Complaints & feedback

A complaint is not an incident. Teiro keeps them apart.

A complaints and feedback register that sits beside incident reporting rather than inside it. Log a complaint from any channel, including anonymously, against an acknowledgement timeframe your organisation sets, and close it with an outcome, a record of what was done, and proof that the people owed an answer got one.

The person a complaint is about is kept out of deciding it. The register exports to CSV when an assessor asks for it.

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A complaint is its own record, not a stretched incident

Complaints are a separate record type from incident reports, with their own fields, workflow, and register. The create screen says so plainly: if this involved harm, or could have, use Report Incident instead. A carer running ten minutes late over and over will never meet an incident threshold, and it is still a complaint.

Your acknowledgement timeframe, not a number we invented

Neither the NDIS nor the aged care rules publish a figure for how quickly a complaint must be acknowledged. So Teiro does not pretend one exists. An admin sets the number of business days your organisation commits to, and Teiro counts in business days, skipping weekends and your state's public holidays.

Two people to inform, tracked separately

The person who complains is often not the person the care is for. A daughter rings about her mother's carer. Teiro records whether the complainant was informed of the outcome and whether the affected client was, as two independent questions with their own dates, because they are two obligations.

The person a complaint is about cannot touch it

Name a worker as the subject of a complaint and they are excluded from reading it, being assigned it, or closing it. That exclusion holds for admins too, so the one person who must not decide the matter cannot quietly decide it in a small team.

How it works

Log it, from whatever channel it arrived on

A complaint starts as a record with a summary, the time received, the channel, what it concerns, and a description. Received time defaults to now and cannot be set in the future. Complaints are visible to coordinators and admins only, never to carers.

Teiro works out when acknowledgement is due

On save, Teiro sets an acknowledgement due date from your organisation's business-day setting, skipping weekends and the public holidays for the state you nominate. If the complaint contains an allegation about a worker, a separate, usually shorter, setting applies.

Acknowledge it, or record why you cannot

Moving to Acknowledged requires the date and the person who did it, so the status cannot run ahead of the fact. Where there is nobody to acknowledge to, a waiver reason records that honestly and takes the record out of the overdue count rather than forcing someone to invent an acknowledgement.

Work it, with the subject of the complaint kept out of it

Assign it to someone to handle. Notes carry the running account of what was done, by whom, when. If a worker is named as the subject, they cannot read, be assigned, or close the record. A worker merely mentioned while describing a service problem is tracked as a different thing from an allegation about that worker's conduct.

Closing is gated on the record being finished

A complaint cannot move to Closed without a resolution status, a written resolution, and an answer to whether the complainant was informed. Say yes and the date becomes required. Where there is an allegation, a finding is required too, and closing needs elevated permission. The close date is stamped automatically.

Reopening does not erase the first attempt

A closed complaint can be reopened with a reason. The previous cycle's outcome, finding, actions, and dates are preserved into a closure history and then cleared, so a second investigation cannot coast on the first one's answers and cannot quietly overwrite them either. Whether the original acknowledgement was on time is frozen and never recalculated.

What the register holds

Modelled the same way as incident reports, so it inherits the same permissions, notes, documents, and audit log rather than being a one-off screen bolted on beside them.

Who complained, including when nobody will say

A complainant type covering the client, a family member, a guardian or substitute decision-maker, an advocate, a support coordinator, a plan manager, another provider, a staff member, a member of the public, or anonymous. Choosing anonymous relaxes the name requirement rather than blocking the record, because an anonymous complaint still has to be accepted and still has to be dealt with.

When and how it arrived, and what it is about

The date and time received, the channel it came in by (phone, email, in person, letter, other), whether it concerns a client, a worker, a service, or the organisation, and a description of what happened. The received time can be corrected backwards if a complaint is logged late, but only with elevated permission, and the change is recorded.

Acknowledgement, and whether the clock applies at all

Who acknowledged it and when, against a due date Teiro calculates from your own business-day setting. Some complaints cannot be acknowledged to anyone, so a waiver reason (anonymous with no contactable complainant, complainant declined, acknowledged at the point of receipt) clears the due date instead of leaving a record permanently and dishonestly overdue.

Outcome, actions, and a finding only where one is warranted

A resolution status that includes the honest options (resolved but the complainant is not satisfied, unable to contact, withdrawn, referred to an external body), the actions taken from a defined list, and a written resolution. A formal finding is only asked for when the complaint contains an allegation about someone's conduct, because that is a more consequential statement than an ordinary resolution.

Whether you told them they can go over your head

A complainant can take a complaint to the Commissioner, and they are supposed to be told that and supported to do it. Teiro records whether that was offered and when, so it is a field an assessor can look at rather than a conversation nobody wrote down.

Every change, with who and when

Complaint records are never hard-deleted, and every field change is written to the audit log with the person who made it, the time, and the value before and after. Notes on the complaint are the dated, authored trail of what was actually done, each one attributable and immutable.

What a defensible complaints process actually requires

Worth getting right independently of any software. Here is what the two frameworks expect in practice, without inventing a number neither of them has published.

A complaints system is required, and it is asked about

Providers operate under the NDIS (Complaints Management and Resolution) Rules 2018 or the Aged Care Rules 2025, and both require a complaints management system rather than just a policy document. Assessors generally want to walk a sample of real complaints end to end, not read your procedure.

No framework publishes an acknowledgement deadline

The NDIS rules say a complaint must be acknowledged, assessed, and resolved in a fair, efficient, and timely manner. The aged care rules use equivalent wording. Neither gives a number. Figures you may have seen quoted are either better-practice guidance, or an obligation that sits on the Commissioner rather than on you. That is why Teiro asks you to set your own and then holds you to it.

Anonymous complaints have to be accepted

A complaints process that cannot record a complaint without a name does not meet the requirement. It also breaks any acknowledgement clock, because there is nobody to acknowledge to. Both halves of that need handling, not just the first.

The complainant and the affected person are both owed an outcome

Where they are different people, informing one is not informing the other. A register with a single complainant field cannot evidence that both were told, which is why Teiro keeps the two as separate fields with separate dates.

The person complained about is owed procedural fairness

They should not simply be handed the record, and whoever decides the matter must be free of bias. In a small provider, the coordinator a complaint would normally route to is sometimes the person it is about. Teiro excludes them automatically and visibly rather than relying on someone to remember.

An incident register answers a different question

Incident reporting captures harm, or the risk of it, and feeds mandatory notification obligations to the NDIS Commission or the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. A complaint is dissatisfaction with care, communication, or service, and it does not need to involve harm at all. Filing one as the other to make it fit somewhere is exactly the conflation assessors flag.

This page describes how Teiro records a complaint. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace your own complaints policy. Confirm your obligations and your timeframes against current NDIS Commission or Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission guidance.

What Teiro does not do here

Teiro does not chase you. There are no reminders, alerts, or digests when an acknowledgement deadline passes, and no overdue badge on the complaint itself. Overdue complaints are found by opening the Complaints Register report and switching on the overdue filter, which gives you the count and the list. If you need a standing habit, put that report in someone’s weekly routine rather than relying on a notification that does not exist.

There is no self-service portal for complainants to lodge or follow a complaint themselves; someone in your organisation records it. Teiro tracks whether the complainant was told they can escalate to the Commissioner, but it does not track the external process after that. The register export is CSV, not a formatted PDF.

Procedural fairness to the person a complaint is about stays a human process governed by your own policy and your enterprise agreement. Teiro keeps them out of reading, assigning, and closing the record, and keeps the distinction between being mentioned and being accused, but it does not notify them, write the summary they receive, or run the investigation.

Frequently asked questions

Does Teiro have a complaints register?

Yes. Complaints are a first-class record type, separate from incident reports, with their own fields, a four-stage workflow (received, acknowledged, actioned, closed), an acknowledgement timeframe your organisation sets, and a Complaints Register report that filters by status or overdue and exports to CSV. Coordinators and admins can see complaints; carers cannot.

What is the difference between a complaint and an incident?

An incident is a real or potential harm event, the kind of thing that can trigger a mandatory notification to the NDIS Commission or the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. A complaint is dissatisfaction with care, communication, or service, and it does not need to involve harm at all. A daughter ringing to say her mum’s carer is always ten minutes late is not an incident. It is a complaint, and it needs its own record. Teiro keeps them as two separate record types, and the create screen points you at incident reporting if harm was involved or could have been.

How many days do I have to acknowledge a complaint?

There is no prescribed figure. The NDIS (Complaints Management and Resolution) Rules 2018 require a complaint to be acknowledged, assessed, and resolved in a fair, efficient, and timely manner, and the Aged Care Rules 2025 use equivalent wording. Neither names a number of days. Figures in circulation are either better-practice guidance or an obligation that sits on the Commissioner rather than on the provider. In Teiro, an admin sets the number of business days your organisation commits to, and Teiro calculates each complaint’s due date from that, skipping weekends and the public holidays of the state you nominate. A shorter timeframe can be set for complaints containing an allegation about a worker. Confirm your own policy against current NDIS Commission or ACQSC guidance.

Can Teiro record an anonymous complaint?

Yes. Anonymous is one of the complainant types, and choosing it relaxes the requirement for a name rather than blocking the record. Because there is nobody to acknowledge the complaint to, a waiver reason clears the acknowledgement due date so the complaint does not sit permanently overdue, and the acknowledgement fields stop being required to move it forward. The complaint still has to be actioned and closed like any other.

Can the worker a complaint is about see it?

No. Carers cannot see complaints at all, and a worker named as the subject of one is excluded from reading it, being assigned it, or closing it, including when that person is an admin. Teiro also distinguishes a worker being mentioned while someone describes a service problem from an actual allegation about that worker’s conduct. Notifying the person and giving them a fair hearing remains a human process governed by your own policy. Teiro keeps the decision out of their hands; it does not run the process for you.

Can I hand the complaints register to an auditor?

Yes. The Complaints Register report covers a date range and can be filtered by status, by what the complaint concerns, or to overdue complaints only, with counts of open and overdue at the top. It exports to CSV with your filters applied, including the acknowledgement date, resolution status, finding, close date, how long each complaint was open, whether the complainant and the affected client were informed, and whether Commissioner escalation was offered. The export is CSV, not PDF.

See the complaints register live

We'll log a complaint, set an acknowledgement timeframe, close it with an outcome, and pull the register out as the CSV an assessor would ask for.