Does this apply to me?

If you have any employees on the national minimum wage or a modern award you will need to increase the amount you pay them from the 1st July. 

What does this mean?

This means the 1st pay run you process for those employees after the 1st July will need to include this pay increase. 

Anyone not covered by an award or agreement will need to be paid $17.70 / hour or $672.70 per week. 

For employees covered under an award you will need to review the new pay rates applicable to your award. 

These are released by the Fair Work Ombudsman. It's a good idea for you to sign up to the email updates so you are alerted as soon as the new rates are available.

We recommend changing these rates as soon as you have completed the final pay run in June. 

Unfortunately there is no way to get out of this increase. It's the law! So yes your wages will increase 2.4% based on last year and then you need to factor the increase to super with the increase in wages as well as workers comp and potentially payroll tax! If you haven't already it's time to look at your pricing for this year and ensure you aren't going to be in cashflow crisis with these increases. 

Help!

Depending on how you have your payroll setup this can be an easy task or extremely time consuming one. 

For those of you on one of our bookkeeping packages, put your feet up as we have you covered :) We will update the awards for you on the 1st July. 

For those of you going it alone, you can change the earnings rate for each pay item if you have each component of the award split up. If you don't then you will need to go into the pay template for each employee and update the amount. 

As always if you are stuck, let one of the growthwise ninja's know and we can sort everything out for you!