Case study

The SCHADS increase used to take a full day. Now it is one pass down a list

Every year the pay guide lands, the rates move, and somebody sits down with Fair Work open on one screen and Xero on the other. Employee by employee. That was this provider's July, and it was also how every new starter was set up all year round.

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ClientAn NDIS disability support provider running a workforce of forty

SizeForty support workers across days, nights, weekends and sleepovers

EngagementA Xero payroll restructure against the SCHADS award, leave accrual corrected and back-calculated, then ongoing bookkeeping

Year2025

Led byNikoletta

Where they started

Every hourly rate had been typed into an individual employee record. That meant the only way to check whether two support workers on the same classification were paid the same was to open both records and compare them by eye.

Nobody had been careless. This is the setup the software suggests first: create the employee, enter their rate, run the pay. It works, and nobody has a reason to revisit it until the rates move and the whole file has to be edited by hand.

That was the smaller of the two problems. The provider had come across from another accounting system and had carried its habits with them. In that system overtime had been handled as a leave item, and the same approach was used when the file was rebuilt. Overtime needs to sit on a proper overtime pay item, and because it did not, leave stopped behaving.

Staff had already raised it. The business could not explain the numbers, because from the front end everything looked ordinary.

Nikoletta and Zsuzsa of NN Accountability together in front of white curtains — Nikoletta and Zsuzsa

The challenges

What we found when we opened the file

01 Rates living on employee records No single place to check a classification, and no way to see at a glance whether two workers on the same level matched.

02 A full day, every July Finding every employee, looking their level up against the new pay guide and editing the record by hand. Every edit a chance to key the wrong number.

03 Accrual that missed most of the roster Disability support runs on days, nights, weekends and sleepovers. Accrual was not configured across the full spread of pay items, so workers rostered outside standard days accrued on a fraction of what they worked.

04 Payouts made on the wrong numbers Several staff had left and been paid out on balances that were never right. The business absorbed it rather than chase former employees, and it repeated with every departure.

What we did

Started from the principle the award is built on: the rate belongs to the classification, not to the person. Two support workers on the same classification are on the same rate, so the rate should live in one place per classification and every employee on it should inherit it.

Mapped every classification and pay point the provider actually employs, and confirmed the interpretation against the current Fair Work pay guide before touching the file.

Rebuilt each classification as its own pay item, and built the shift and penalty types the provider genuinely rosters: day, afternoon, night, weekend, public holiday, sleepover and broken shift.

Moved overtime off the leave item and onto a proper overtime pay item, so leave items do only what leave items are meant to do.

Configured leave accrual deliberately across the full set of pay items, so a worker rostered mostly across nights and weekends accrues on the hours they actually work. This is the part most setups get wrong. It is not a tick box.

Back-calculated the affected balances and corrected them, then set the annual process: update the pay items once, and every employee on that classification moves with them. Our payroll services page explains how we check and take over a payroll.

Corrected the timing as well. Fair Work's guidance is that most award increases begin from the first full pay period on or after 1 July rather than on 1 July itself, so a pay period starting on 29 June runs to its end on the old rates. Which period that is depends on your cycle, and it is worth checking against Fair Work rather than assuming the date.

Diagram comparing rates typed into employee records, where both records are opened and compared by eye and every record is edited by hand when rates move, with rates held against a classification as one pay item that every employee on it inherits — When rates move, the pay item changes once, not every employee record.

The outcome

What changed

One place, not forty Award rates live on the pay items. The July increase is a single pass down a list of classifications rather than a pass through every employee in the business.

The job stopped scaling Because the work is per classification rather than per person, growing the team no longer grows the July workload.

Balances that reconcile Accrual is configured across every shift type the provider rosters, so balances reflect hours genuinely worked. The questions staff had been raising now have answers.

New starters in minutes Onboarding means selecting a classification. The rate fills itself in, from the same place every other worker on that level draws from.

The longer they leave it, the longer the annual leave or sick leave are not correct. Therefore you have to back-calculate it for everyone. It is a very big job. And any time someone got terminated, they would have paid an incorrect annual leave amount.
Nikoletta, Director, NN Accountability

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Is this you

When this is worth a look

Two checks you can run this afternoon. Take three staff on the same classification and compare their hourly rates: if they do not match exactly, your rates are living on employee records. Then take one worker who does a genuine mix of nights and weekends and compare their accrual against the hours they actually worked. If it looks light, your accrual is not picking up all their pay items.

Does the July increase take you a full day, or are you still finding errors in September?
Are rates typed into individual employee records rather than held against a classification?
Has anyone checked whether leave accrues across nights, weekends and sleepovers as well as standard days?
Have staff queried their balances and nobody in the business could explain the numbers?
Were overtime, allowances or penalties set up by copying how they worked in a previous system?

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