Payroll compliance for large Australian employers
Payroll compliance means paying every employee exactly what awards, enterprise agreements, contracts and legislation require, every pay run, and being able to prove it. In Australia that is a harder promise than anywhere else in the world: 122 modern awards, thousands of enterprise agreements and rules that change every July.
Since 1 January 2025 the stakes have been criminal. Intentional underpayment now carries up to 10 years imprisonment for individuals and fines of $7.825 million or three times the underpayment for corporations. The Fair Work Ombudsman recovered $358 million for underpaid workers in 2024-25, $213 million of it from large corporate employers.
We help CFOs, CHROs and payroll leaders turn compliance from an annual scare into a controlled, evidenced process.
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Australia’s Top Payroll, HR & Finance Teams
What changed, and what changes next
Compliance is a moving target. The dates below are the ones your payroll calendar has to hit now:
1 January 2025
Intentional wage underpayment became a Commonwealth criminal offence under the Closing Loopholes reforms.
1 July 2025
2025
1 July 2026
Award minimum rates rose 4.75 per cent, with the national minimum wage at $26.44 an hour. Every award-covered rate in your system should have changed. Did all of them?
The obligations a compliance programme must cover
Award and agreement interpretation is where the money goes wrong: classifications, ordinary hours, overtime, penalties, loadings and allowances, applied to real rosters. Around it sit superannuation, Single Touch Payroll reporting, PAYG withholding, state payroll taxes, long service leave across eight jurisdictions, record-keeping and payslip requirements.
None of these is difficult in isolation. The risk is in the interactions, and in drift: a system configured correctly in 2023 meets 2026 rules only if someone changed it deliberately, tested it and documented the change. Compliance drift happens quietly. We find it, quantify it and fix it.
What we do
Compliance reviews
A structured assessment of your pay rules, configuration and governance against current instruments. Board-ready findings, quantified where exposure exists.
Independent payroll audits
Full recalculation and verification when you need evidence, not opinion. See our payroll audit service.
Pay rule documentation
The single largest cause of non-compliance we see is undocumented interpretation. We document every rule as “when X happens, we pay Y”, agreed by payroll, HR and legal.
Agreement Visualisation
Our tool for turning enterprise agreement legalese into rules people can actually follow.
Ongoing compliance monitoring
Annual or quarterly checks aligned to the July award cycle, so changes land before they become underpayments.
Who is liable when payroll gets it wrong?
The company, first: civil penalties run to $82,500 per contravention, multiplied five-fold for serious contraventions, and a single misconfigured rule can generate thousands of contraventions. Directors and executives carry accessorial liability under section 550 of the Fair Work Act, and courts have found managers personally liable even where they acted honestly. The criminal offence adds personal jail exposure for intentional conduct, and intent does not require knowing the conduct was illegal, only knowing that wages were owed and not paid.Frequently Asked Questions
What is payroll compliance?
Payroll compliance is meeting every legal obligation attached to paying employees: correct rates and entitlements under awards, enterprise agreements and the Fair Work Act, plus superannuation, tax, reporting and record-keeping obligations, with evidence that each pay run met them.
How often should payroll compliance be reviewed?
At minimum annually, aligned to the July award changes. Employers with multiple awards or agreements, large casual workforces or recent system changes should review quarterly, with monthly reconciliations of super, PAYG and leave.
What are the penalties for payroll non-compliance in Australia?
Civil penalties reach $82,500 per contravention for corporations, five times that for serious contraventions. Since January 2025, intentional underpayment is a criminal offence carrying up to 10 years imprisonment for individuals and fines of $7.825 million or three times the underpayment for corporations.
Is payroll compliance the same as a payroll audit?
No. Compliance is the ongoing state of paying correctly; an audit is a point-in-time verification of it. A compliance programme uses audits as evidence, alongside documented pay rules, controlled configuration changes and monitoring.
Who is responsible for payroll compliance in a company?
Legally the employing entity, its directors and any person involved in a contravention. Practically it is shared between payroll, HR, finance and legal, which is exactly why undocumented interpretations survive so long: everyone assumes someone else signed them off.
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
