How Much to Charge Clients on Mable: A Working Answer

This article first appeared on Invoala.

On Mable, you set your own hourly rate — so the honest answer to "how much should I charge?" is: whatever covers your costs, your unpaid time and your tax, plus a margin. Most independent support workers land somewhere between roughly $45 and $70 per hour for standard weekday daytime support, with higher rates for evenings, weekends, public holidays, complex care or specialist skills. That range is a starting point, not a rule — the right number depends on your region, your experience, what the client's funding can cover, and what the platform and any insurance or registration costs take out of the advertised figure.

Start from your costs, not from other people's ads

The mistake most new workers make is copying the highest rate they see on the platform. That number belongs to somebody else's situation. Work backwards instead:

1. Set a real income target. Decide what you need to earn per working hour after tax. If you need $40 net, and your marginal tax rate is around 30%, you need roughly $57 gross — check your own rate with the tax office, since it depends on your total income and country.
2. Add your non-billable time. A one-hour shift is rarely one hour of work. Travel, prep notes, progress reports, messages and invoicing often add 15–30 minutes. If you bill $55 for an hour but spend 1.4 hours on it, your effective rate is about $39.
3. Add platform and business costs. Mable charges a service fee to the worker (the exact percentage and how it's applied is set in Mable's current fee schedule — check it in the app or their help pages, as it can change). Then add public liability and any required checks, phone data, a car, and accounting.
4. Add a margin for quiet weeks. Self-employed work has gaps: holiday periods, cancellations, clients between plans. A 10–20% buffer is common.

Photo by Recha Oktaviani on Unsplash

What actually moves your number up or down

Two people doing "the same job" on Mable can legitimately quote $40 apart. The variables that matter most:

• Time of day and day of week. Evening, overnight, weekend and public holiday work typically commands a premium. Many workers apply a multiplier rather than a flat higher rate.
• Complexity and skill. Behaviour support experience, manual handling, PEG feeding, mental health experience or a relevant qualification justify more than general companionship support.
• Whether you supply a vehicle. If you drive the client to appointments, you carry fuel, insurance and wear — bill for it, either inside the rate or as a separate agreed charge.
• Travel time between clients. Some clients are fine paying for travel; others aren't. Decide your policy before you quote, and state it clearly.
• The client's funding type. If a client is self-funded, private-paying or plan-managed, the budget and the rules around what can be charged differ. If they're NDIS-funded, what you can charge generally depends on the current price limits for the relevant support category, so verify the latest guidance from the official NDIS pricing arrangements rather than relying on a blog.

Also understand the platform's cancellation policy. A client cancelling two hours before you were due to arrive is lost income; knowing whether you can charge a short-notice cancellation fee — and whether Mable's terms allow it — changes how you price your risk.

Example: what a $58 rate actually pays you

Say you list $58/hour and work a 3-hour weekday shift.

• Listed total: 3 × $58 = $174
• Travel and prep (unpaid): 45 minutes
• Platform service fee: assume the worker-side fee works out to around 10% for illustration → −$17.40, leaving $156.60
• Fuel and vehicle wear: −$9
• Effective time spent: 3.75 hours

$156.60 ÷ 3.75 = $41.76 per hour actually earned, before income tax and before public liability insurance. If your insurance is $500/year and you work 800 billable hours, that's another $0.63/hour.

Now say you invoice a private client for $1,200 of support in a month and you're registered to charge 10% sales tax or GST: $1,200 + $120 = $1,320 due, of which you remit $120 to the tax authority. If you'd quoted $1,200 as "all in," you'd be absorbing that $120 yourself.

The point of the exercise: quote from the net number you need, not the gross number that sounds good. Run it for your own fees, your own travel and your own tax bracket — the arithmetic above is illustration only.

Quoting, agreeing and getting paid

Once you have a rate, put it in writing before the first shift. A short, plain summary works: hourly rate, what counts as billable time, travel policy, cancellation terms, and how and when you'll invoice. Clients appreciate it, and it prevents the awkward conversation three months in.

If you're starting with a new client, sending a written quote or estimate first is standard practice — there's a free estimate generator for quotes and estimates you can use for that. Then, when work is done, you need a clean record of hours and a proper invoice. For a walkthrough of what an invoice needs to contain, see this step-by-step guide to creating an invoice.

How Invoala helps

Setting a rate is only half the job — the other half is getting paid at that rate, on time, with paperwork that stands up if a client queries it.

1. Create the invoice in a form. Open the free invoice generator, fill in your details, the client's details, your hours, your rate and any travel or cancellation charges, and the dates. No sign-up required.
2. Apply any tax or adjustment. Add sales tax or GST as a line if you're registered to charge it, so the client sees the gross figure you expect to be paid.
3. Download an A4-accurate PDF. The output is a properly laid-out A4 document with no watermark, which you can email directly to a self-funded client or attach to a plan manager's portal upload.
4. Track what's outstanding. If you have several clients paying on different cycles, tracking which invoices are paid, due or overdue stops you losing track of a late payer — a real risk when you're juggling shifts and travel.
5. Follow up automatically. Chasing money is the least enjoyable part of self-employment. Automated follow-ups for unpaid invoices do the nudging for you.

If you prefer to start from a pre-built layout, there are free downloadable invoice templates you can adapt to your own rate and travel terms.

One last pricing habit worth building: review your rate every six months. Check your insurance renewal, your actual hours, your fuel costs and what your last three months really paid you. If your effective hourly rate has dropped, raise your listed rate or tighten your travel policy. Most workers underprice in their first year and never revisit it.

None of the numbers here are promises — every rate depends on your country's tax rules, the platform's current fee schedule and the funding rules that apply to your specific client. Check the official sources for those, then set your own number with the arithmetic above.

---

Originally published at How Much to Charge Clients on Mable: A Working Answer. More guides at Invoala.