Award Interpretation
Tanda has been building award interpretation software for 10 years, making it the most mature and tested software that exists in the market today.
Tanda’s interpreter automates wage calculations and includes base rates, overtime, allowances, and higher duties.
With built-in onboarding and quality integrations, paying staff correctly with Tanda is easy.
Engineered for compliance
Tanda’s dedicated compliance team includes former workplace lawyers and researchers that comb through the fine print of Australian awards so you don’t have to.
We manage templates for over 30 of Australia’s largest awards. If you’re on one of Tanda’s managed templates, all pay rates are automatically calculated for your staff. We also support custom-built EBAs.
Tanda’s compliance team also advocates for simpler interpretations of workplace law at the Fair Work Commission.
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Base rates. All managed awards have built-in base rates that sync with payroll and update on staff birthdays or when Fair Work mandates change.
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Allowances. Automatic allowances apply to shifts that match specific criteria to ensure they’re never missed.
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Higher Duties. Tanda’s award interpretation calculates higher duty rates automatically when employees work in specific teams.
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Breaks. Compliant breaks are automatically created based on your Award template. Be alerted if your employees aren't taking their breaks.
Tanda removes complicated Award Setups. To apply any of Tanda’s managed awards, simply select the award, employment type, and apply it to the employee.
From here, Tanda will automatically create and maintain the relevant pay items and base rates in your payroll system to ensure staff are always paid accurately.
Tanda integrates with all major payroll providers. Wage cost factors are exported line by line, so you can see ordinary pay rates, allowances, overtime, and other cost factors.
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Pay Item Management. Select your award, instantly configure your staff, and export accurate timesheets directly to your payroll system, ready for your next pay run.
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Gross Wage Calculation. Use Tanda's Award Interpretation to view a comprehensive breakdown of timesheets, giving you oversight of gross wages and other cost drivers, saving time and reducing errors.
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Frequently asked questions
Award Interpretation is the process of software analysing a worker’s timesheet, and calculating the amount of money they should be paid per hour. Because these pay rules are contained in Fair Work’s Awards, the process is called “Award Interpretation”.
Modern awards are the pay award rules for workers in specific industries. They are set by the Fair Work Commission, and typically are for lower-paid industries, or industries that employ large numbers of people. Remember, if you employ someone covered by an award, the pay awards apply, not the minimum wage rules. Typically, businesses will use award interpretation software to calculate employee award rates for their workers because of the complexity of pay awards. Award interpretation software (pay award) is part of workforce management software (workforce management solutions / employee management software), which also often includes timesheet software and award onboarding software.
Tanda has over 30 individually managed employee award rates templates, including awards for major industries in Australia, like the Hospitality Industry Award (HIGA), General Retail Industry Award (GRIA), Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award (SCHADS), Restaurant Industry Award (RIA), Aged Care Award, Pharmacy Award and Children’s Services Award. If you’re looking to clarify our award coverage, get in touch and we can go through our complete suite of awards.
Tanda’s award interpretation software (pay award) templates work by calculating the employee award rates of workers based on their hours worked. Businesses use our onboarding software to register their employees in the award interpretation software (pay award), the hours are clocked and registered in our timesheet software (timesheet management), and then exported to payroll.
An Enterprise Bargaining Agreement is a deal that a business makes with a union that sets the pay and conditions for their workers, instead of an award. Provided that the deal doesn’t undercut the pay and conditions of the award, it will apply. Tanda’s award interpretation (pay award) can be custom built to handle your Enterprise Bargaining Agreement as part of our workforce management software (workforce management solutions / employee management software) suite.
Yes, Tanda’s award interpretation can handle Enterprise Bargaining Agreements. If you get in touch with us, we’re happy to help implement the conditions of your EBA into Tanda. We deal with a large number of clients with specific EBA’s that we’ve implemented into Tanda.
Tanda closely follows the Fair Work Commission’s wage rulings and implements these into our award interpretation software. This means that unlike other workforce management software (workforce management solutions / employee management software), pay rates are automatically updated after they change, and you don’t have to do a thing. Likewise, employees are automatically moved to their new relevant pay rate on their birthday, if it changes their classification.
Every year, the Fair Work Commission, a Federal Government body, will sit down and determine the employee award rates for different industrial awards. These rulings on employee award rates occur throughout the year, although most employee award rates are set just before the conclusion of the financial year.
The Commission is made up of people appointed by the Government. It takes submissions from economists, unions, and business groups about pay award rates. Unions will typically ask for large employee award rates (pay awards) increases, and businesses will ask for lower or no increase to employee award rates (pay award). Lately, the Commission has picked the middle ground between these groups, increasing employee award rates by a moderate amount.
The best way to confirm which award applies to you is to use Fair Work’s website. Remember, multiple awards can apply across different employees in your business. However, the award interpretation that applies is mostly intuitive. Retail employees are covered by the retail award, for example. But there are some exceptions, so you should always clarify which award interpretation (pay award) applies.
Workforce management solutions (workforce management software / employee management software) can encompass the process of handling how employees work, from onboarding software, award interpretation software, timesheet software and right through to payroll. Some workforce management software (workforce management solutions / employee management software) will include all of these features from start to finish, whereas others might include some of them – like onboarding software, award interpretation software and payroll, for example.
Award interpretation is complicated and workforce management software (workforce management solutions) is typically built with this in mind. Each managed award interpretation template is built to handle thousands of different rules. Businesses use onboarding software to register employees, timesheet software to register their hours, before the data is placed into award interpretation software.
Yes, you’ll need to enter an employee’s details into Tanda’s onboarding software in order to use our built in award interpretation. Our onboarding software is intuitive, easy to use, but importantly crucial to storing their details in our employee management software and paying them.
You should always use an electronic award interpretation. Manually calculating pay awards might sound simple, but with hundreds of different rules and different entitlements, it’s easy to make a mistake. The Fair Work Ombudsman often checks if employee management software with award interpretation is in use when it audits businesses, and looks more thoroughly at businesses that pay awards manually. Using employee management software that has timesheet management / timesheet software is always a great idea to make sure your time is accurately recorded and that your employees are paid correctly. A proper workforce management solution (workforce management software / employee management software) should always pay awards based on timesheet software or timesheet management that is digitally based.
Workforce management software (also called workforce management solutions / employee management software) is the catch-all term for all forms of software that are used to manage employees. It will regularly include pay awards or award interpretation software, onboarding software, pay award or pay awards, timesheet software / timesheet management, all as part of its workforce management solutions.
Tanda’s employee time clock automatically exports data into timesheet management / timesheet software. The timesheet management program then uses Tanda’s award interpretation software to calculate exact pay and entitlements for the worker. The timesheet management program records the exact day and times the employee works. The timesheet management program keeps these on hand for the required seven years. The data is then exported straight from the timesheet management program to your payroll system.
