Quick Award Template Create is a step-by-step builder for creating your own custom award template in Tanda. You choose the classifications, rates and employment types, then add the penalty and overtime rules your award or agreement requires. Tanda turns your answers into award rules you can review and assign to staff.

What this guide covers:

If you only need to add a few rules to an existing template, see Create Custom Award Rules.

Before You Start

Quick Award Template Create is only available to Australian organisations.
You need permission to create award rules.
Have your award or agreement handy. You will need the classifications (levels) and their hourly rates, the employment types it covers, and the clauses for any penalty rates, overtime and minimum shift lengths.

Note: The template is created for your organisation only, and it is only created when you click Create Template on the final step. Your answers are held while you work, but if you leave the builder and open a new one, you will start from a blank form.

Opening the Builder

Go to Time & Attendance > Compliance.
In the Customise your setup list, click Quick Award Template Create.

Creating the Template

The builder has six steps, followed by a confirmation page. The progress bar along the top shows where you are.

You can jump back to a previous page using this progress bar without losing your configuration on a more recent page, but if you navigate out of the template builder before creating the template, your configuration will not save.

Step 1: Basic Setup

Template Name - Give your template a descriptive name.
Select Rate Levels - The classifications in your award. You can add your own by typing a new classification and clicking + Add New.
Include Junior Rates - Choose Yes if younger employees are paid different rates. You set the ages and percentages in the next step.
Select Employment Types - The employment types the template covers, for example full time, part time and casual. You can add your own by typing a custom employment type and clicking + Add New.
Include Shiftwork - Choose Yes if you have shiftwork penalties. Then select the Shiftwork Types and which employment types separate shiftworker rules should be created for.

Click Continue to go to the next step.

Step 2: Base Rates

Base Hourly Rates

Enter the hourly rate in dollars for each classification. This is the base pay rate that the employee is entitled to without any penalty or overtime multipliers.

Clause Reference - Optional. The award clause the rates come from. It is shown on the rules that are created from the template.
Base rates apply during date range - Set Applies From and Applies Until for each table. The base rates in the table will only apply within those dates, which is useful for EOFY or agreement changes where the base rate is scheduled to update. These dates can be edited via csv for individual rules at any time after creating the award.

Leave Applies From blank for the first period and Applies Until blank for the last to ensure there are no periods without a base rate. Tick Use exact date if the change should happen on that date rather than at the start or end of a pay period.

Click Add Base Rate Table in the top right if rates change over time, or use Duplicate to copy an existing table.

Junior Rate Percentages

If you chose Include Junior Rates in Step 1, click Add Junior Rate Table for each group of classifications that has its own junior ages or percentages.

Under Applies to Classifications, choose the classifications the table covers.
Enter the Percentage of Base Rate for each age. For example, 80 means juniors are paid 80% of the adult rate. Leave an age blank if it isn't covered.

The lowest age you fill in is paid that rate for that age and under. Ages above the highest one you fill in are paid the adult rate, as are classifications that aren't in any junior table.

A classification can only be in one junior table for any date range, and if a classification has more than one junior table over time, their date ranges can't leave gaps.

Time Off In Lieu (TOIL)

Choose Yes for Enable TOIL for overtime to create a TOIL accrual award alongside each overtime rule.

Choose the TOIL Accrual Type:

1:1: One hour of TOIL for each hour of overtime worked.
Multiplier-based: TOIL hours match the overtime multiplier, for example 1.5x overtime earns 1.5 hours of TOIL.

Overtime rules limited to shift tags or teams are always paid rather than accrued as TOIL. See TOIL / RDO Accruals for more.

Minimum Paid Hours

Once you've chosen employment types, you can choose which of them are guaranteed a minimum number of paid hours per week, based on their contracted weekly hours.

Minimum Shift Engagement Rules

Click Add Minimum Shift Engagement Rule, choose the employment types it applies to and set the minimum paid hours per shift. If a worked shift is shorter than the minimum hours, the shift will be automatically extended to meet this number.

You can also add extra conditions with Additional Parameters, for example, limiting the rule to certain teams or days.

Step 3: Multipliers

Set up the standard multipliers once here, then reuse them across your rules in the next two steps. This is not where you configure the specific conditions for the penalty/overtime rules, just the standard flat multipliers for different days of the week.

You can also configure the multiplier rates later for individual rules in steps 4 and 5 if preferred.

Penalty Multipliers:

Click Add Penalty Rate Configuration to add a new rate. The rates here are not necessarily linked to only penalty rules - this is also where ordinary multipliers like casual loading are configured.
1. Under Applies to Employment Types, choose the employment types it covers. You cannot use the same employment type in multiple penalty rate configuration tables.
2. Optionally add a Clause Reference.
3. Click + Add Penalty Rate to add a row. For each row, choose the Days it applies on, the Multiplier as a percentage (for example, 150 means 1.5x) and, if the rate only starts partway through the day, the number of penalty hours it starts after.
  
  For example, in the configuration below, rules would be created to apply a 1.5x multiplier to Casuals on Saturdays, with the multiplier increasing to 1.75x after 3 penalty hours have elapsed that same day.

Overtime Multipliers:

Click Add Overtime Rate Configuration. For example, 150% after 38 hours in a week.
1. Under Applies to Employment Types, choose the employment types it covers. You cannot use the same employment type in multiple overtime rate configuration tables.
2. Optionally add a Clause Reference.
3. Click + Add Overtime Rate to add a row. For each row, choose the Days it applies on, the Multiplier as a percentage (for example, 150 means 1.5x) and, if the rate only starts partway through the day, the number of overtime hours it starts after.

On overtime configurations, you'll also see Overtime hours in the week, for rates that count overtime across the week. Create separate Overtime Rate Configurations for weekly vs daily rates to ensure the "After x overtime hours" setting applies to all configurations correctly.

To accommodate casual loading, create a separate standard penalty rate configuration (with the "After x penalty hours" field blank) at the loaded rates just for casuals.

Step 4: Penalty Rules

Penalty rules say when penalty rates apply during ordinary hours.

Click + Add Penalty Rule.
Choose the Rule Type. See Choosing a Rule Type.
Under Applies to employment types, choose who the rule is for.
Answer Apply standard penalty multipliers from previous step? Choose Yes to use the multipliers from Step 3 or No to use custom ones. You can also set this after the rule is added. Remember that the multiplier should be written as a percentage; for example, to have a 1.5x multiplier, enter "150"

There must be a rate table set up in either Step 3 or a rate set in the penalty rule itself for all the employment types listed in the rule.
Click Add Rule.

The rule appears as a card. Add additional pay rates if No was selected in step 4.

Open it to fill in the details for its rule type, optionally add a Clause Reference, and add extra conditions by clicking Add Parameter. Each rule can be duplicated or deleted from its card.

Step 5: Overtime Rules

Overtime rules work the same way as penalty rules, but say when overtime applies. Click Add Overtime Rule, choose the rule type and employment types, choose whether to use the standard overtime multipliers, then fill in the card's details.

Click Add Rule. You can't change the rule type after creation.

Click Continue to Summary when you're done.

Step 6: Summary

Review everything you've entered: rate levels, employment types, junior rates, TOIL, base rates, multipliers, minimum shift engagement, and each penalty and overtime rule with its clause reference.

Tick I confirm I want to create this template, then click Create Template. Use Back if anything needs changing.

Step 7: Completed

You should see confirmation that the template has been created successfully:

Click Review Template Rules to see the award rules that were generated, and check them against your award.
Click Create Another Template to start again with a blank form.

To pay staff under the custom template, assign it to them as you would any other award. See Assign payroll classifications to staff.

Choosing a Rule Type

When you add a penalty or overtime rule, or an additional parameter, the Rule Type list covers the most common award conditions:

Time of day and day of the week: Hours Worked Between, Majority of Hours Worked Between (applies to the whole shift when most of it falls in the range), Hours Worked Outside, Shifts Starting Between, Shifts Ending Between, Specific Days of the Week, Public Holidays and Date Range.
Hours and shift length: Daily Hours, Hours worked per week in an overtime period, Exceeds Contracted Weekly Hours in an overtime period, Contracted Hours, Span of Hours, Two Daily Lengths / Week, Minimum Shift Length (with the option to round shift length up), Exceeds Rostered Hours and Outside Rostered Hours.
Days worked, rest and breaks: After number of Consecutive Days Worked, After number of days worked in a week, After number of days worked in a multi-week period, Required Consecutive Days Off Unmet, Rest Between Shifts (with the option to pay the whole next shift), Non-continuous Work (where a long gap between shifts splits the day), Missed Break, Worked Previous Three Sundays and Worked on RDO.
On call, sleepover and availability: Worked While On Call, Worked While On Sleepover, Shifts Bordering a Sleepover and Worked Outside Availability.
Who the rule applies to: Age Range, Teams, Exclude Teams, Tagged Shifts, Exclude Tagged Shifts and Tags That Rule Will Not Apply To.

A rule can have one main rule type plus extra Additional Parameters. For example, Public Holidays with an Age Range applies only to juniors on public holidays.

FAQs/Troubleshooting

I can't see Quick Award Template Create in Compliance HQ.

The link only shows for Australian organisations, and only to users who can create award rules. Ask an admin to check your permissions.

Where can I view the award rules created for my template?

You can find the award rules under Time & Attendance > Compliance > Custom Award Rules. You can then either sort by your award to find them, or export your custom rules to a CSV and filter them there.

I got "Session data was lost. Please start again."

Your answers are held while you work in the builder, and starting it again from Compliance HQ clears them. If your session times out, you'll need to begin again.

My junior rates won't save.

Check that no classification is in more than one junior table for the same dates, and that a classification with several dated junior tables has no gaps between them. A classification with a single dated table is paid the adult rate outside its dates.

Can I change the template after I've created it?

The builder creates the template in one go. To adjust it afterwards, open Review Template Rules and edit the individual award rules, or see Create Custom Award Rules. You can also export the rules to CSV and update them in bulk there.

Can I use the template for another organisation?

No. The template is created for the organisation you built it in.

Creating Custom Award Templates