How It Works
We ask you (a lot of) questions first, about how your service actually runs, and build your documents from what you tell us.
Our tools take longer than buying a generic template pack, but that's the point. The time you spend answering, and the thought you put in, are where the value lies.
Generic vs Paperbark
Most customised packs work the same way, you tick which services you deliver, the same standard procedure everyone else gets drops into your pack, and you spend the next few days find-and-replacing your business name and deleting the parts that don't apply.
As an example, let's look at Incident management. Here's what you can expect from a generic template pack, and what you get from Paperbark.
A generic template pack asks
1 question
Do you need an incident management procedure?
Everyone who ticks yes gets the same procedure. It will help you in your audit, but probably doesn't truly describe your organisation.
Our Certification Toolkit asks
21 questions
(plus additional conditional logic) for this one procedure
- What is the title of the person responsible for managing the incident management system and reporting to the NDIS Commission?
- How do you ensure every worker (including contractors) understands the incident management processes?
- How do you provide information to participants about the incident management system?
- In addition to participants, who else do you provide information about incident management procedures to?
- When an incident occurs, what are the immediate next steps (where relevant to the situation) to ensure the safety of those involved?
- After the situation has been secured as necessary, what are the next steps?
- Who are workers required to report incidents to?
- For non-reportable incidents, how soon must workers report an incident?
- How soon must an Incident Report form be completed?
- Where are after-hours incidents reported?
- And more. Every procedure in every toolkit works this way.
Our questions are asking you to decide who is accountable, how fast, to whom, and how staff can respond to the unexpected.
Some of these questions you might not have asked yourself yet, and might need you to think through the answer. This is the tool working! A question you can't answer might represent a gap in your service, and finding it at your own desk is a lot better than finding it with an auditor sitting across from you.
What it looks like
This is the real first page of the Incident Management tool, exactly as it appears when you work through it. The guidance sits with the questions, your progress saves as you go, and conditional logic means you only see the questions that apply to you.
Incident Management
Participant and Staff Awareness
What is the title of the person responsible for managing the incident management system and reporting to the NDIS Commission?
Service Delivery Manager
e.g., Director, Compliance Manager
How do you ensure every worker (including contractors) understands the incident management processes?
- Mandatory training prior to first shift (selected)
- Annual refresher training (selected)
- Reviewing incident procedures in staff meetings
- Staff Handbook (selected)
- Other
How do you provide information to participants about the incident management system?
- Incident Management information sheet (selected)
- Participant welcome pack (selected)
- Verbally explaining the process
- Easy Read summary (selected)
- Other (selected)
Please specify other methods
Talked through at the participant's intake meeting
Shown with sample answers filled in, for a provider with staff.
Why are the questions so detailed?
The questions are detailed because every answer is a decision about how your service runs, and those decisions are yours to make. When an auditor asks how your incident system works, you'll be able to answer, because you're the one who put it together.
The documents you download are the record of your thinking, but the thinking is what you're actually taking away.
"So I'm the one doing the work?"
Yep! The Certification Toolkit will take you about 8 hours, and you can spread it over weeks, and we won't lie and say it will take you ten minutes.
Your alternative, though, is a generic pack that also takes days. You need to work through every page, find-and-replace, delete clauses about services you don't deliver, and reconcile that rewritten policy with the procedure a few pages down that now doesn't match.
As you decide where to get your documents, the question is whether the days you spend on them teach you anything. At the end of our toolkits, you'll really know your organisation, and get the confidence you need to explain it to your auditor.
What we will and won't do
No AI generates your policies
Every section of every template was developed by a person who knows the standards. The builder assembles your documents from your answers using rules we wrote, with no chance of it inventing an obligation that doesn't exist.
Free tools stay in your browser
For our free tools, the answers you type never reach our server. The document is built on your own machine and downloaded from there. We count that a tool was used, and nothing else.
One payment, then it's yours
No subscription and no renewal. If the rules change, we update the tool and you regenerate at no cost.
Start with a free one
Many tools are free and need no account. Work through one and you'll know within 10 minutes whether the questions are the kind you want to be asked.
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