Using this guide

The guide demonstrates how Tanda assists to meet the requirements of the award.
Highlighted Text beginning with the '📜' icon shows the relevant clause in the Award
This guide details the most common sections of the Award. To view the full sections of the Award, refer to the Professional Employees Award 2020 on the Fair Work Ombudsman website.
This guide includes the award variation effective from the first pay period commencing on or after 16 September 2023.
This guide was last reviewed on 15 January 2026.

Enabling the Award Template

To utilise the Professional Employees Managed Template in your account you will first need to enable the Managed Template in your account.

For further details on how to do this, please see below.

How To Enable The Professional Employees Managed Template

Navigate to Time & Attendance > Compliance > Award Template > Apply Template:

Select the relevant payroll system if you have not already enabled a integration:

Scroll down the page to Apply an Award > click Enable next to the Award Template you would like to apply to your account:

Once the Award Template has been enabled you have the option to add staff to the award via the + Add Staff to Award button or via the steps outlined below:

For further information on how to configure the settings in your account including automatic breaks and public holidays please see the article Configuring Settings.

Classification of Staff

This section of the guide will take you through the options available for configuring employees under the Professional Employees Award Managed Template.

Setting Up Employees on the Managed Template

To pay an employee under a Managed Template, you will need to configure the applicable Managed Template in the Industry Award field of the employee profile.

Navigate to Time & Attendance > Staff > (Employee Name) > Pay Conditions > Edit > Under Industry Award select Professional Employees, as below:

Once the Professional Employees Managed Template has been assigned to the industry award field, the Employment Types and Classification/ Levels available under the Managed Template will populate via drop-downs for each selection.

Assigning an Employment Type

An Employment Type is a tag which all of the pay conditions (award rules) are associated to for an employee, including penalties and overtime.

An example of this kind of tag is Full Time.

The available employment type tags:

Full Time
Part Time
Casual
Salaried

If you use autopay for your salaried employees please see the Salaried Staff guide on how to best configure this in Tanda.

Assigning a Classification/ Level

A Classification/ Level is the tag that will pay the employee their base rate which all penalties and overtime is calculated off.

An example of this kind of tag in the Professional Employees Managed Template is Level 2 Experienced Professional.

The Available Classifications/ Levels:

Level 1 Graduate Professional - Pay Point 1.1 (3 year)
Level 1 Graduate Professional - Pay Point 1.1 (4-5 year)
Level 1 Graduate Professional - Pay Point 1.2
Level 1 Graduate Professional - Pay Point 1.3
Level 1 Graduate Professional - Pay Point 1.4
Level 2 Experienced Professional
Level 3 Professional
Level 4 Professional
Level 5 Experienced Medical Research

The above Classifications/ Levels facilitate the appropriate rates per the rounding details provided in the Fair Work Ombudsman Pay Guide for the Professional Employees Award.

The Base rates are increased in line with the Pay Guide annually and the new rates will always take effect from the first full pay period on or after the date stipulated by the Fair Work Commission.

Note: Schedule A - Classification Structure and Definitions sets out the requirements for employees to progress to the pay point.

Each time an employee progresses to the next pay point you will need to update the Classification/ Level tag within their pay conditions in Tanda.

This is because the criteria to warrant progression to the next pay point is handled outside of Tanda.

Casual Employee Set Up

Please see the below information on managing casual employees in Tanda.

Casual Loading

📜 11. Casual employees

11.1 A casual employee must be paid per hour worked:

(a) the minimum hourly rate appropriate to the employee’s classification prescribed in clause 14—Minimum rates; and

(b) a loading of 25% of that rate.

Casual loading in Tanda is applied using the multiplier method.

In the Tanda Employee Profile, the casual rate is expressed in the Monday to Friday pay rate with the base hourly rate showing the rate without the loading added. This is demonstrated in the below image:

The base hourly rate is always expressed as 1.25x on the timesheet and where applicable, penalty rates are expressed with the additional casual loading amount:

Casual Conversion

Australia's National Employment Standards provide a casual employee with a pathway to become a permanent employee. This pathway is known as ‘casual conversion’.

Casual conversion is referenced under the Professional Employees Award:

📜 11.3 Offers and requests for casual conversion

Offers and requests for conversion from casual employment to full-time or part-time employment are provided for in the NES.

Tanda has a Casual Conversion Dashboard which can be used to identify casual employees that may be suitable for conversion to a permanent employment type.

For further information on casual conversion, see the Fair Work Ombudsman resource 'becoming a permanent employee' or Tanda’s summary here.

Paying Above Award

If employees are paid a base rate higher than the Award rate, you may enter the employee's above award rate in the Overriding Hourly Rate field in the pay conditions:

This will override the hourly rate in the Managed Template and penalty rates and overtime will be calculated from this new rate.

Note: The overriding hourly rate field will not be considered by the Higher Duties Builder in the Professional Employees Managed Template.

For further information please see the Pay Above Template article.

Timesheets

Once an employee has clocked in and out of the Tanda app, this clocked time will be converted into a timesheet.

The time worked will be interpreted in Tanda based on the employee's Employment Type and Classification/ Level as configured in the Pay Conditions tab.

General Information

Once the employee classification has been set up, the rules applicable to that worker will now apply on the employee’s Timesheet when a shift is worked.

An example of an interpreted timesheet can be seen below.

The example employee has been configured to be full time and worked ordinary hours between the hours of 9:00am to 6:00pm:

For a general overview of timesheets in Tanda see Getting Started: Timesheets.

More examples of the automatic penalties and overtime conditions under the Professional Employees Managed Template are detailed below.

Automated Penalty Periods

Automatic penalty rates will populate in the timesheet for hours worked based on the configuration of the employee in Tanda.

Penalty Rates

The below penalty rates have been introduced into the Professional Employees Award 2020 per clause 18.4:

📜 18.4 Penalty rates

(a) An employer must pay an employee penalty rates for all hours worked at the direction of the employer as follows:

The above penalty rates will automatically apply in Tanda based on the time of day and day of the week.

For example, please see the below Monday to Saturday - Before 6.00am rate applying to a full time employee on a Tuesday:

The public holiday penalty will also automatically apply based on the public holidays configured in your Tanda account:

For more information on managing public holidays in Tanda, please see Configure public holidays dates.

Minimum Engagements

Under the Award, Casual employees require a minimum engagement of 2 hours per shift as outlined in the below clause:

📜 11.2 A casual employee must be paid for at least 2 consecutive hours of work on each occasion they are required to attend work.

The above minimum engagement will automatically apply in the timesheet for Casual employees if they have worked less than 2 hours in a shift.

The minimum engagement will apply to any shifts under 2 hours even if there have been two or more shifts in the day. Please see the below example of a minimum engagement applying for a Casual employee:

Automated Overtime Conditions

For Full Time, Part Time and Casual employees, overtime is to be paid for working in excess of 38 ordinary hours per week or per cycle.

📜 18.2 Payment for overtime

(a) The employer must, subject to clauses 18.2(c), 18.3, 18.4 and 18.5, pay a full time employee the appropriate minimum hourly rate in clause 14 for all hours worked in excess of 38 hours per week, or an average of 38 hours per week over a period agreed pursuant to clause 13.2. This must include work on or in connection with call-backs and work performed on electronic devices or otherwise remotely.

Overtime for working in excess of 38 ordinary hours will apply automatically in Tanda:

The period over which this overtime is calculated can be set up to 13 weeks per clause 13.2 of the Award:

📜 13. Ordinary hours of work

13.2 An employer and employee may agree that the employee’s ordinary hours of work will be averaged over a period of up to 13 weeks.

The overtime averaging period can be set up in Tanda to reflect this. This overtime averaging period can either be set to apply to all employees across your organisation or can be customised per employee.

For details on how to configure this please see Overtime Averaging.

Award Template Tags

In Tanda, award tags are applied to a timesheet in order to apply a manual overtime rule or override an automatic overtime rule.

Under the Professional Employees Managed Template the available shift tags are:

Call Back
Time Off In Lieu (TOIL)

For further details on the operation of the shift tags please see below.

Call Back

The ability to categorise worked time as a Call Back has been introduced into the Professional Employees Managed Template to facilitate clause 18.2:

18.2 Payment for overtime

NOTE: Time worked on a call back will count towards overtime for working in excess of 38 ordinary hours over the period.

To mark worked time as a Call Back, you will first need to save the Call Back shift tag to the profile of the applicable employee/s.

To do this navigate to Workforce > Staff > Employee Name) > Pay Conditions & Regular Hours > in Pay Fields click Make a Change > under Allowances/ Penalties search for the Call Back shift tag:

Then click Save Contract Changes.

To categorise time worked as a Call Back in a timesheet, the shift must be tagged as Call Back.

Please see the below example of the application of the Call Back shift tag for a Full Time employee:

Before the application of the shift tag:

After the application of the shift tag:

Automation of the Call Back Shift Tag

The application of the Call Back shift tag can be automated by associating the tag to a team.

To do this navigate to Workforce > Teams > select go to the location with the call back specific team and select this team by clicking the pencil icon:

Click Show advanced options...

Then under Associated Tags search and select the Call Back shift tag:

Then click Update Team Details at the bottom of the page.

Then when the employee works in this team the Call Back shift tag will automatically apply:

Time Off In Lieu (TOIL)

Time off instead of payment for overtime has been introduced into the Award via this variation.

18.3 Time off instead of payment for overtime

(a) An employee and employer may agree in writing to the employee taking time off instead of being paid for a particular amount of overtime that has been worked by the employee.

....

(d) The period of time off that an employee is entitled to take is the same as the number of overtime hours worked. EXAMPLE: By making an agreement under clause 18.3 an employee who worked 2 overtime hours is entitled to 2 hours’ time off.

This is commonly known as Time Off In Lieu or TOIL.

To categorise time worked as TOIL in a timesheet, the shift must be tagged as TOIL so that time off is accrued instead of overtime rates being paid.

The overtime hours that have had a TOIL tag applied to them will no longer be costed in the timesheet.

Note: The TOIL Accrual report can be used to track and report on TOIL accruals and TOIL expiry.

For further details see TOIL Accrual Report Explained.

Please see the below example of the application of the TOIL shift tag for a Full Time employee who has worked in excess of 38 ordinary hours for the period -

Before the application of a TOIL shift tag:

After the application of the TOIL shift tag:

Getting Set Up to Use Shift Tags

To use the above shift tags, you will need to set up your account to use Shift Tags.

Turning on the Setting

To apply shift tags on the Timesheets, you must first have Award Tags feature turned on. Turning on this feature will give you the drop down box on timesheets from which shift tags can be selected.

To turn this feature on, navigate to Settings > Timesheets > Show Advanced Settings > select the box next to Show an extra dropdown to adjust shift cost (Award Tag):

Now you will see the shift tags that have been saved to an employee profile available via the drop-down in the timesheet:

Adding Shift Tags to the Employee Profile

To use shift tags in an employee timesheet, you will first need to save the shift tag to the employee profile.

To do this navigate to Workforce > Staff > Employee Name) > Pay Conditions > Edit > in the pay conditions locate the Allowances field and search for the TOIL shift tag:

To learn more about creating Shift Tags please see here.

Applying Shift Tags in the Timesheet

Note: Only one shift tag can be applied to a shift at once.

Once you have saved the applicable shift tags to the employee profile, they will populate under the shift tag drop-down in the timesheet:

Allowances

The vehicle allowance pursuant to the Professional Employees Award 2020 has been built into the Tanda Managed Template.

Using the Vehicle Allowance

📜 16.3 Vehicle allowance

The employer must pay an employee required to use their private vehicle on the employer’s business at least $0.95 per kilometre travelled. For the purposes of clause 16.3 the use of the employee's private vehicle is by mutual agreement between the employee and employer.

This allowance will not apply unless specifically added to the timesheet.

This allowance is set up to manual in Tanda as it is not predictable when this allowance would be applicable.

To apply an allowance, go to the relevant employee’s timesheet and click on the blue ‘+ Add’ button under the start and finish times as shown below:

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Then, from the dropdown, select the manual allowance you wish to apply.

Please note that any custom automatic allowances will appear in the drop down however they cannot be edited.

Enter the number of units you wish to apply, then press the ‘Save Allowances’ button to apply it to the timesheet. Tanda will calculate the total cost of the allowance for you: