The questions people actually ask.

You can buy a company that holds registration — but understand what you are buying: the provider’s entire history, including its student records, its debts to students, and every compliance skeleton in its cupboard. A change of ownership is also a regulatory event, and the incoming owners face scrutiny of their own. Sometimes buying is right; it is a corporate transaction layered on a regulatory process, it is bespoke by nature, and it is not something we sell at a fixed price — we refer it to CAQA, the senior advisory arm of our family.

The smallest scope you can evidence convincingly — usually one to three training products with demand you can document and people you can name. Scope drives everything: workforce, evidence volume, cost and risk. You can extend scope after registration from a position of operating proof. Stage 2 covers the reasoning; our feasibility package exists to make this exact decision with you.

Three buckets. ASQA’s fees — set by the regulator, currently in a period of change; we render them from a maintained source on the calculator page rather than typing numbers that go stale. Operating costs — premises, insurances, systems, salaries; real, large, and honestly unquotable in general terms. And help, if you want it — our fixed-price packages, $2,900 to $18,500 by stage and band.

Preparation done properly typically runs four to nine months of your time; assessment after lodgement is the regulator’s clock and commonly runs months more. Anyone quoting a fast precise number is selling the number. The timeline page gives every range with its reasoning.

No, and nobody honest can. ASQA decides every application on its evidence; a consultant who promises the decision is describing a service that does not exist. Our outcomes disclaimer puts this in writing, and it applies to every package we sell.

ASQA has published its position: applications showing generic or templated tools and resources that do not reflect the organisation’s context are unlikely to be approved — and initial applications cannot be resubmitted. Templates are legitimate raw material; lodged as-is they are the most reliable way to fail the one lodgement you get. Why templates fail is our full answer.

The Financial Viability Risk Assessment — the regulator’s test of whether your entity can survive long enough to serve its students properly. Expect to show projections with their assumptions, committed capital, and a cost model that includes the unglamorous lines. Stage 4 explains it; our $3,900 FVRA preparation package builds it with you and your accountant.

Executives, high managerial agents and anyone in a position to influence the provider must make declarations about their history — regulators, companies, insolvency, conduct in the sector. The regulator weighs what is declared; what it cannot forgive is what it discovers undeclared. Stage 3 covers who counts and how to present a history honestly.

You need arrangements consistent with what your application describes — assessable facilities and systems appropriate to your products and mode, not necessarily a long lease signed on day one. What fails is fiction: a TAS describing simulated environments that do not exist and are not budgeted. Your premises plan also belongs in your FVRA as a cost line.

CRICOS — delivering to international students — layers a second regulatory framework over everything on this site. It changes the evidence, the viability case and the systems, and it is not a fixed-price product: our calculator will tell you the same thing and route you to CAQA for bespoke advice. Most new providers are better served establishing domestic delivery first.

ASQA assesses the application: document review, usually requests for information, and interviews with your executives and trainers. Your people must be able to explain their own application — a consultant answering for you proves the assessor’s doubt. Stage 8 walks through it; our $3,400 post-lodgement package prepares your people and helps draft RFI responses.

Because they change, and a consultant’s stale number is worse than no number. Every regulatory fact and fee on this site renders from a single maintained source with a verification date and a link; where an amount is awaiting verification, you get the regulator’s schedule instead of a guess. That is a design decision, not laziness — the fee panel shows it working.

No — and the regulator says so, in guidance we quote on this site rather than paraphrase: consultants in this sector are not regulated, engaging one is not without risk, and providers should do due diligence before acting on advice. Read that as applying to us too. Our answer to it is fixed published scopes, listed exclusions, a disclosed family structure and a written outcomes disclaimer.

You are. Always. A consultant may help set up a path to compliance, but the provider remains responsible for meeting its obligations on an ongoing basis — that is the regulator’s framing, and it survives every engagement including ours. It is also why our method insists your people can explain every document lodged in their name.