Payroll in the Registered Clubs across Australia is a compliance landmine. With over 30 different penalty conditions, an apprenticeship system and over 50 classifications to choose, theres a high risk of error without proper planning. 

Traditionally, many smaller Club's place a lot of (sometimes too much) reliance on industry specific payroll software to manage their compliance risk.

With payroll often being a shared role with administrative and bookkeeping functions,  Club payroll administrators are often burdened with managing this complexity with only a short period of time to complete this.

With a bit of planning, the right payroll application and the right set-up, Clubs can enjoy a compliant, consistent and efficient pay day process. In this article, we visit the most common areas we come across when doing set ups.

1. Late Evening and Early Morning Allowances should not be pro-rated to less than one hour

The Award calls for a penalty to be paid as a percentage of the standard rate for each weekday over 7PM and before 12PM midnight. After 12PM and before 7AM that penalty increases.

Time and time again we see anything less than a whole hour applied as a portion of that hour. The interpretation of this clause is that an hours worth is paid regardless of whether the entire hour is worked.

e.g. if I worked for 1 hour and 10 minutes, I would be entitled to the equivalent of 2 hours of the penalty.

2. The 'no meal break' penalty is cumulative

The award states that when an employee has not had a meal break after 5 hours, a penalty is owed of 50% of the base rate on top, until a break is given or the shift ends.

Where a lot of clubs get caught is if that shift ended up being overtime, that would result in both the overtime penalty, and the extra 50% of base rate, being paid to the employee.

3. Part time work arrangements need to be documented

If you employee part time employees, you are required to work out the days and total hours available to make up your agreed hours. You should work out a start and end time that sets the parameters within which you will be permitted to roster.

Where this is not documented, it is difficult to correctly account for working outside of rostered hours. Remember if the total agreed hours are exceeded in a week or roster cycle, overtime is to be paid. Is important that these are documented appropriately in the employment contract.

4. Junior employees doing bar work are to be paid as adults

When a junior employee (under 21 years old) is to be performing bar work, they are to be paid as an adult employee, not a pro rated percentage. As this is the case, an employees rate of pay may change as they work in different parts of the Club and perform different functions.

It is important to use a time and attendance system that can appropriate capture different classifications across a single shift to ensure that junior employees are not underpaid.

5. Broken Shift allowances apply to split shifts

According to the award, permanent employees are required to be paid an allowance where they work a broken shift - that is - they are working their shift across more than one part of the day (other than a meal break).

This can be common, in particular for kitchen staff, where there is a gap of a few hours between preparation and meal service.

It is important that your systems can detect these occurrences that aren't always obvious when performing manual interpretation of timesheets, and trigger this allowance to be paid.

Conclusion

It is with good planning, a robust modern payroll system with award interpretation, and above all a well executed payroll implementation that can prevent your Club from becoming a payroll compliance time bomb.

How do you manage compliance risk? What are some other challenges that the Club Industry faces with award interpretation? We welcome your comments!