Coordinator or plan manager?
Two different jobs. Here’s who does what.

Support coordination and plan management are two different funded NDIS supports. A support coordinator helps you find, connect with and manage your supports; a plan manager handles the money — paying provider invoices and tracking your budget.

The names sound similar, so the two roles get mixed up constantly. It doesn’t help that “plan management” is also one of three ways a plan’s funding can be handled — self-managed, plan-managed, or agency-managed, where the NDIA pays providers directly. This guide untangles it in plain English — integrity, built in.

What does a plan manager do?

A plan manager looks after the financial side of your plan. They receive invoices from your providers, check them, pay them, claim the money back through the NDIS portal, and send you a monthly statement showing exactly where your funding is up to. Because the plan manager does the claiming, you can use unregistered providers as well as registered ones — something an agency-managed plan doesn’t allow — while staying completely hands-off the paperwork. Think of them as a bookkeeper for your plan: they don’t choose your supports, and they don’t fix a support that isn’t working. To be clear: Tegrity does not provide plan management. We stay deliberately out of the money-handling side, working alongside your plan manager instead — and if you don’t have one yet, we can help you find one.

What does a support coordinator do?

A support coordinator helps you turn the funding in your plan into supports that actually happen. They get to know your goals, find providers who fit, make the introductions, set up service agreements, and keep an eye on whether they’re working. When something goes wrong — a provider keeps cancelling, a worker isn’t the right match, your needs change — your coordinator is the person who sorts it out. They also help you think strategically about how to use your budgets, and gather the evidence for your plan review so the next plan reflects your real life. Coordination comes in different intensities depending on your situation — see our guide to support coordination levels. For the full picture of the role, read what a support coordinator actually does, or start at our support coordination page.

What does your LAC (Local Area Coordinator) do?

A Local Area Coordinator, or LAC, works for a partner organisation contracted by the NDIA — not for you, and not for a provider. LACs help people apply for the NDIS, understand what their plan means once it arrives, and do light-touch connection work — pointing you toward community and mainstream services — for people who don’t have funded support coordination in their plan. Two things make an LAC different from a support coordinator. First, an LAC is not a funded support inside your plan: their help is general, spread across many people, not shaped around ongoing work with you. Second, you don’t choose your LAC — they’re assigned by area — whereas you choose your support coordinator and can change them if the fit isn’t right. For complex situations, that choice and continuity is what makes funded coordination worth asking for.

Can you have both support coordination and plan management?

Yes — and many participants do. The two supports are funded from different parts of your plan, so having one doesn’t eat into the other. Plan management has its own dedicated budget category, added alongside your other supports; support coordination sits within your Capacity Building budget. One pays the invoices, the other builds and manages the supports — the NDIS treats them as separate items doing separate jobs. They’re also funded differently. Per NDIA guidance, plan management is generally included in your plan if you ask for it at your planning meeting, while support coordination is funded case-by-case based on your circumstances — the NDIA’s own page on support coordinators and plan managers sets this out. The takeaway: if you want both, ask for both, and explain why coordination matters for your situation.

Who do I contact for what?

Once both roles are in place, the question is simply who to ring. Here are the most common situations.

Where Tegrity fits

Tegrity Services is an Aboriginal-owned, registered NDIS provider in Sydney. We do two things: support work and support coordination. We don’t provide plan management, therapy, nursing or SIL/SDA housing — when you need those, we refer you to people who do them well. If a culturally safe coordinator matters to you or your family, our Aboriginal support coordination page explains how we work.

Not sure whether your plan includes coordination, or should? Ask us — if a plan manager is what you need, we’ll point you to a good one.