Shift penalties

In your Position within an Award, you can add Shift Penalties, allowing you to pay your employees an additional amount for specific workday periods. Businesses commonly use these penalties to incentivise employees to take on shifts during hard-to-fill hours.

Before adding any Shift Penalties, it is important to note that this additional value differs from items like weekend and public holiday penalty rates. Those items can be set up in the Rate Labels section of your Award. 

To add a Shift Penalty:

1. From the main menu, navigate to Awards & Agreements and search for the Award you are working on.
2. Select the Award > Positions & Pay Rules.

3. Once you have located the position to which you would like to add the Shift Penalty, you can select the edit icon (pencil) to the right.

   

4. Within your position's pay rules, locate the day type (Weekday, Saturday, Sunday, or Public Holiday) and navigate to the rule condition time frame to which you want to add your Shift Penalty. Select Add Shift Penalty. 

   

5. Within the drop-down that appears, fill in the following fields. 
   • Shift Penalty ($): The total payable amount for the penalty. 
   • Penalty Label: This field allows you to specify a name for the penalty, which will appear on employee payslips (e.g. Night Shift Penalty).
   • Charge Penalty ($): When enabled, for labour-hire organisations, specify the amount charged that will be invoiced to clients. 
   • Variables Applied: These variables can impact reporting and whether the penalty amount is taxed or has a Superannuation Guarantee paid on top of it. By default, the following variables are applied; select the x next to them to remove them. 
     • Workers Compensation
     • Payroll Tax

     • Superannuation

       

6. Once you have updated all required timeframes, select Save Position. This will save the new Shift Penalties.

Applying the Shift Penalty to multiple positions

If you wish to apply the same Shift Penalties to other positions in your Award, you can do this by selecting Apply next to the position you just updated.

This feature will allow you to apply all the pay rules from that position, including Shift Penalties, to other positions of your choosing. 

  Please note: If these positions have differing pay rules, do not use this copy function as it will copy the same rules to all positions. 

There are very few reasons you would want or need to edit an existing Shift Penalty individually. Most commonly, it would be to:

• Update the Shift Penalty title that appears on payslips
• Add or remove variables assigned

If you'd like to learn how to update your Shift Penalty rates in bulk, please review the 'Updating Shift Penalties in bulk' section below. 

To update the Shift Penalty for an individual position:

1. From your chosen Award, navigate to Positions & Pay Rules, locate the Position you need to edit and select the edit (pencil) icon.
2. In each time frame, select Edit Shift Penalty, and you can edit any of the following.
   • Shift Penalty ($): The total payable amount for the penalty. 
   • Penalty Label: This field allows you to specify a name for the penalty, which will appear on employee payslips (e.g. Night Shift Penalty).
   • Charge Penalty ($): For labour-hire organisations, when enabled, specify the amount charged that will be invoiced to clients. 
   • Variables Applied: These variables can impact reporting and whether the penalty amount is taxed or has a Superannuation Guarantee paid on top of it. By default, the following variables are applied; select the x next to them to remove them. 
     • Workers Compensation
     • Payroll Tax
     • Superannuation
       
       
3. Repeat for other timeframes as needed, then select Save Position to save your changes. 

There are 2 methods in which you can update the Shift Penalty rates set in your Award positions in bulk. The method you choose to update your rates will depend on the outcome you want.

The ways you can update Shift Penalties in bulk are:

• CSV Import - This import allows you to bulk update the rates only for all position Shift Penalties.
• Rate Rise Tool - This tool is mainly used at the end of the financial year (EOFY) for the Annual Wage Increase. However, it can also be used anytime to update an Award. It allows you to update all the rates associated with your Awards and positions, including Shift Penalty rates, ordinary rates, overtime rates, and allowance rates. 

This section will explain using the CSV Import tool to update your Shift Penalty rates. For information on how to use the Rate Rise tool, please see our comprehensive guide, which is available here.

To use the CSV Import: 

1. From your main menu, navigate to Import/ Export > CSV Import.

2. From the drop-down list, select Award Position Shift Penalty Rates (From Export).

   

3. Select Export All Award Position Shift Penalty Rates to export your current rates.

4. As required, update the pay and charge rates in the exported CSV file, and save the file. Please do not close your file until it has been uploaded to your platform. 
   
    Hot tip: In your CSV file, you can apply a filter and sort your columns into ascending or descending order to bulk update the same rate across multiple positions.

   

5. Upload file, and select Import CSV to update. 
6. If any errors occur, first select Get Field Definitions to see the correct formatting for each field. Alternatively, look at the section below on Data Validation to see a breakdown of all the columns in your export. 

Data Validation

The information must be formatted correctly when importing any updated data into the platform. Please use the table below for assistance.

 Please note: Only the bolded fields in this import are editable. All other fields must remain the same for this import to work correctly.