How we know who's who.

Registered and in good standing — automatic, against official registers

Are they an approved NDIS provider, and is anything on record against them? Re-run every time we receive a fresh copy of the NDIS register, and on a schedule in between.

• Their NDIS registration is current. We check the NDIS Commission's public register of approved providers, rather than trusting the copy we first saw — registrations can lapse or be withdrawn.
• Still operating. Either the latest NDIS register says so, or the provider has signed in and told us directly. A provider whose register entry has gone quiet stays listed only while they keep telling us they're still going.
• Nothing recorded against them by the NDIS Commission. The Commission publishes a register of providers it has banned, suspended or otherwise acted against; we check whether this provider appears on it. A clear result means nothing was listed on the day we looked — it is not an assessment of the quality of their care.
• A registered Australian business with an active ABN. The Australian Business Register lists this ABN as active and not cancelled.
• The name shown here matches their business registration. Many businesses trade under a name that differs from the one they registered, so no match here is common and is not a concern on its own.

What our team has checked — done by hand, by a person

Has a real person looked into this provider? Each of these is logged with the date it was done, and most expire after 90 to 365 days depending on how quickly that kind of signal goes stale. Where nothing is listed, we simply haven't got to it.

• We phoned them and spoke to a person. Someone on our team rang the number on the listing and reached a person who identified themselves as the provider.
• They returned a call we asked for. We left a message on their listed contact details and they called us back.
• We've seen their registration, insurance or qualification papers. The provider sent us documents and a team member read them. We don't publish the documents, and we don't assess whether the cover or qualifications suit any particular participant.
• They really do work in the areas listed. We checked that the areas the provider says they cover line up with where they actually have offices and staff.
• A person confirmed their services match their NDIS registration. The automatic check further down only reads the words on a provider's home page; here someone looked properly — across their site, and at what they told us — and confirmed the supports they offer are the ones they're registered for.
• We reviewed the details they sent us before publishing them. Descriptions, logos, opening hours and corrected contact details are read by a team member before they appear. If a provider hasn't sent us anything, there's nothing here to review.

What the provider has confirmed — actions the provider takes themselves

Is the provider keeping their listing up to date? Self-reported, but the only way into our portal is a single-use code emailed to the address the NDIS holds for them — so the act of producing any of these confirms who they are. They count for less than a team check, but they are real signal.

• The email address on this page reaches them. We emailed a single-use code to the address on the NDIS register and someone there returned it. That confirms the address is live and reaches the business — it says nothing about the phone number or the addresses.
• They confirmed they're still operating. The provider pressed "I'm still active" in the portal within the last month.
• They signed in to SupportFinder recently. Within the last month — somebody is watching the listing.
• They told us whether they're taking new participants. Answered per profession, and shown at the top of their page when the answer is yes.

The details shown on the page — automatic

Is the contact and location information right? These test whether the details are usable, not whether anyone answers — that's the phone call above. Where a provider hasn't published a phone number, an email or a website, the checks about it simply don't appear on their page: a question we can't ask isn't a question they failed.

• The phone number is a valid Australian number. We check the shape of the number, not that someone picks up.
• Their email address can receive mail. We check that the mail system behind the address is set up and reachable. We don't send test emails, so we can't tell you the mailbox is being read — that's the provider check above.
• Every address matches a real street location. We look each one up against Australia's national address file. Where there's no exact match we drop the map pin in the middle of the postcode instead, and say so on that location.
• The state on their NDIS registration matches where their offices are. A narrow check of one field against another — the broad question of whether they really work where they say is the team check above. Providers who have recently moved or opened an office elsewhere often show no match for a while.
• Their website is a real, working site. We open the web address and check it loads and has real content — not a "domain for sale" notice, an empty template, or a blank hosting placeholder. Sites go down for ordinary reasons, so no result on a given day doesn't say much on its own.
• Their home page mentions the supports they're registered for. We look for those supports in the words on their home page, and nowhere else. Many good providers describe their work in their own words, or on a different page of their site, so no match here does not mean anything is wrong — it's why a person checks this too.

Checks we run but don't publish

Several checks feed a provider's level and their position in search results without appearing on their page. Some are developer questions a reader can't act on and that plainer checks above already cover: whether the site is served securely, the technical shape of the email address, and whether the website responded at all (which is part of "their website is a real, working site").

Two more are held back because they'd mislead. We sweep the whole directory for records that look like the same business listed twice — that's a prompt for our team to go and look, not a finding about a provider, so publishing it would insinuate something we haven't established. And two checks confirm things that are true of every listing by construction: that it has an ABN, and that it has at least one address. Nothing can fail them, so counting them as confirmations would pad every provider's score with a guarantee. We keep running both as safety nets — if either ever failed, it would mean a record reached the site through a route that skipped our checks, and it wouldn't be shown at all.