Award Interpreted Timesheets Are Necessary for All Education Employees, Including Those On Salaries
Fair Work requires all employees, excluding those earning less than $191,911 (2026), to determine that pay is correct and for the undertaking of the Better Of Overall Test (BOOT)
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay-and-wages/paying-wages/record-keeping
These records must be accessible for investigators and for presentation at any hearing as evidence of those worked.
Many education institutions have been found to underpay their employees, with enforceable undertakings required just in the 25/26 year, including Woolongong, Qld, Monash, Tasmania, Charles Darwin and as recently as June 2026 $32m at the University of NSW.
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/compliance-and-enforcement/enforceable-undertakings/2025-2026-enforceable-undertakings
Why are education institutions so prevalent in having Enforceable Undertakings applied to them?
A key issue is the lack of defensible timesheet/timekeeping records for management supervision and approval of employees’ time.
Employees undertake many duties that were not captured in the timesheet and were not compensated accordingly. For example, time spent preparing course material, marking exams, attending parent/teacher interviews, and other extra activities.
The Solution is to create an efficient process to capture the employees’ time for activities undertaken
Using the employee’s mobile device to record these activities, and tracking separate activities each day, provides the data required to monitor work times and serve as a record for the Better-Off-Overall-Test (BOOT) requirements now legislated.
For each shift or part thereof, the employee can modify the record from their default set-up to include”
- Location,
- Cost centre,
- Position
- Event
- Task
- Units of activities (eg. exam papers marked)
Employees could also add notes to each activity, providing the desired data for work analytics and productivity
The system will dynamically display timekeeping records against employee rosters for selection as the authorised timesheet for approval by the responsible manager.
These records are critical for the automated undertaking of the BOOT, and if a dispute arises, they provide evidence of time worked that, without the institution, would not exist for FWO or court proceedings if required.
Article on Timesheet and Employee Records by the Australian Payroll Association
By Emma-Lee Oliver | Senior Payroll Consultant, APA
There was a time when I thought of timesheets as simply the starting point for payroll.
Employees completed them, managers approved them, payroll processed them and everyone moved on.
After spending the last few years working on payroll compliance reviews and underpayment remediations, I have come to see them very differently.
Some of the biggest challenges I’ve faced haven’t been interpreting awards or calculating underpayments. They’ve been trying to work out what actually happened because the records simply weren’t there.
I’ve worked on projects where organisations had no timesheets at all. Instead, they were left trying to reconstruct historical work patterns using whatever information they could find. Employee interviews, manager recollections, rosters, calendars, emails, access records and other documents all became pieces of the puzzle, with the hope of building an accurate picture of hours worked years earlier.
Sometimes that evidence was enough to build a reasonable picture. Other times, it wasn’t. Where start and finish times or meal breaks couldn’t be established, assumptions had to be made. Those assumptions were often reasonable based on the information available, but they remained assumptions and that meant there was always the possibility they didn’t reflect what actually occurred.
When the evidence doesn’t exist
One of the realities of remediation projects is needing to recalculate historical pay against the applicable modern award.
That sounds straightforward until you realise the award may require overtime to be assessed based on actual start and finish times, or meal breaks taken during the shift.
Without those records, you can’t accurately determine whether overtime, penalty rates or minimum break provisions have been applied correctly.
Instead, assumptions have to be made.
Perhaps employees are assumed to have worked their rostered hours. Perhaps they’re assumed to have taken their unpaid meal break every day. Those assumptions may be reasonable, but they may also be wrong.
An employee who consistently started work early, skipped meal breaks during busy periods or regularly stayed back after their roster finished could have very different entitlements from someone who worked exactly to the roster every day.
Without accurate records, nobody can say with certainty.
Modern Awards require more than total hours
Another common misconception is that recording total daily hours is enough.
Many modern awards require employers to keep far more detailed records, including actual start and finish times, paid and unpaid meal breaks and overtime worked. Some awards also require employees to acknowledge or sign these records.
These aren’t simply administrative preferences. They’re record-keeping obligations that provide the evidence needed to demonstrate compliance.
Fair Work requirements
The Fair Work Act and the Fair Work Regulations also require employers to maintain accurate employment records, including records of overtime where applicable.
These records are not just for payroll processing. They are there to demonstrate that employees have been paid correctly and that workplace obligations have been met.
The reverse onus of proof
The importance of maintaining compliant records has increased significantly with section 557C of the Fair Work Act 2009.
Often referred to as the reverse onus of proof, this provision means that where an employer has failed to keep or produce the required employment records, a court may presume an employee’s allegations about hours worked are correct unless the employer can prove otherwise.
In other words, if the records don’t exist, the burden can shift to the employer.
Without reliable time records, it can become incredibly difficult to challenge someone’s recollection of events that occurred years earlier.
The cost of missing information
One thing I have learnt through remediation projects is that poor record keeping creates uncertainty.
It makes compliance reviews more difficult, increases the amount of judgement and assumptions required, and ultimately increases risk.
I have seen organisations invest hundreds of hours trying to reconstruct work patterns that could have been confirmed in seconds if compliant time records had been maintained from the beginning.
The irony is that organisations often spend far more time trying to recreate history than it would have taken to record it accurately in the first place.
It might be time to ask the question
If your institution relies on timesheets, it’s worth asking whether they capture everything they need to.
Are employees recording their actual start and finish times?
Are paid and unpaid meal breaks being recorded?
Are overtime hours accurately documented?
Where the applicable modern award requires employee-signed records, are you obtaining those acknowledgements?
If Fair Work asked for your time records tomorrow, or you found yourself undertaking a remediation several years from now, would your records provide the evidence you need?
Payroll has always been about paying people correctly.
Increasingly, the institutions that manage risk best are those that can prove they did and kept the statutory records for their defence.
Questions and Answers
Do I need the timesheet records to be signed by the employee?
You need a form of acceptance by the employee of each timesheet for each shift, signed or by other means like an electronic signature
Do I need electronic time & attendance records?
It is preferred but not necessary as long as you at least have employees’ agreement to their timesheet
How long do I need to keep the records?
The records need to be available for up to 7 years
What would be the consequences of not maintaining timesheet records?
Because the Fair Work Act requires it, you may face fines and penalties.
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/rights-and-obligations/record-keeping-pay-slips
What are the consequences of not having timesheet records?
It can be a criminal act to alter or mislead an investigation of an employee’s working times, as was the case with 7-Eleven
Such cases can now include penalties for the business and its directors, including jail time.