Centrelink rates

Which figures a calculation uses

Every calculation reads a set of Centrelink payment rates and combines them with each participant’s own payment profile to work out how much they can be charged. Four payments feed every participant’s figures: the Disability Support Pension, Pension Supplement, Energy Supplement and Rent Assistance. A participant under 21 draws on four more: Youth Disability Supplement, Pharmaceutical Allowance, Utilities Allowance and Telephone Allowance. How these combine into the caps a charge must fit inside is explained in Centrelink benchmarks, and the full step-by-step of a calculation is in how a calculation works.

You never maintain these rates

SILWise holds one central table of Centrelink rates and applies it to every provider’s calculations. There is no rate sheet for you to enter, check or update. When Centrelink changes a rate, SILWise publishes a new version, and every calculation run from that point picks it up on its own.

Rates change on a fixed schedule

Centrelink indexes the Disability Support Pension, Pension Supplement, Energy Supplement and Rent Assistance twice a year, on 20 March and 20 September. The under-21 payments move on a separate date, 1 January, and Telephone Allowance only changes in the September round.

A calculation’s Calc date decides which published rate set applies: SILWise uses whichever rates were in force on or before that date. SILWise only publishes a new rate set on 20 March or 20 September, and each set carries whatever under-21 amounts were current by that publish date. So a calculation dated shortly after 1 January but before the next published set still uses the older under-21 figures. That is expected, not an error.

A saved scenario keeps its original figures

This is the most common worry, so it is worth stating plainly: once you save a calculation as a scenario, it keeps the exact rates it used at the time, for good. A later indexation round does not reach back and change anything about a scenario you have already saved. Open it in a year and the figures, rates and result are exactly as they were on the day you saved it.

Getting today’s rates into an old calculation

A saved scenario cannot be edited, so there is no way to refresh its rates in place. Instead, use Clone as draft to turn it into a fresh, editable draft. The clone starts out carrying the original’s calculation date, so before you save it, change Calc date to today (or to whichever date you need) and let the page recalculate. Saving that draft locks in the rates that applied on the date you chose, as a new scenario. The original is untouched, so you end up with two records: the old one exactly as it was, and a new one on the rates you need. See clone a scenario for the full steps.