Tanda's Wage Compare feature allows users to compare an employee's actual earnings to what they would have earned under a different pay classification. It is modelled on the Fair Work Commission's Better Off Overall Test (BOOT).
Customers can use Wage Compare to compare an employee's or a prospective employee's pay under any two pay configurations.
What Does This Help Guide Cover?
What is the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT)?
The BOOT framework, as outlined by the Fair Work Commission, is used to ensure that employees are better off under a registered agreement compared to their relevant modern award.
As the Fair Work Commission explains: "The better off overall test considers the terms that are more beneficial and less beneficial to employees in an agreement, compared to the terms in the relevant modern award.
The better off overall test requires the identification of agreement terms which are more beneficial, and the terms which are less beneficial, and then an overall assessment is made as to whether employees would be better off under the agreement than under the relevant award."
To learn more, see this guide from the Fair Work Commission.
How Wage Compare Works
Wage Compare generates a report comparing:
What an employee was paid based on their pay configuration used for payroll purposes (e.g., their "Timesheet Cost"); and
What the employee would have been paid under a different employment classification (e.g., their "Compared Cost"), as entered on the Wage Compare tab of their profile.
The reports use the employee's Timesheets to compare their actual payroll classification with their Wage Compare classification.
Enabling Wage Compare
To enable Wage Compare in your account, navigate to Settings > Feature Management.
Once enabled, a 'Wage Compare' tab will appear in the Pay Conditions tab of Staff Profiles.
Creating a Wage Comparison
Once you have enabled the feature, you can create a Wage Comparison. To do so:
Open an employee's profile and navigate to Pay Conditions > Wage Compare.
Click EDIT and enter the period type, anchor date type, anchor date, and current reporting period. Your options for 'Period type' are yearly, six monthly, quarterly, or the current pay period. Your options for anchor date type are from the start of employment, from the earliest wage comparison, or custom. Click SAVE to confirm your changes.
Click the + ADD WAGE COMPARISON button to create a new comparison. You will be prompted to enter the following details:
Enter the pay configuration that you want to use to calculate the employee's Compared Cost.
Click SAVE to confirm your changes.
Do: Add the same amount of detail here as you would use on the employee's actual payroll configuration, including entering details for the award, employment type, classification, and allowances.
Don't: Add details to the Base hourly rate or annual salary fields, unless you want to override the configurations generated by award, employment type and classification.
If a rate is added to the Base hourly rate field, this will remain the rate for the Wage Comparison profile until edited or removed. Annual Wage Increases will not be considered.
Note: Because Tanda will begin re-calculating all historical timesheets in the background, it can take up to 15 minutes between saving these wage comparison settings and the report being ready to run.
When configured, your wage comparison will look similar to the image below. You can edit or delete it using the respective EDIT and DELETE buttons.
What Do the 'Outer Limit Settings' Mean?
Outer limits allow you to specify the maximum penalty/overtime hours a salaried staff member can work before needing to be paid extra. These 'outer limit settings' are intended for employers who want to comply with an award clause like this one:
(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.
To learn more about outer limit settings and how they work, see our help guide.
Running the Wage Comparison Reports
To run our Wage Comparison reports, navigate to Reports > All Reports > Employee Reports.
Currently, there are two Wage Compare reporting options:
The Wage Compare Progress Report, which shows the compared costs for employees with a wage comparison configured, filtered by their configured wage comparison reporting period. For example:
The Wage Compare Report, which shows the costs for employees with a wage comparison configured. For example:
Only employees with a Wage Comparison configured will appear in these reports. You may also see the old Wage Comparison report listed under Payroll > Uncategorised. This report's functionality has been superseded by our newer reports, and it will soon be deprecated.
For more information on setting filters and running these reports, see our Managing Reports help guide.
How to 'Top-Up' an Employee's Pay
Sometimes, the Wage Compare reports will show that the employee would have been paid more under their Wage Compared configuration (i.e. the Compared Cost is greater than the Timesheet Cost).
To pay an employee more after running the Wage Compare report, you can use a simple Allowance in Tanda to add this top-up payment.
To set up an allowance for this purpose:
Navigate to Time & Attendance > Compliance > Allowances > Manage.
Click '+ New Allowance' to create an allowance.
For step 3, 'What type of Allowance?, select Manual Allowance.
For step 5, '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).
Click CREATE ALLOWANCE to confirm your changes.
Once the allowance has been created, refer to the 'Cost Difference' column in the Wage Compare Report to see which staff are being paid less than their compared cost (shown in red).
To add the allowance, navigate to the employee's timesheet for the current pay period and click '+Add Allowances' on the relevant shift.
You will see the following screen, where you can select the appropriate allowance and enter the relevant cost difference into the Units field. Click Save Allowances to confirm your changes.
FAQs and Troubleshooting
Will Wage Comparisons impact what is exported to payroll?
Will Wage Comparisons impact what is exported to payroll?
No.
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.
What comparisons and testing can I perform?
What comparisons and testing can I perform?
Wage Compare can be used to test any two payroll configurations. Common use cases include:
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 can run the Wage Comparison Report?
Can I modify permissions for who can run the Wage Comparison Report?
Yes. To do so, navigate to Settings > Permissions > View All Permission Settings > Show Advanced Settings > Customise Access & Roles Here. Then, follow the prompts and enable the relevant 'View Reports' permission for your desired role-type.
For more information on permissions, check out our help guide here.
Can I use Wage Compare for Prospective Employees?
Can I use Wage Compare for Prospective Employees?
Yes. 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 in a role.
You can use Wage Compare for this purpose. You will need to:
Set up a 'Test Employee' profile mimicking the future employee's proposed salary/hourly rate and award classification; and
Create hypothetical timesheets for this 'Test Employee' to use for Wage Compare purposes.
Remember to deactivate the test profile once you have finished your testing. For details on doing so, see our help guide.
Key words: Wage Compare, BOOT testing, annualised salary reconciliation, outer limits)