Review, reassessment and appeal at each Australian assessing authority: the windows range from 60 days to 12 months, and one authority has none

Every one of these authorities lets you challenge an unsuccessful outcome. None of them uses the same word for it, none of them uses the same deadline, and the deadline is almost always the thing that decides what you can do. Two of the five give you 60 days. One gives you 90. One gives you twelve months. One publishes no deadline at all.

Read the row for your authority before you read anything else, because a missed window is not recoverable by argument.

The windows, side by side

Authority	First-stage challenge	Deadline	Second stage	Deadline	Can you add new evidence?
VETASSESS	Review	90 days from the issue date of the original decision	Appeal	90 days from the review outcome	Yes, at both stages
ACS	Level 1 Appeal	not published on the pages we read	Level 2 Appeal	not published	not published
CPA Australia	Review	12 months from the assessment outcome date	none published	—	No
CA ANZ	Internal review	60 days from receiving the result	External appeal	60 days from the internal review result	No
IPA	Review	60 days after the assessment date	none published	—	not stated

What each authority actually offers

VETASSESS runs three separate products and only one of them is a challenge to the reasoning. A review is a second look by “a different team of assessors who were not involved in your initial application, ensuring an independent review of your case”, lodged in the portal within 90 days. An appeal is the stage after that: lodged on form SRG04 by email rather than in the portal, within 90 days of the review outcome, processed in about twelve weeks, possibly with “advice from an independent industry expert” — and then it stops: “The appeal outcome is final, and there is no opportunity to re-appeal.” A reassessment is not a challenge at all; it is a fresh application within twelve months, and it is the only route that lets you change nominated occupation.

VETASSESS is also unusually explicit about whose job it is to make the case: “it is your responsibility to provide us with a decision-ready application at the time of making your request. We are under no obligation to seek further information from you at any time and can make a decision based on the evidence provided.”

ACS has two appeal levels and publishes almost nothing about them. The fee page prices a Level 1 Appeal at AUD 516 and a Level 2 Appeal at AUD 620, each “Assessed on: Appeal Reason”. The policies page says an applicant “can appeal an assessment decision if they disagree with the result of their assessment outcome and/or believe an error has been made in their skills assessment”, and directs you to a downloadable Appeal Policy for the detail. No deadline, no evidence rule and no processing time appears on the public pages. There is one further ACS-specific consequence: ACS states it “does not currently support Outcome Reassessment nor Outcome Renewals”, so appealing is the only route back — there is no equivalent of VETASSESS’s twelve-month reassessment.

CPA Australia gives the longest window and the narrowest review. Twelve months — “Review applications must be submitted within 12 months from the assessment outcome date stated on the outcome letter” — but on the original file only: “Reviews will only use the documents you originally submitted with your application. No new information or documentation will be considered.” If you have something new, CPA Australia says that is a different product: “If you wish to submit new documents to be considered for your application, then this will be considered as an update application, not a review.” No second-stage appeal is published, and CPA Australia’s own FAQ uses the words interchangeably — “You can appeal your assessment result by submitting a review application and paying the relevant fee.”

CA ANZ is the only one of the five with a published two-stage process, and both stages are 60 days. Internal review: “If you believe a mistake was made in your outcome, you can request a review within 60 days of receiving your result”, decided by “A different or senior assessor”, on the original file only — “The review will be based only on the evidence submitted in your original application.” External appeal: available “where both have been assessed as not suitable”, within 60 days of the internal review result, “undertaken by an independent assessor who was not the assessor of the original assessment”, and then final — “The appeal outcome is final and not subject to further review.” CA ANZ also publishes the clearest refund rule of the five: “If the decision is overturned, the fee will be refunded.”

IPA reviews qualifications and refuses to review employment. Its fee schedule prices a review at AUD 235 with a seven-business-day turnaround and adds: “The Review fee will be refundable if the assessment outcome is overturned. You must lodge an application for review within 60 days after the assessment date.” But on the employment side it is categorical: “Please note that we do not reassess or review skilled employment outcomes after the decision has been made.” No external appeal stage is published.

How to read this table without getting it wrong

“Review” and “appeal” are not stable words across authorities. At VETASSESS a review comes first and an appeal second. At CPA Australia the FAQ calls the review an appeal and there is no second stage. At ACS both stages are called appeals. Do not assume a process exists because another authority has one, and do not assume your authority’s “appeal” is a second opinion — at CPA Australia and CA ANZ the first stage is a re-read of the same file.

The new-evidence rule is the real branch point, not the fee. Three of the five state whether new material is allowed, and they split. VETASSESS invites it: “When you apply for a review, you may submit new evidence to support your application.” CPA Australia and CA ANZ both forbid it. That single difference tells you what a review is for: at VETASSESS it can fix an incomplete application; at CPA Australia and CA ANZ it can only fix an assessor’s error, and an incomplete application has to be fixed by a different product (an update, or a fresh application).

Refund conditions are narrower than they look at two authorities. IPA and CA ANZ both refund a review fee if the outcome is overturned, full stop. VETASSESS refunds only where the outcome is overturned and “No new information or evidence is considered during the review process, including any information obtained by VETASSESS through interviews, telephone or email reference checks, or any other means.” Since VETASSESS also encourages new evidence at review, most successful VETASSESS reviews will fail the refund condition by construction. ACS states only that it “may refund the cost of an Appeal if the assessment decision is overturned.”

The clock runs from a date on a document, not from when you read it — except at CA ANZ. VETASSESS: “within 90 days of the issue date of the original assessment decision”. CPA Australia: “from the assessment outcome date stated on the outcome letter”. IPA: “after the assessment date”. CA ANZ is the outlier and the more generous formulation: “within 60 days of receiving your result”. If your outcome letter sat unread in a spam folder for three weeks, that matters at four of the five.

Missing the window is expensive, not fatal — at one authority. Only VETASSESS publishes a graduated fallback: review within 90 days from AUD 374.00; reassessment from day 91 to twelve months at AUD 819.50; after that, a new full assessment at AUD 1,205.60. Its fees page states it flatly: “Review applications lodged outside of the 90-day timeframe will incur full skills assessment fees.” Everywhere else, the published options end when the window does.

One authority explicitly rules out priority handling for challenges. VETASSESS: “our Priority Processing service is not available for review applications”, and its list of priority-ineligible applications includes both review and appeal. Appeals are the slowest product on its schedule at twelve weeks.

What none of them offers

None of the five publishes an external, independent merits review by a body outside itself. CA ANZ’s “external appeal” is external to the original assessor, not to CA ANZ. If you exhaust the published stages, the published stages are exhausted; VETASSESS and CA ANZ both say so in terms. Complaints processes exist at all five and are a different thing — they address how you were treated, not what you were assessed as. ACS separates them explicitly, publishing an Appeal Policy and a Complaints Policy as two documents.

So what should you actually do

Before you decide anything, write down the date on the outcome letter and count forward. Then ask one question: is there something the assessor did not have? If yes, and you are at CPA Australia or CA ANZ, a review is the wrong product — you need an update or a fresh application, and you should say so rather than spend the fee proving the assessor read your file correctly. If yes, and you are at VETASSESS, a review is the right product and is the cheapest of its three. If the answer is no — you believe the material was there and was misread — then the review is exactly what it is for, everywhere.

And check the fee against what you are actually contesting. VETASSESS prices qualification-only review at AUD 374.00 and qualification-plus-employment at AUD 1,004.30, with no partial refund for over-buying. What the outcome letter itself is telling you is decoded in what a skills assessment outcome actually says; the fee schedules are in VETASSESS fees and published processing times and ACS fees and processing times; and the expiry clocks that constrain all of this are in how long each AU and NZ assessment outcome stays valid.

What this page does not do

It does not tell you whether your challenge will succeed, and no authority publishes success rates. Nothing here is a prediction. Every deadline, fee and quotation was read from the authority’s own pages on 3 September 2026; ACS’s appeal deadlines are absent because ACS does not publish them on the public pages, not because we did not look — the detail sits in a downloadable Appeal Policy you should obtain directly. Only the assessing authority can decide your application. For visa questions, go to the Department of Home Affairs or a registered migration agent.