Verification or certification, which audit your classes put you in

Providers talk about "the audit" as if it were one thing. It is two, and which one you get is decided before anyone has read a policy: by the list of classes you tick when you register.

Section 20 of the Rules holds a table. Thirty-nine rows, one per class of support, from accommodation and tenancy assistance at item 1 to assistance with supported independent living at item 38, with item 31A inserted this year for specialist disability accommodation delivered alongside other supports. Every row names an assessment method. Some say verification. Some say certification. The rest of your registration follows from which rows you chose.

The rule that decides it

Verification is the lighter path. It applies to lower-risk classes: household tasks, assistive equipment, home modifications, interpreting, therapeutic supports, the equipment and product classes, most of the capital supports. In practice it is a desktop review of a fixed set of documents, and auditor guidebooks describe it as a single auditor working from your evidence rather than a site visit.

Certification applies to the classes where the provider is in the person's life: daily personal activities, high intensity supports, behaviour support, early childhood, support coordination, group and centre-based activities, supported independent living, specialist disability accommodation. It is two stages, a document review and then a site visit with interviews of workers and participants, against the Core Module and whichever module the class carries.

Here is the part that catches people. Section 23 says that if a standard must be assessed by verification, that requirement is met when it is assessed by certification. Read the other way, it means a single certification class in your list lifts your whole registration onto the certification pathway. You do not get a verification audit for some classes and a certification audit for others. You get certification, and it covers everything.

So the question is not "how many of my classes are certification classes". It is "is any of them".

The declaration that overrides the table

There is one more row that is not a class at all. If your organisation uses, or is likely to use, a regulated restrictive practice, the Rules bring in Module 2A, implementing behaviour support plans, and require it to be assessed by certification, whatever classes you hold.

That is a yes or no question about your practice, not about your service list. A provider holding only verification classes who answers yes to it is on the certification pathway. The product asks it as a declaration beneath the class table, and the registration flow on this site asks it the same way, because it is the one answer that can change the pathway on its own.

The modules follow the classes

Each class in the table also names the practice standards it binds you to. Wherever the table says Schedule 1, the Core Module applies. Then the class adds its own module:

1. High intensity daily personal activities (item 4) brings in Module 1, the high intensity skills descriptors.
2. Specialist positive behaviour support (item 10) brings in Module 2.
3. Early intervention supports for early childhood (item 18) brings in Module 3.
4. Specialised support coordination (item 32) brings in Module 4.
5. Specialist disability accommodation (items 31 and 31A) brings in Module 5.
6. Assistance with supported independent living (item 38) brings in Module 5A, which commenced on 1 July 2026.
7. Every verification class is assessed against Module 6, the verification module, on its own.

The modules are additive. Tick items 4, 38 and 1 together, as a provider delivering high intensity supports in a supported independent living setting might, and you are bound by the Core Module, Module 1, Module 5A and Module 6, on the certification pathway. That is what your audit plan will list, and it is what your document set has to answer.

Two edges worth knowing

Early childhood, for sole traders and partnerships. Section 20 narrows the assessment for an individual or partnership providing early childhood supports: the Core Module applies only at clause 7, alongside Module 3, rather than the whole Core Module. Companies get the full module.

Government providers. Section 22 requires a government provider to meet the full Core Module by certification for any class it holds, verification classes included.

What to do with this

Before you touch a policy, settle the list. Write down every class you deliver today and every class you intend to deliver in the registration period, because adding a certification class later means a variation and a further audit. Answer the restrictive-practices question honestly, since an auditor will find the answer in your incident register regardless. Then read your pathway and your modules off the table, and build the document set to that scope and nothing wider.

The registration flow on this site reads the same table the software does, ticks the same rows, and tells you the pathway and the modules as you go. It is the first step of the product, and it is free to use.

The uncomfortable version

If you have been preparing for a verification audit and one of your classes is a certification class, you have been preparing for the wrong audit. Find out today, from the table, not from a consultant's summary of it.

Everything above is drawn from the Provider Registration and Practice Standards Rules 2018, compilation 6, in force 1 July 2026. Where it describes how auditors run a verification audit in practice, it rests on the auditors' own published guidebooks and says so.