How to Check Employment Hero Timesheets for Award Compliance (And Why Your Current Setup Might Be Gaps)

If you're using Employment Hero HR — but not Employment Hero Payroll — your timesheets might be compliant with your rostering system, but they may not be compliant with Australian employment law. Here's the gap most HR-only customers don't know exists.

The Split That Creates the Compliance Gap

Employment Hero sells two distinct products:

Product	What it does	What it doesn't do
Employment Hero HR	Time & attendance, timesheets, rostering, leave management, onboarding, employee self-service	Award interpretation, pay rate calculations, penalty rate application
Employment Hero Payroll	Award interpretation, automated pay calculations, STP Phase 2 reporting, payslips, superannuation	—

This split is intentional. Businesses can start with the HR module for time tracking and rostering, then add Payroll when they're ready to run pay runs in-house.

The problem: thousands of Australian businesses are on Employment Hero HR only. They track time, manage rosters, and approve timesheets — but they're either running payroll in a separate system or outsourcing it entirely.

And here's what most of those businesses don't realise: Employment Hero HR doesn't include award interpretation. The timesheet system records what time your staff started and finished. It doesn't check whether those hours were paid at the correct award rate, whether overtime applies, or whether weekend or public holiday penalties should have been applied.

Your timesheets are clean. Your compliance might not be.

What Award Interpretation Actually Means (And Why It's Not Optional)

In Australia, the Fair Work Commission oversees 122 Modern Awards — industry-specific agreements that set minimum pay rates, penalty rates, overtime thresholds, allowances, and leave entitlements.

Every business with award-covered employees must:

• Apply the correct base pay rate for the relevant award and classification level
• Apply the correct penalty rates for evenings, weekends, and public holidays
• Calculate overtime when daily or weekly hours exceed award thresholds
• Account for allowances (meal, travel, tool, first aid — award-specific)
• Adjust rates for age-based transitions (e.g., when a junior employee turns 21)

If you have staff under the Hospitality Award, the General Retail Industry Award, the Clerks — Private Office Award, or any of the others, you're legally required to get every one of these right — every pay period.

Getting it wrong means underpayment. The Fair Work Ombudsman has recovered over $800 million in unpaid wages from Australian businesses in recent years. The majority of those cases came from businesses that thought their payroll was correct.

The PAGA Risk Nobody Talks About

Underpayment isn't just a payroll error. Under the Protection of Award Entrance (PAGA) framework, almost any underpayment — no matter how small — can be escalated by unions or employees into a civil penalty action in the Federal Court.

Fines can reach $18,780 per employee per underpayment event for small businesses, and significantly more for larger ones.

The kicker: even if your timesheet system is recording hours perfectly, if those hours are being translated into pay at the wrong rates somewhere downstream, you're exposed.

A business on Employment Hero HR with a disconnected payroll process has a wide gap where this can happen silently — for months or years — until an audit finds it.

How to Check Your Employment Hero Timesheets for Award Compliance

If you're on Employment Hero HR (without the Payroll module), here's how to audit your timesheets against your award obligations:

Step 1: Identify Which Award Covers Each Employee

Check each employee's employment contract. The award should be specified there. If you're not sure which award applies, use the Fair Work Ombudsman's Find My Award tool or consult a payroll specialist.

Step 2: Pull Your Timesheets from Employment Hero HR

1. Log into Employment Hero HR
2. Go to Time → Timesheets Management
3. Filter by the relevant pay period and employee(s)
4. Export to CSV or copy the data you need

Note: you're looking at clock-in/clock-out times and hours worked. You're not seeing pay rates, penalties, or allowances — because EH HR doesn't calculate those.

Step 3: Cross-Reference Hours Against Award Pay Rules

For each employee, check:

• Base rate: Does the employee's classification match the award rate for their role? (Check the Fair Work Pay Guide for your award — updated each July after the Annual Wage Review)
• Ordinary hours: Did they work within ordinary hours, or did hours creep into overtime?
• Penalty rates: Were weekend, evening, or public holiday hours worked? Were the correct penalty loadings applied?
• Age transitions: Did any employee have a birthday since the last pay run that moves them into a higher pay point?

This is where things get complex — and where spreadsheets stop working reliably. Awards have different rules for different industries, and the interaction between ordinary hours, overtime, and penalty rates varies significantly.

Step 4: Look for the Gaps

Common compliance gaps in timesheet data:

• Unpaid breaks that should attract a loading
• Split shifts that trigger meal allowances under certain awards
• Annualised salary employees where record-keeping requirements under the award haven't been met
• Casual employees whose casual loading hasn't been separately identified
• Public holiday work not flagged or loaded correctly

If any of these apply to your workforce, your timesheet data is telling you something incomplete.

The Faster Path: AwardChecker Connects to Employment Hero

Doing this manually is error-prone and time-consuming — especially if you have multiple employees across different awards and classifications.

AwardChecker is built to fill exactly this gap. It connects directly to your Employment Hero HR timesheet data and validates each employee's hours against the correct modern award rates — including:

• Base hourly rates by award and classification
• Penalty rate calculations (Saturday, Sunday, public holidays)
• Overtime thresholds and rates
• Allowance triggers based on hours and conditions
• Age-based rate transitions

You get a clear compliance report for each pay period — before you process payroll, not after.

How AwardChecker Works with Employment Hero HR

1. Connect your Employment Hero account — Authorise AwardChecker to read your timesheet and employee data (API-level integration, no manual export required)
2. Upload or sync your pay period — Select the pay period you want to check
3. Get an award compliance report — AwardChecker reviews every employee's hours against their applicable award and flags any potential underpayments or calculation errors
4. Resolve before you pay — Correct any flagged items before running payroll

The report is structured for payroll teams and bookkeepers: it shows exactly which employee, which pay period, which issue, and what the correct rate should be.

What You Need to Know Before You Run Your Next Pay Run

If you're processing payroll outside of Employment Hero Payroll — or using an external bookkeeper or accountant — you are responsible for ensuring award rates are correctly applied to every timesheet. The fact that timesheets came from a compliant HR system doesn't mean the pay calculation will be.

The businesses most at risk are those who:

• Use Employment Hero HR for timesheets and rostering
• Run payroll manually or through a separate system
• Have employees across multiple awards (e.g., Hospitality, Retail, Clerks)
• Have part-time or casual staff with variable hours
• Haven't had a payroll audit in the past 12 months

If that's you, now is the time to check. A single pay period review through AwardChecker takes minutes — and it could identify a compliance gap that's been quietly accumulating for months.

Ready to Check Your Employment Hero Timesheets?

Upload your timesheet CSV to AwardChecker and run a free award compliance check on your current pay period — no account required.

Run a Free Award Compliance Check →

This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or payroll advice. Award obligations vary by industry, classification, and individual employment circumstances. Consult a qualified payroll specialist or employment lawyer for advice specific to your business.