The Audit-Readiness Guarantee
If our work doesn’t stand up at audit, you don’t pay for it.
Complete your engagement, meet the conditions below, and if your certification audit returns a major non-conformity against work that was in our scope, we fix it at our cost — and if it still doesn’t close, we refund every dollar of our fee.
Applies to fixed-scope registration, audit-preparation and audit-recovery engagements.
Read this first
This is a promise about our work, not about your audit.
No honest consultant can guarantee an audit outcome. The audit is conducted independently by a JAS-ANZ-accredited approved quality auditor that you choose and engage yourself, and the result reflects what your organisation actually does. We have no influence over it, and we would not want any — our Statement of Impartiality puts that beyond doubt.
What we can put our money behind is the quality of what we build. So we do. If the auditor finds a major non-conformity against something that was ours to get right, we carry that — first by fixing it at our cost, and if it still doesn’t close, by giving you your fee back.
The one-sentence version:do the things we ask of you, and a major non-conformity against our work costs you nothing — we remediate it free, and refund 100% of our professional fees if it isn’t closed inside the auditor’s corrective-action window.
Qualifying conditions
What we need from you for it to apply.
Eight conditions, all of them things a client acting in good faith does anyway. They are here in plain sight rather than in small print because a guarantee you have to decode is not a guarantee.
- 01
A signed engagement, with fees paid to schedule
The guarantee attaches to a signed engagement letter with a defined scope. Invoices need to be current at the time of the audit — we are not asking for early payment, only that nothing is overdue.
- 02
Evidence and information back within five business days
We work from what your operation actually does, so we ask for documents, rosters, records and answers. The agreed turnaround is five business days, or whatever longer period we set in the engagement plan. Ask for more time and you will get it — silence is the only thing that breaks this.
- 03
Attendance at the scheduled sessions
Kick-off, the checkpoint reviews, the pre-audit readiness review and the handover session. Life happens: miss one and we reschedule. What ends the guarantee is a session missed and not rescheduled within ten business days.
- 04
Your side of the gap register closed out
Every item on the gap register carries an owner. Some are ours to build; some are yours to do, because only you can do them — appoint a person, run a drill, hold a meeting, sign a record. Yours need to be closed before the pre-audit readiness review.
- 05
No material change of scope or delivery model mid-engagement
A new service type, a new site, a new registration group, a change of legal entity or an acquisition changes what an audit will look at. Tell us and we will re-scope — a signed variation re-attaches the guarantee to the new scope. What is not covered is a change we were never told about.
- 06
An approved quality auditor, chosen by you
The audit has to be conducted by a JAS-ANZ-accredited approved quality auditor that you select and engage directly, and booked within six months of handover — or on the earliest date that auditor offers, if their calendar runs longer than that, on their written confirmation. Auditor availability is not something you control and we will not hold it against you. We do not refer, rank or recommend auditors, and we take no fee from one — that choice is yours alone.
- 07
The system presented as it was delivered
If you rewrite the deliverables after handover without telling us, we cannot stand behind what was presented. Change whatever you like — just bring us in, because a document that no longer matches practice is the most common finding there is.
- 08
The auditor's written findings shared with us
A claim runs on the auditor's own words — the non-conformity report or findings letter, as issued. We do not ask you to characterise it for us.
The boundary
What’s covered, and what isn’t.
Covered
- The professional fees you paid Compliance Care for the engagement named in your engagement letter, GST included.
- Remediation work to close a covered finding — drafting, re-mapping evidence, corrective-action planning and re-presentation support — at no additional charge.
- Findings against a Practice Standard indicator that was inside the agreed scope of our engagement and traceable to a deliverable we produced or a system we designed.
Not covered
- Auditor and Commission fees
- You engage and pay the approved quality auditor directly. We never see that money, never set it, and could not refund it if we wanted to. The same goes for NDIS Commission fees and any re-audit fee the auditor charges. This boundary is not negotiable and we would rather you knew it now than at claim time.
- Minor non-conformities and opportunities for improvement
- Minor findings are a normal, healthy audit outcome — most certification audits produce some. Promising you a clean sheet would be a promise about the audit itself, which no honest consultant can make. The guarantee triggers on a major non-conformity.
- Anything outside the agreed scope
- If the engagement covered your core module documentation and the finding lands on a clinical practice we were never engaged on, that is outside it. The scope is written down in your engagement letter before any work starts, precisely so this is never a surprise.
- Practice that has drifted from the documented system
- We build the system; your team runs it. A finding that arises because what happens on shift stopped matching what the procedure says is a finding about operations, not about our work.
- Information we were not given, or that was inaccurate
- We can only build against what we are shown. An undisclosed site, an unreported incident or a worker record that was not what it appeared to be will surface at audit, and that is not something a consultant can insure you against.
- The registration decision itself
- The auditor reports; the NDIS Commission decides. The Commission's decision, its timing and any condition it imposes are matters for the Commission, and are outside anyone's guarantee.
- Your losses beyond our fee
- Lost revenue, lost participants, delay costs and third-party costs are not covered. The guarantee returns our fee; it is not an insurance policy over your business. Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law are unaffected — see below.
- Monthly retainers and Larenta subscriptions
- The guarantee is built for fixed-scope engagements with a defined deliverable and a defined end. Ongoing retainers and platform subscriptions are cancellable instead, on the terms in the agreement covering them.
How to claim
The actual process, with the clock on us.
A guarantee is only as good as the process behind it. Here is ours, with the timeframes we hold ourselves to.
- 01
Email us within 30 days
Send the claim to info@compliancecare.com.au with the subject line “Guarantee claim”, within 30 days of receiving the auditor's written findings and in any case within 18 months of handover.
- 02
Send four things
Your legal entity name and ABN; the engagement letter reference; the auditor's non-conformity report or findings letter as issued; and the corrective-action window the auditor has given you.
- 03
We acknowledge in two business days, decide in ten
We confirm receipt within two business days and give you a written decision within ten business days — accepted, or declined with the specific reason and the clause it turns on. No decision by silence.
- 04
We fix it, at our cost
On an accepted claim we produce a remediation plan within ten business days and do the work at no charge, inside the corrective-action window the auditor has set.
- 05
If it does not close, you get your fee back
If the finding is not closed within that window, we refund 100% of the professional fees you paid us for the engagement — GST included, so the figure that leaves our account is the figure that left yours — within 14 days, to the account the fees were paid from.
- 06
If we disagree
Your engagement letter has a dispute pathway: good-faith discussion within fifteen business days, then mediation administered by the Resolution Institute, costs shared. Your Australian Consumer Law rights sit above all of it and are not affected.
Claims and questions go to info@compliancecare.com.au, the only mailbox we operate. One claim per engagement. Refunds are of professional fees paid to Compliance Care, GST included, and exclude any pre-approved third-party costs we passed through at cost.
Your statutory rights
This sits alongside the Australian Consumer Law — it doesn’t replace it.
You have rights under the Australian Consumer Law that we cannot exclude, restrict or modify, and nothing on this page attempts to. Our services come with guarantees under that law that cannot be excluded.
This guarantee is in addition to those rights. If the Australian Consumer Law gives you a better remedy than this page does in a given situation, the law applies and we will honour it. Claiming under this guarantee does not waive anything, and you do not have to use it before exercising a statutory right.
The full contractual position is in your engagement letter (CC-LEGAL-ENG-001) and, for the Larenta platform, in our Terms of Service. Where this page and your signed engagement letter differ, the engagement letter governs — so read it, and ask us about anything in it that doesn’t match what you read here.
Questions
The ones worth asking.
- Are you guaranteeing we will pass the audit?
- No — and treat anyone who does with caution. The audit is conducted independently by an approved quality auditor you choose yourself, and the result reflects your organisation's actual practice. This is a guarantee about our work, not a prediction about your audit: if what we delivered does not stand up, we fix it, and if it still does not close, you do not pay for it.
- Why is this conditional at all? Competitors say 100% money back, full stop.
- Because an unconditional promise is one we would have to argue our way out of, and that is worse for you than a clear one. Every condition on this page is something a client acting in good faith does naturally — answer our questions, turn up to the sessions, do your own items, tell us if the business changes. None of them are traps, and we would rather be held to a promise we can keep than advertise one we cannot.
- What counts as a major non-conformity?
- The approved quality auditor decides that, not us — it is their term and their judgment, recorded in their findings. We take the auditor's classification as issued and do not argue it.
- Do you cover the cost of a re-audit?
- No. You engage and pay the auditor directly, and the auditor sets their own fees, including for any re-audit or corrective-action verification. We have no control over that relationship and refunding it is not in our gift. What we cover is our own fee, and the remediation work to close the finding.
- Is the refund inclusive of GST?
- Yes. We refund what you actually paid us, GST included — the amount that leaves our account is the amount that left yours. Pre-approved third-party expenses we passed through at cost, and any Larenta subscription, are separate and are not part of the engagement fee.
- What if the auditor cannot fit us in within six months?
- Then you book the earliest date they offer and send us their written confirmation, and the guarantee holds. Auditor capacity is tight in the run-up to the registration deadline and none of that is within your control. The six-month condition exists so the guarantee is not run against evidence that has gone stale, not to penalise you for a queue.
- What if I miss a session or run late on an evidence request?
- Tell us and we will reschedule or extend — that is normal project life and it does not end the guarantee. The condition exists for the engagement that goes quiet, where we cannot build against evidence we never receive.
- Does this replace my rights under Australian Consumer Law?
- No, and it could not lawfully try to. This guarantee is in addition to the consumer guarantees you have under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing on this page excludes, restricts or modifies any right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded, and where the law gives you a better remedy than this guarantee, the law applies.
See also: how an engagement actually runs, and book a discovery call to scope yours.
A guarantee is easy to write. Ask us to explain it.
Book a no-obligation discovery call and we'll walk you through the conditions line by line before you commit to anything.
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