Independent payroll audits for complex Australian workforces
Since January 2025, intentionally underpaying staff has been a criminal offence. Ten years imprisonment for individuals. Fines of $7.825 million or three times the underpayment for companies. The Fair Work Ombudsman recovered $358 million for workers in 2024-25, and $213 million of it came from large corporate employers.
Most of those employers had payroll teams, HR systems and external accountants. What they did not have was an independent check of the thing that actually goes wrong: how awards, enterprise agreements and pay rules are applied to real rosters, every pay run.
That is what a Payroll Experts audit does. We verify every rule against every dollar, quantify any exposure and give your board evidence instead of assurances.
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Australia’s Top Payroll, HR & Finance Teams
What a payroll audit covers
A payroll audit is an independent verification that employees have been paid what awards, enterprise agreements, contracts and legislation require. It tests the pay rules configured in your systems against the source instruments, recalculates sample and full populations, and traces discrepancies to their root cause in configuration, interpretation or process.
A thorough audit covers award and EBA interpretation, ordinary hours and overtime, penalties and loadings, allowances, annualised salary reconciliation, superannuation (12% since 1 July 2025), leave accruals and loading, termination payments, PAYG and record-keeping. It also tests the things that change: the 4.75% award increase applying from 1 July 2026, and the 2025 Federal Court set-off ruling that stopped employers offsetting overpayments across pay periods.
What an accounting audit will not find
Financial audits confirm that payroll totals reconcile to the general ledger. They do not test whether a sleepover shift under the SCHADS Award was classified correctly, whether an annualised salary actually covers the hours worked in each discrete pay period, or whether your system rounds time in the employer’s favour. Every large underpayment case of the past decade passed financial audits while it was happening.
Payroll auditing is a different discipline. It needs people who read awards for a living and systems capable of recalculating millions of pay lines. We bring both, and we are independent: we have no payroll software to sell and no incentive to find anything other than what is there.
How the Audit Runs
Keep the existing six-step process section (Compliance Assessment through to Implementation), but replace the step descriptions with the tightened versions below.Scope and Data
We agree the employee population, period and instruments, then take payroll, time and HR data extracts. Most audits need no more than read-only access and a fortnight of elapsed time to first findings.Rule Verification
Every pay rule in scope is tested against the award or agreement text, not against what the system was configured to believe.Recalculation
We recalculate pay for the population and period in scope and rank every variance by dollar value and root cause.Exposure and Evidence
You receive quantified exposure by cohort and cause, with workings that stand up to your auditors, your board and the FWO.Findings Collaboration
We walk your payroll, HR, finance and legal teams through the findings before anything is finalised.Fix and Prevent
A prioritised remediation and prevention plan, including what to change in configuration, process and governance.
Recent Work
A national employer engaged us to audit and remediate pay for 13,000 staff across 620 sites. The remediation was delivered a month ahead of schedule. Our auditors have run engagements for ASX-listed companies, government departments and employers running every major payroll platform in the Australian market.
Why boards choose an independent audit now
- Criminal exposure is personal. Intentional underpayment carries up to 10 years imprisonment, and directors carry accessorial liability for civil contraventions.
- Self-disclosure before an FWO investigation preserves access to the safe harbour arrangements. Discovery during an investigation does not.
- Fewer than half of Australian employers ran a payroll audit in the last 12 months, while award complexity keeps rising: 122 modern awards, most with well over a hundred interacting rules.
- The 2025 set-off ruling quietly invalidated the annualised salary reconciliation approach many large employers still use.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a payroll audit take?
First findings typically land within two to four weeks of data extract for a single-entity audit. Full multi-award, multi-entity audits run eight to twelve weeks. We agree the timeline in the scoped proposal before you commit.
What does a payroll audit cost?
It depends on employee numbers, the number of industrial instruments and the audit period. We quote a fixed scope and price after a confidential discussion of your environment, so there are no day-rate surprises.
Do we audit a sample or the full workforce?
Both approaches are valid. Sampling finds systemic issues quickly; full recalculation quantifies exposure precisely. Many clients start with a targeted sample and extend to full recalculation only where variances appear.
What happens if you find underpayments?
You get quantified exposure with root causes, and options: our remediation team can scope, calculate and deliver back payments, and self-reporting to the Fair Work Ombudsman before any investigation preserves safe harbour protections. Nothing is disclosed to anyone without your instruction.
Can the audit be run under legal privilege?
Yes. Many clients engage us through their legal advisers so that findings are privileged while decisions are made. We work within that structure routinely.
Other Services
Payroll Advisory
Our Payroll Advisory and Compliance Services are a one-stop solution for all your payroll needs. Our comprehensive services include Payroll Health Checks, ensuring the accuracy and compliance of your payroll processes and systems, identifying areas for improvement. Count on us for a seamless Payroll Compliant Audit to provide spot checks of your historical payroll and identify potential areas of risk. Then remedy those finding via our Payroll Remediation Services.
Trust us with your payroll advisory needs, and experience smooth operations and peace of mind.
We partner with you to take your projects from the beginning through to accomplishment. We can also jump in along the way to give you the project assurance that key artifacts have been designed to drive compliance, best practice and alignment to your future state processes. This ensures that your project stays on track and potential bumps along the way have been mitigated against.
Our record of achievement across many high-profile and high-risk projects and recoveries qualifies us to know the right formula for the delivery of your project. We can also support you across the entire project lifecycle, utilising our refined skills in Business Analysis, Test management all the way to Change Management driving adoption throughout the organisation.
Project Delivery
Payroll Processing Services
We support you with Payroll Business Continuity: short-term tailored payroll processing support when you need it most. Mitigate against unexpected leave and resignations within your payroll team. We’ll embed into your organisation as an extension of your Payroll Processing function and handle everything from basic payroll processing to more complex BAU payroll services.
Our Agreement Visualisation tool lets you share simplified information on how your people can expect to be paid. Allowing your HR/Payroll team to easily understand how staff should be paid, enabling internal consensus around how and what your people are paid.
A first-of-its-kind approach and technology unlike any other, Agreement Visualisation helps your organisation take back control, ensure internal alignment for one of your most critical functions, and helps support long-term success.
Agreement Visualisation
Payroll Compliance Calendar
Our compliance calendar is an essential tool for payroll professionals, highlighting crucial dates, public holidays, ATO, and STP deadlines. It helps keep payroll operations organised and compliant with all regulatory requirements, proving indispensable for maintaining excellence in payroll management.
No business is the same and as such, no engagement is ever the same. We actively listen to tailor a unique service and support options grounded in our many years of experience to help you reach your project goals, mitigate risk and ultimately, have confidence in paying your people correctly.
Other Services
What our Clients say
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Scott Quinn
