Inzenius’ Award Interpreter can help with complex annualised salary payroll award interpretation challenges.

The systems can duplicate interpretation of the employee’s salary and comparable Award entitlements directly from its electronic timesheet for each pay run and annual analysis for the legislated Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) and Annualised Salary comparison requirements.

An annualised salary arrangement is an agreement that is made where a fixed annual wage is paid, that will remunerate the employee for some or all of the separate payments they would be entitled to under an Award (e.g. hours of work, penalty rates, overtime, allowances, loadings etc.).

The Fair Work Commission has already varied the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 (HIGA) terms that relate annualised wage arrangements. Similar changes will also take effect from 1 September in relation to the Restaurant Industry Award. We see other awards to follow.

This award now requires:

  • Separate payment to employees, in addition to the amount of annualised salary paid, when “outer limits” of penalty rates and overtime are exceeded in a particular pay period.
  • Employers to conduct a reconciliation every 12 months or upon termination of employment, calculating the difference between what the employee would have earned in separate entitlements compared to salary paid, with any shortfall being back paid with 14 days.
  • Annualised salary agreements to specify certain details, including the amount of annualised wage, the award entitlements that the salary includes, and the outer limits that apply.
  • The additional records of time worked on different work periods to be maintained.

The changes introduced include “outer limits” of penalty rates and overtime hours that can be included in Annualised salary arrangements. These outer limits when exceeded will attract additional payments based on loaded rates of pay for:

  • more than 18 penalty rate hours per week; or
  • More than 12 overtime hours per week.

The weekly limits specified may be averaged over a period of up to four weeks, if the employer operates a roster cycle over such a period.

Where the outer limits are exceeded, hours worked are not covered by the annualised wage, and are in addition to the annualised wage payment made, an employer is required to pay the hours worked beyond the relevant rates of pay.

Employers will need to conduct reconciliations:

  • after each 12 months of the annualised wage arrangement, or
  • within any 12-month period upon the termination of employment of the employee or termination of the agreement, with any shortfalls identified to be paid within 14 days.

This new obligation builds upon existing BOOT provisions which require an employee not to be disadvantaged by an annualised salary.

In addition to retaining start and finish times of each working day, employers are required to record any unpaid breaks taken. These records need to be signed off by employer and employee or acknowledged as correct by signing or by electronic means in each pay period or roster cycle.

Annualised wage employee work on a public holiday will be treated as penalty rate hours, with up to 18 being able to be worked per week. If this outer limit is exceeded, these hours will need to be paid separately at the relevant public holiday penalty rate.

Employers that already have employees on non-managerial annualised wage arrangements should:

  • Ensure that payroll systems and processes will be able to accommodate outer limit payments that may need to be made in any given pay period.
  • Ensure that accurate records are being made of working times, including breaks of annualised wage employees, (Timesheets) and that these records are signed and acknowledged by the employee as correct in each pay period.
  • For existing salary employees – If you wish to continue using an annualised wage arrangement obtain their agreement to amend their employment terms.

Contact us to see how we can help:

rbode@inzenius.com

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It is all about the culture and the drive delivery and maintenance behind it.
The Inzenius story is all about innovation in automation of complex Award Interpretation, linked directly to the Time and Attendance validation against the Rostering with Payroll System for the automated creation of the Electronic Timesheet with its electronic sign-off by the manager and employee through to automated payroll production and processing, including STP2 Payroll System and bank processing of pays.

Contemporary employee communication to and from their mobile device delivers a great employee experience with an all-in-one HRM Rostering Timekeeping and Payroll System.

 

Australian Compliant Payroll Is So Much Easier with Inzenius’ Award Interpretation Software

The Inzenius package includes all the Initial Processes from employee Onboarding linked to Rostering, Time & Attendance, Award Interpretation from the approved Electronic Timesheet and STP2 approved Payroll processing and distributions in one. That’s Inzenius.

All Inzenius users were easily set up on the Inzenius STP Payroll System reporting platform due to the flexibility of Inzenius’ Australian Compliant Award Interpretation software.

Employee device Onboarding data entry efficiency.

Easy Rostering Development and Employee Notification.

Electronic Timesheet Software with GPS locating.

Simplified Electronic Timesheet Software inbuilt into the Inzenius Payroll System directly into the Inzenius Electronic Timesheet Software makes it so easy for the staff to record their time worked at each location with GPS tracking and automated time recording for validation t rosters for supervisor approval.

Inzenius commenced with the development and launch of its Award-winning Rostering with Payroll System in 2007. It has been awarded the Oracle and Telstra Innovation Awards and has a patent for its innovative system design.

What makes it so different?

The Automated Payroll System with its Inzenius own in-built comprehensive Award Interpretation from its Electronic Timesheet Software that presents to supervisors the comparison of times attended to the Staff Rostering System for analysis and approval. The system will create the ability of group electronic sign-off of all the compliant times worked and present for review and acceptance of any variances.

Remote employee timekeeping process from local phone, computer, kiosk or mobile device with GPS site tracking clock in and options are also available.

Adding tracking of time worked on different jobs provides the ability for individual job labour costing with analysis of the Award Interpretation available from the Staff Rostering System as well as the Electronic Timesheet Software for each job and or customer. This data provides the opportunity to create a direct billing API to the business billing system. It also can deliver labour time and cost productivity analysis based on the time allocated for each task completed in comparison to the actual time and cost thereof taken for the job.

 

The HRM Rostering Timekeeping and Payroll System integrated in the one system delivers a great employee experience and efficiently through the system employee portals published to their device. The features that can be included in the Staff Rostering System is the publication to each employee of the roster for the acceptance. Unfilled rosters are updated directly for the supervisor to follow up on those not accepted. If a roster shift remains empty the supervisor will be presented with available employees to fill the shift with the appropriate skills and permissions to work at the site.

The HRM Rostering Timekeeping and Payroll system will enable the employees to also add their availability, leave requests or update details on their employee file with direct updates to the system.

Employees will also be able to view:

  • Their approved times on the device in the Electronic Timesheet Software and address any errors or omissions with their supervisor each day after the shifts have been approved in the Electronic Timesheet Software. 
  • Their payslips on the device in the Inzenius HRM Rostering Timekeeping and Payroll System. 
  • They will also be able to see their leave balances as they apply that then can be approved online by the supervisor in the Staff Rostering System

Building and costing rosters to the budget is easy due to the Inzenius Award Interpreter link to the Inzenius Staff Rostering System. The systems Award Interpreter Software will cost the rosters developed and compare them to the budgets established for each business unit. This provides the opportunity to modify the roster before they are published to the employees.

Once rosters are ready for publishing the supervisor with a click of a button pushes the roster to each employee mobile device. Of course, the alternative is to print and post the roster from the easy-to-read roster publication and print tool.

Using the MS PowerBI and reporting capabilities, the data is easily available for the development of the business reporting and dashboard.

The power of Inzenius and its unique capabilities in its Australian Compliant Award Interpretation is all delivered in its HRM Rostering Timekeeping Payroll system, built specificity for the Australian and New Zealand payroll rule environments. Getting interpretation wrong is not an option these days.