🎯 This article is relevant to Planday customers who haven’t enabled an Award on Planday. If you’ve enabled an Award, go to How to set up your employees with supported awards.

If you are unsure about the classifications and levels that apply to your employees we recommend that you contact the Fair Work Ombudsman, visit the Fair Work Commission website or seek professional legal advice should you require assistance with the necessary calculations or interpretation of the relevant clauses.

What are Classifications and Levels?

A classification is used to set a minimum wage recommendation for an employee group and type, based on experience and qualification(s). When combined with a ‘Level’, the wage recommendation can be configured to be dependent on:

Duties of a job role
Certain qualification (E.g. Certificate, Diploma, etc.)
Years of experience

For example:

Classification - Office Administrator

OA - Level 1

OA - Level 2

OA - Level 3

Classification - Warehouse Assistant

WA - Level A

WA - Level B

WA - Level C

Note: To create Classifications and Levels, you will need to ensure you have created Employee groups and Employee types.

How to create Classifications and Levels

Navigate to People > Classifications > then click on the Create button in the top right corner.

Give the Classification a name (1.)
Select the Employee groups and the Employee types for which this classification should be available. (2.)
Create the Levels (minimum default wages) that apply to this classification by clicking on Add level (3.)
- Select a wage type (hourly) and a wage for each Level

Assign a Classification and Level to an employee

Repeat this step for all of your employees.

Employees need to be linked to an Employee group and an Employee type before you can apply a Classification or to set the hourly wage for them. Once they are linked to an Employee group, you can either choose a preset classification level or you can add an arbitrary hourly rate.

Navigate to People > Employees > Edit employee > switch to Employment tab > Employee groups, to assign an employee group and set the hourly rate.

Note: If your business utilises penalties, overtime rates or loadings, these will be applied separately afterwards and will be based on the wage input in the field below. Learn more on creating penalties, overtime rates or loadings with payroll supplements.

Once you have chosen the appropriate classification or input a wage specific to the employee, click Save.

Update Classifications and Levels

You can update classifications and levels by going to People > Classifications > Edit the relevant classification. From here you will also be able to update the Employee groups the Classification applies to as well as Employee types where appropriate.

To edit the value set against the levels:

Click on the pencil icon ✏️ to the right of the level’s value that needs to be updated
A new window will display allowing you to update the value of the minimum default wage for that level
Click Save

Note: When updating the default hourly wage for levels associated with classifications, you need to be aware of the following:

The updated default wages will only apply to employees assigned to the classification and level after the update.
If you already have employees assigned to the updated classification and level and want them to receive the new default wage, you will need to update the wages in bulk.

Update wages in bulk

To update the wage of the employees in an employee group and/or employee type in bulk, navigate to People > Employee Groups > Edit the relevant Employee group > choose the right Employee type in the filters.

Select the employees that need a wage update. Once you're done selecting, find the Edit wages option at the bottom of the screen ( the pencil icon ✏️).

A new window will open up, where you can set:

the wage
the wage type
and define which date the change will be valid.

Finally, click on Save and then on Done to close the window.

See related articles:

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