This video explains the key areas that SCHADS payroll audits focus on and highlights where errors are most likely to occur. It covers the main components that auditors check in community services, disability support, and home care providers, including penalties, loadings, overtime, and allowances. The video breaks down the different types of penalties and overtime calculations, as well as the common allowance mistakes that can lead to significant underpayments. By understanding these audit areas, employers and payroll staff can ensure payroll is applied accurately and in line with SCHADS award conditions.
So every SCHADS payroll audit focuses on the same five key areas. These are the areas where auditors know errors are most likely to occur, especially in community services, disability support, and home care providers.
So we're just going to break them down. We have their penalties, loadings, and overtime. SCHADS is full of penalties. We have the afternoon penalties, the night shift penalties, the weekend and public holiday penalties. And then we have all of the overtime. This would be their sleepover wake periods. It would be overtime based on the shift length, so there's the daily overtime and the period overtime, and minimum breaks between shifts. Payroll has to apply all of these accurately.
Then we have the allowances. This is where most SCHADS payroll mistakes happen. There's broken shift, sleepovers, kilometer allowance, overtime meal allowance, and first aid. They must all trigger exactly according to the award conditions. If any allowance is missing or misconfigured, the underpayment can end up being significant.