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How to update Modern Award wages
How to update Modern Award wages

Update enabled Modern Award wages in line with the new Award minimum wage increases

Saad Saeed avatar
Written by Saad Saeed
Updated over a week ago

🎯 For admins with Awards enabled on their Planday.

In this article, you’ll learn how to update the wages of the classifications from your imported Modern Awards in line with the latest Award minimum wage increase handed down by the Fair Work Commission, effective from 1 July annually.

If you’re unsure which Award minimum wage increases are relevant to your company or your employees, we encourage you to visit the Fair Work Commission Awards finder page or contact the Fair Work Ombudsman to discuss this further. Getting this right is very important and sets the foundation for paying your employees correctly. You should also seek any independent legal advice as appropriate for your business.

Please note that Planday focuses on the most common time and attendance-related parts of the Clerks and Retail Awards and does not cover all Award requirements. For example, allowances and age-based wage progression supporting age updates for young workers. Please refer to this Help Centre article for more information about the Award exclusions.


What are the changes?

This will require you to update the wages of the classifications assigned to your employees in Planday where you have the Clerks and/or Retail Awards enabled.

For the Clerks Award, the Award minimum wage has increased for the below supported classifications:

Name of Classification

Level

Adult

Level 1-5 + call centre

20 years

Level 1-5 + call centre

19 years

Level 1-5 + call centre

18 years

Level 1-5 + call centre

17 years

Level 1-5 + call centre

16 years

Level 1-5 + call centre

16 years and under

Level 1-5 + call centre

For the Retail Award, the Award minimum wage has increased for the below supported classifications:

Name of Classification

Level

Adult

Level 1-8

20 years and employed by the employer for more than 6 months

Level 1-8

20 years and employed by the employer for 6 months or less

Level 1-8

19 years

Level 1-8

18 years

Level 1-8

17 years

Level 1-8

16 years

Level 1-8

15 years and under

Level 1-8

Learn more on the new Award minimum wage increases here.

Note: If you have employees in Planday not assigned to a supported Award, need to set a new classification to employees or need to update fixed salaries for employees paid above Award minimum wages (e.g. enterprise agreement or other registered agreement), please reference one of the following:

  • Assign employees to a supported Award in this article.

  • Click here to learn how to set a new classification to employees.

  • To update fixed salaries for employees paid above the Award, learn more in this article.

  • If you have employees paid above Award minimum wages but assigned an hourly wage in Planday, continue with the steps detailed further below.


Update the Award wages

Wages for all employees can be updated for your business by navigating to:

People > Employees > Tools > Edit wages

Here you will also find information about the new Award minimum wages, and you will be able to configure each employee individually with the option to change their classification level, hourly wage and when the wage should be valid from. This can also be done in bulk for all employees associated with an Award by using the option Increase wages to Award minimum, which will pre-set the hourly wage for the given classification level to the new Award minimum wage.

For each employee, you can see which Employee group(s) they belong to and their current wages for comparison. If a wage is below the new Award minimum wage, this will be highlighted in red to inform you that it needs to be updated.

To set the Valid from date, you should select the first full pay period in July that excludes any June dates, which is when the new minimum wages are applicable from.

Note: If you are using a Xero Payroll Integration, the Valid from date should match the pay period interval(s) you have defined in Xero, and the updated wages will be synced when the next pay period starts.

Once you have updated everything, click the Preview and update (x) wages option to get a final overview of the changes and then submit them by pressing Update wages.


Need more help?

Please search for answers in the 🔍 Help Center or watch our ▶️ video tutorials.

Contact our support team via the blue icon at the bottom if you have more questions.


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