the Core Module's four parts, and six is the supplementary list before Module 5A.
How long does it take to become an NDIS provider? There is no single number, because registration is not one clock but three, running in sequence: your preparation, your auditor's queue, and the NDIS Commission's decision. Only the third is officially measured: a median of 36 days for new applications in January to March 2026. End to end, we see 4 to 6 months for verification and 8 to 12 months for certification.
An NDIS verification audit is a desktop audit only: one stage, off-site, reviewing your documentation. It applies to providers who deliver only low-risk, low-complexity supports. A certification audit runs two stages: that same desktop audit, plus an on-site stage with a site inspection and interviews with your staff and participants. Which audit you face is set by the supports you apply to deliver, not by choice.
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