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See what employees would earn under a different pay classification
See what employees would earn under a different pay classification

Compare employees pay to a secondary payroll configuration using Wage Compare. (BOOT, annualised salary reconciliation, outer limits)

Nick Braban avatar
Written by Nick Braban
Updated over a week ago

Tanda's Wage Compare feature compares what an employee earned to what they would have earned under under a different pay classification.

Customers can use Wage Compare to compare an employee or prospective employee's pay under any two pay configurations.

How it works

Wage Compare generates a report comparing:

  • what an employee was paid based on their pay configuration used for payroll purposes ("Timesheet Cost"); and

  • what the employee would have been paid under a different employment classification ("Compared Cost") entered on the Wage Compare tab of their profile.

The report uses the employee's actual timesheets to provide the comparison between their actual payroll classification and the Wage Compare classification.

Enabling wage compare

To enable Wage Compare in your account, navigate to Settings > Feature Management. Once enabled, you will see a 'Wage Compare' tab in employee profile profiles.

Creating a Wage Comparison

  • To create a Wage Comparison, open an employee profile and navigate to the Wage Compare tab. Click the plus (+) button to create a new comparison

  • Enter the pay configuration that you want to use to calculate the employee's Compared Cost.

Do: add the same amount of detail here as you would use on the payroll configuration, including award, employment type, classification and allowances.

Don't: add details to base hourly rate or annual salary unless you want to override the configurations generated by award, employment type and classification.

  • Wage Compare will only report on timesheets on and from the Effective From date. If you are looking to backtest previous timesheet periods, set the 'Effective From' date to match the beginning of your comparison period

Note: because Tanda will begin re-calculating all historical timesheets in the background, it can take up to 15 minutes from saving the comparsion to when the report is ready to run.

Should I add details to the outer limits settings?

These settings are intended for employers who want to comply with an award clause like this:

(b) The employee must not be required by the employer in any roster cycle to work in excess of:

(i) an average of 18 ordinary hours which would attract a penalty rate under clause 29.2(a) of this award per week, excluding hours worked between 7.00pm to midnight; or
(ii) an average of 12 overtime hours per week in excess of ordinary hours
without being entitled to an amount in excess of the annualised wage in accordance with clause 24.2(c).

(c) If in a roster cycle an employee works any hours in excess of either of the outer limit amounts specified in clause 24.2(b) , such hours will not be covered by the annualised wage and must separately be paid for in accordance with the applicable provisions of this award.

Click here if you want to learn more about the outer limit settings and how they work.

Running the Wage Comparison report

To run the Wage Comparison report, navigate to Reports > Wage Comparison.

Only employees with a Wage Comparison configured will appear. For the period filtered, you will be able to compare the Timesheet Cost (what is being paid) vs the Comparison Cost (Wage Compare Set up).

In the example above, we paid the employee a salary of $1,153.85 for the period selected, and under the equivalent Full-Time set-up, they would have earned $1,439.64 This suggests they were paid $285.80 less for the period than they would have earned as a full-timer.

How to 'top up' an employee's pay

Sometimes the Wage Compare report will show that the employee would have been paid more under their Wage Compared configuration (i.e. Compared Cost is greater than Timesheet Cost). If you need to pay an employee more after running the Wage Compare report, you can use a simple allowance in Tanda as a method to add this top up payment.

To set up an allowance for this purpose:

  • Navigate to Compliance > Customise Your Setup > Allowances

  • Click '+ New Allowance' to create an allowance

  • For type of allowance, select manual allowance and for What rate is it paid at? select specific cost and enter a specific cost of $1 (Note: You can name this allowance whatever you like depending on how you would like it to appear in Tanda and on payslips. You can learn more about creating allowances here).

Once the allowance has been created, check the Wage Compare report to see which staff are currently being paid less than their compared cost (shown in red).

To add the allowance, head to the employee's timesheet. Unapprove the last shift in the timesheet, and click 'Add Allowance.' You can now enter the Cost Difference into the units field and then click save.

For outer limits, you may want to have an allowance for each type e.g. Penalty Hours Outer Limits Top Up and use these to split out the two types of top ups you may be managing.

FAQ's and Troubleshooting

Will wage comparisons impact what is exported to payroll?

Setting up a Wage Compare will not impact the interpretation of timesheets that are sent to your payroll system. The calculations are only presented in the Wage Compare report, and will not show on timesheets.

What comparisons and testing can I do?

Wage Compare can be used to test any two payroll configurations.

The most common uses for Wage Compare are:

  • Confirming that an employee's annual salary is sufficient to cover their entitlements under an Award or Enterprise Agreement;

  • Confirming that an employee's above-award flat hourly rate is sufficient to cover their entitlements under an Award or Enterprise Agreement;

  • Confirming that an employee's individual flexibility agreement (IFA) is sufficient to cover their entitlements under an Award or Enterprise Agreement;

  • Confirming that an enterprise agreement covered employee is being paid the same or more than the relevant Modern Award;

  • For some Awards only, confirming how many penalty or overtime hours have been worked for outer limits purposes; and

  • Doing each of the above for a prospective employee.

Can I modify permissions for who run run the wage comparison report?

Yes. If you head to Reports > BI Reporting you can adjust which of your permission levels can view the wage compare report. Click on the Wage Comparison Report under Built-in Reports and you can assign which native permission levels can access the report. For more information on permissions check out our article here.

Can I use Wage Compare for Prospective Employees?

Sometimes employers want to check whether an annual salary or base hourly rate will be sufficient to meet an employee's award entitlements before they have commenced.

You can use Wage Compare for this purpose. You will just need to:

  • set up a "Test Employee" profile with the future employee's proposed salary / hourly rate in the payroll configuration and the award classification in the wage compare profile; and

  • create hypothetical timesheets to use for Wage Compare purposes.

Remember to deactivate the profile once you have finished your testing.

Key words - Wage Compare, BOOT testing, annualised salary reconciliation, outer limits)

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