Payroll is never just the pay run. There's the leave check nobody has time for, the classification progressions tracked by hand, the portable long service leave return that takes half a day to format, and the 40 employee files that all need the same fix, one click at a time.
Pay Cat Toolbox is nine automations for the worst tasks in SCHADS payroll. It's built for payroll admins, HR and finance teams at NDIS, disability and community services providers who already run their payroll in Pay Cat Payroll. This guide walks through all nine, using the live demos our Head Trainer, Tasya, ran in our Meet Pay Cat Toolbox webinar on 22 October 2026. Each section has a short video so you can watch the automation run.
What is Pay Cat Toolbox?
Pay Cat Toolbox is a set of nine automations that connect to your Pay Cat Payroll account and do the time-consuming jobs around the pay run: compliance checks, reporting, bulk employee updates, timesheet preparation and month-end accounting. You open it inside Google Sheets, pick an automation, and it pulls your live payroll data in a few clicks. Some automations fix things you currently do by hand, and others give you reporting that isn't available directly in Pay Cat Payroll.
| Automation | Category | What it does |
| Quantum of Leave | SCHADS and compliance | Checks which SCHADS shift workers qualify for five weeks of annual leave instead of four, based on the shifts they actually worked |
| Classification Report | SCHADS and compliance | Shows every employee's current SCHADS classification and pay point, how long they've held it and the hours worked in it |
| Portable LSL Report | SCHADS and compliance | Selects the right pay categories for your state's portable long service leave scheme and formats the report ready to upload |
| Salaried Hours Report | Payroll and reporting | Compares the hours salaried employees worked, including leave, against their contracted hours |
| File Reviewer | Payroll and reporting | Scans employee files in Pay Cat Payroll for missing or mismatched setup, such as leave templates, tax file numbers, super and bank details |
| Redundancy Template | Payroll and reporting | Estimates an employee's redundancy payout and creates an employee-facing worksheet |
| Employee Updater | Employee and timesheet management | Pulls any employee fields into a sheet so you can edit them in bulk and push the changes back to Pay Cat Payroll |
| Timesheet Shaper | Employee and timesheet management | Reshapes CSV timesheet exports from external time and attendance systems into the format Pay Cat Payroll imports |
| Wage Accrual | Accounting | Calculates wages earned but not yet paid at the end of an accounting month, per employee and by pay category |
SCHADS and compliance automations
Three automations handle the SCHADS Award rules that are hardest to track by hand: shift worker leave, classification progression and portable long service leave.
Quantum of Leave: which shift workers get five weeks of annual leave?
Quantum of Leave checks every employee's actual weekend work and 24-hour care shifts and tells you who should be on four weeks of annual leave and who should be on five. It then compares that against the leave allowance template each person is on in Pay Cat Payroll, so you can see who needs to move.
This one matters because a lot of providers give five weeks to anyone who is technically a shift worker. Under the SCHADS Award, the extra week depends on what the employee actually worked during the leave year. As at November 2026, an employee qualifies if they work more than 4 ordinary hours on 10 or more weekends (clause 31.2), or work at least eight 24-hour care shifts (clause 25.8). You can't tell that from a job title or employment type. Read our full guide to SCHADS shift worker annual leave.
How to run it
- In Google Sheets, open Extensions, then Pay Cat Toolbox.
- Go to the SCHADS menu, choose Quantum of Leave and click Run assessment.
- Toolbox pulls your employees from Pay Cat Payroll, counts qualifying weekends and 24-hour care shifts for the year, and checks each person's current leave allowance template.
What you get: a list of only the employees who need an adjustment. In Tasya's demo, three employees were on five weeks of annual leave but hadn't worked enough weekends, so they could move to the four-week leave allowance template. It works the other way too, flagging anyone on four weeks who has earned five.
It's most useful for providers with large numbers of shift workers, where checking eligibility person by person would take days.
Classification Report: when is each employee due to move pay points?
The Classification Report pulls every employee's current SCHADS classification and pay point into one sheet, along with how long they've held it and how many hours they've worked in it. It gives you the numbers you need to review progression without tracking anyone's hours manually.
Progression through SCHADS levels and pay points can depend on service, experience or competency requirements. Across a large workforce, keeping on top of who's due to move is a big admin job, and missing a progression can turn into back pay.
How to run it
- Open Pay Cat Toolbox and go to the SCHADS menu.
- Hover over SCHADS Classification and click Generate report.
What you get: one row per employee showing:
- Current classification and pay point
- Previous classification, so you can see recent moves
- Start date of the current classification
- Days and months in the current classification
- Hours worked in the current classification
The report gives you visibility, not a decision. Any progression still needs to be assessed against the relevant award requirements.
Portable LSL Report: how do you prepare a portable long service leave return faster?
The Portable LSL Report picks the pay categories your state's portable long service leave scheme counts as reportable wages, then builds the return in the format the scheme needs for upload. It covers community services portable long service leave schemes in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT.
The standard portable long service leave report in Pay Cat Payroll is generic. It comes with a default list of pay categories, and because every scheme counts wages differently, you have to know exactly what to include and reselect it each time. Toolbox does that groundwork for you and saves your selection, so you set it up once.
How to run it
- Generate the pay category selection (first run only). Open Pay Cat Toolbox, choose Portable LSL, select your scheme (for example, Long Service Corporation in NSW, Portable Long Service Leave Authority in Victoria, or QLeave in Queensland) and your industry, then click Generate selection.
- Review the ticked categories. Toolbox lists all your pay categories with their STP classifications and pre-ticks the ones your scheme counts. Add or untick any you need to. Your ticks are saved in the sheet for next time.
- Generate the report. Go to the Payroll menu, choose Portable long service leave, decide whether to include terminated employees, optionally filter by leave allowance template, and pick your date range. Next quarter, you can start here.
What you get: a report formatted for your scheme, with each employee's payroll ID, first and last name, email address, employment end date, gross ordinary hours and their scheme employee ID.
Good to know
- Only rerun Generate selection when you've added new pay categories in Pay Cat Payroll, so they appear in the list. This replaces your saved selection, and Toolbox warns you before it does, so keep a copy of your previous ticks to refer back to.
- Employees are included based on the primary location state on their file in Pay Cat Payroll. A Victorian scheme report includes every employee whose primary location is Victoria, so check primary locations are correct before you run it.
- The scheme employee ID only comes through if it's saved on the employee's file in Pay Cat Payroll, under Portable Long Service Leave ID. Check this before you run your first report.
- Reporting rules differ between schemes, so confirm which rules apply to your organisation.
Payroll and reporting automations
These three automations check your payroll setup, compare salaried hours against contracts, and do the heavy lifting on redundancy calculations.
File Reviewer: how do you find setup errors across every employee file?
The File Reviewer scans your employee files in Pay Cat Payroll and returns only the employees with missing, invalid or mismatched setup. Instead of opening each file one by one, you get a list of what's wrong and a direct link to fix it.
We built it because "can you review our file?" is one of the most common requests our team gets. We looked at what customers wanted checked and turned it into a review you can run yourself, any time, ideally before you run payroll.
How to run it
- Open Pay Cat Toolbox, go to the Payroll menu and choose File Reviewer.
- Click Review file and choose which checks to run. You can run one, a few, or all of them.
What it checks
| Check | What it flags |
| Leave allowance templates | Employees with no leave allowance template, or one that doesn't match their employment type, such as casuals on a permanent template accruing full leave |
| Leave allowance template vs state | Employees whose leave allowance template is set to a different state from their residential address |
| Tax file numbers | Missing or invalid tax file numbers, which can slip through at onboarding and cause STP reporting issues later |
| Super details | Missing or invalid super fund ABN, fund name or member number |
| Bank details | Missing or invalid bank details |
| Employment type vs employment agreement | Employees whose employment type in their tax file declaration doesn't match the employment agreement on their file, which can pay the wrong ordinary hours |
| SCHADS hours | Employees whose standard hours per day are overridden to 7.6 instead of 10, which can trigger daily overtime too early |
| Payment configuration, pay rate templates, tax settings, pay schedules and primary pay categories | Missing or inconsistent setup in each of these areas |
What you get: a tab for each check plus a summary tab. The summary lists every flagged employee, their ID, a note on exactly what's missing, and a link straight to their file in Pay Cat Payroll.
Two issues Tasya sees often: an employee with no leave allowance template accrues every leave type on all their ordinary time earnings, and an employee moved from casual to permanent often gets a new employment agreement but keeps the old employment type in their tax file declaration. The File Reviewer catches both.
Salaried Hours Report: are your salaried staff working their contracted hours?
The Salaried Hours Report compares the hours each salaried employee actually worked, including leave, against their contracted hours and shows the variance. It brings together information you'd otherwise pull from your leave report, ordinary hours and overtime separately.
How to run it
- Open Pay Cat Toolbox, go to the Payroll menu and choose Salaried Hours.
- Choose a specific pay run or a date range.
- Tick the option to show ordinary hours as a separate column if you want that split, then click Generate report.
What you get: one row per salaried employee showing worked hours, worked ordinary hours, overtime hours, paid leave hours, unpaid leave hours, contracted hours and the variance to review.
Good to know: this report is about hours against contract. It doesn't break down broken shifts, allowances or penalty rates.
Redundancy Template: how do you estimate a redundancy payout?
The Redundancy Template builds a redundancy calculation worksheet for an employee from the termination details you enter, then creates an employee-facing HR worksheet you can hand over. Redundancy is one of the most complicated jobs in payroll, with redundancy pay, notice, outstanding leave and tax treatment all in play, and this puts it in one place.
How to run it
- Open Pay Cat Toolbox, go to the Payroll menu and choose Redundancy Template, then Generate template.
- Enter the financial year and termination date.
- Record whether notice was provided, the number of weeks of severance pay, and any other genuine redundancy payment, such as a gratuity or golden handshake.
- Select the employee and click Generate template.
What you get: a redundancy calculation worksheet with the employee's details (termination date, date of birth, adjusted service start date, standard hours), their annual leave and long service leave payouts, severance pay, any other genuine redundancy payment, and the tax treatment including the tax-free portion. A second step generates the HR worksheet for the employee.
Good to know: the result is an estimate. It only includes pay runs that have already been finalised, so it won't include the pay run where the termination is processed.
Employee and timesheet management automations
The review automations above tell you what needs fixing. These two help you fix it in bulk and get timesheets from external systems into Pay Cat Payroll without reformatting them by hand.
Employee Updater: how do you update lots of employee files at once?
The Employee Updater pulls any employee fields you choose from Pay Cat Payroll into a sheet, lets you edit them there, and pushes every change back in one go. It replaces opening each employee file and changing the same setting over and over.
Use it for jobs like changing leave allowance templates, moving a group of employees to new levels or pay points, updating hours per day or per week, enabling a setting, or adding a tag to everyone.
How to run it
- Open Pay Cat Toolbox, go to the Employee menu and choose Employee Updater.
- Search for and tick the fields you want. You can pick as many as you like.
- Click Get data. You'll get one row per employee with their name, employee ID, external ID and the fields you selected.
- Edit the values you want to change.
- Click Update data to push the changes back to Pay Cat Payroll.
Pair it with the review automations. In the webinar, Tasya took the casual employees the File Reviewer flagged as being on a permanent leave allowance template and switched them to the casual template in a few clicks. She then pulled hours per day and changed SCHADS employees set to 7.6 hours back to 10.
Good to know: before a large update, make a copy of the spreadsheet or duplicate the generated data tab, so you have a clean version to fall back on.
Timesheet Shaper: how do you import timesheets from an external rostering system?
The Timesheet Shaper converts CSV timesheet exports from external time and attendance or rostering systems into a file that's ready to import into Pay Cat Payroll. It's for providers whose system doesn't have a direct integration with Pay Cat Payroll and who currently fix columns, headings and formatting by hand every pay period.
It handles the parts that usually need manual work, including sleepover shifts, overlapping shifts and kilometre allowances. For providers processing large volumes of timesheets, that's a real saving every pay period.
If your time and attendance system already connects directly to Pay Cat Payroll, you won't need this one.
Accounting automations
Wage Accrual: how do you calculate wages earned but not yet paid at month end?
The Wage Accrual automation calculates the value of wages your employees have earned but haven't been paid yet, so finance can recognise them in the right reporting period. It uses timesheet costings and pro-rated salaries from Pay Cat Payroll, so nobody has to work out accruals employee by employee.
The problem it solves: your accounting month often ends halfway through a pay period. Employees have worked days in that month, but those wages won't be processed until the next pay run.
How to run it
- Open Pay Cat Toolbox, go to the Accounting menu and choose Wage Accrual.
- Select the month you're reporting on and generate the report.
What you get: two sheets.
- Wage accrual: the detailed report, broken down per employee and pay category, with the cost, rate and calculation method. Unpaid timesheets are included.
- Wage accrual consolidated: totals by pay category across your workforce, including rates and the super calculated on them.
It's most useful for organisations with larger workforces or multiple pay schedules, where month-end accruals take the longest.
Pay Cat Toolbox FAQs
How much does Pay Cat Toolbox cost?
As at November 2026, Pay Cat Toolbox costs an extra $2 per employee per month on top of your Pay Cat Payroll subscription, and all nine automations are included. You don't pay separately for each one. Billing is based on your active employee count. See the Pay Cat Toolbox page for current pricing.
Is there a lock-in contract?
No. Pay Cat Toolbox is an upgrade to your existing Pay Cat Payroll subscription, and you can cancel it at any time.
Who can use Pay Cat Toolbox?
Pay Cat Toolbox is only for Pay Cat Payroll customers. You need an active Pay Cat Payroll subscription and a Pay Cat API key. It connects only to Pay Cat Payroll, not to other HR or payroll platforms.
Do I need Google Workspace to use it?
No paid subscription is needed. Pay Cat Toolbox runs in Google Sheets, and a free Google account works. Once it's installed, type sheets.new into your browser's address bar to open a new sheet and run it from there.
Does Pay Cat Toolbox work in Excel?
No. Pay Cat Toolbox runs in Google Sheets only. You can export any report it generates from Google Sheets to Excel (XLSX) afterwards.
Do I need to connect my API key every time I open a new sheet?
No. You connect your API key once. In each new sheet, you just select your business.
Can Toolbox calculate an employee's pay at a different pay level?
No. Timesheets are always calculated at the pay level set on the employee's file in Pay Cat Payroll.
Do I need to be technical to use it?
No. Every automation runs from menus inside Google Sheets, under Extensions, then Pay Cat Toolbox.
How do I get started with Pay Cat Toolbox?
Already using Pay Cat Payroll? Install Pay Cat Toolbox from the Google Workspace Marketplace, connect your API key under Pay Cat Toolbox, then Pay Cat Settings, and run your first automation. The Pay Cat Toolbox setup guide walks you through it.
Not a Pay Cat customer yet? Book a demo and we'll show you around Pay Cat Payroll and Toolbox together.
Want the full walkthrough? Watch the Meet Pay Cat Toolbox webinar on demand.
Who is Pay Cat?
Pay Cat are payroll specialists for SCHADS and community services employers. Pay Cat Payroll runs on our SCHADS Award template, which interprets the award automatically, and Pay Cat Toolbox adds the reports payroll teams usually build by hand.
Disclaimer: This article is general information only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. Award requirements, portable long service leave rules and pricing can change. Consider your specific circumstances and seek advice where needed.
