Payroll remediation that stands up to boards, auditors and the FWO
Payroll remediation is the process of correcting underpayments: establishing what every affected employee should have been paid, calculating the shortfall with superannuation and interest, and repaying it with evidence that withstands regulator scrutiny. We do this for large Australian employers, and only for employers.
If you have just discovered a problem, two facts matter more than anything else. Underpayments that continue while you investigate compound your exposure, so interim corrections come first. And self-reporting to the Fair Work Ombudsman before an investigation begins preserves access to safe harbour protections that disappear once the FWO comes to you. The sequencing of the first few weeks decides how the next year goes.
PayrollExperts Are Trusted By
Australia’s Top Payroll, HR & Finance Teams
The first 72 hours after finding an underpayment
Stop the bleeding
Preserve privilege
Scope honestly
Plan communication
Why enterprise remediation is hard
The calculation itself is rarely the problem. The problem is six years of time and attendance data across system migrations, multiple awards and agreements with disputed interpretations, casuals and terminated employees who must be found and paid, and a board that needs defensible numbers while the population keeps changing. Remediation at scale is a data engineering and industrial interpretation exercise wrapped in a governance process.
Our remediation teams have rebuilt pay histories from legacy systems that no longer exist, resolved interpretation disputes award clause by award clause, and delivered outcomes the FWO accepted without contest.
How we run a remediation
Keep the existing six-step section (Scoping & Discovery through Remediation Roadmap) with these tightened descriptions:Scoping and Discovery
Define affected cohorts, periods and instruments; secure and validate the data.Identify Discrepancies
Recalculate against the correct interpretation of every applicable instrument.Validate Interpretations
Contested rules are resolved with your legal advisers and documented, so the calculation basis is defensible.Quantify Exposure
Shortfalls with superannuation, interest and tax treatment, by employee, cohort and cause.Stakeholder Alignment
Board, auditors, insurers and regulator engagement in the right order, with evidence packs for each.Remediation Roadmap and Delivery
Payment execution, employee communications, and the configuration and process fixes that stop it recurring.
Recent Work
A national employer engaged us to remediate pay for 13,000 employees across 620 sites. Delivered one month ahead of schedule. “Payroll Experts were very knowledgeable, understood the issues and resolved them quickly.” (Michael Mino, CFO). Keep the full testimonial carousel below this section.
What is at Stake
The Fair Work Ombudsman recovered $358 million for underpaid workers in 2024-25, $213 million of it from large corporate employers. Since 1 January 2025, intentional underpayment is a criminal offence: up to 10 years imprisonment for individuals, and for corporations the greater of $7.825 million or three times the underpayment. Directors carry accessorial liability for civil contraventions even without intent.Underpayment claims generally reach back six years, and remediation done badly gets done twice.Frequently Asked Questions
How far back does a payroll remediation have to go?
Should we self-report an underpayment to the Fair Work Ombudsman?
Usually yes, and the timing matters: self-reporting before an investigation begins preserves safe harbour protections against criminal referral and shapes a cooperative rather than adversarial process. The decision belongs with your board and legal advisers; we provide the quantified evidence it rests on.
Do underpaid amounts attract superannuation and interest?
Can remediation run under legal privilege?
Do you act for employees?
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
We love what we do, and we do it well. But don't just take our word for it. See what our clients say.
Scott Quinn
