Terms of service

1. What we provide

Award Compliance provides an automated, factual payroll analysis service. We review the payroll data you supply for a period of up to 12 months against the published rates of the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 (MA000009) or the Restaurant Industry Award 2020 (MA000119), as selected by you, and deliver a written report of any discrepancies identified.

Document reading is assisted by AI. The compliance calculation itself is not: every rate, penalty and entitlement is computed by a deterministic rules engine against the published Award rates, with no AI judgment involved in the calculation.

Our reports state whether discrepancies were, or were not, identified in the data supplied. A report is not a declaration or certification that your business is compliant with any law or industrial instrument, and must not be represented as such.

Award Compliance does not provide legal advice, accounting services, tax agent services or BAS agent services. Where remediation is required, you should engage a qualified professional.

2. Scope and eligibility

The service covers businesses with up to 30 employees whose staff are engaged under the Hospitality Industry (General) Award or the Restaurant Industry Award. Businesses covered by an enterprise agreement (EBA) or another industrial instrument are outside the scope of the service.

The analysis covers: base rates by classification level and rate period, Saturday, Sunday and public holiday penalty rates (casual and permanent), casual loading, evening (7pm–midnight) and night work (midnight–7am) loading on Monday to Friday shifts, overtime for both casual and permanent employees once rostered hours pass the applicable weekly threshold (or, for casuals, 12 hours in a single shift), junior rates by age including the rule that a junior employee serving alcohol must be paid as an adult, tool allowance and first aid allowance calculated per employee from rostered days actually worked, and the equivalent superannuation guarantee shortfall on any confirmed underpayment.

The analysis does not cover: apprentice rates, junior office classifications, other allowances (meal, laundry, leading-hand or otherwise), annualised salary arrangement reconciliation, or enterprise agreements. Public holiday penalties are checked against how your own documents label a shift, not against an independent state-by-state public holiday calendar. These exclusions are restated in every report. If any of them apply heavily to your business, your real exposure is likely higher than the figure in your report, not lower.

3. Your responsibilities

The accuracy of the analysis depends on the data you supply. You warrant that the payroll exports and timesheets you upload are complete, accurate and unaltered for the audit period.

Before your results are calculated, you confirm: the award classification level of each employee, and that your business is not covered by an enterprise agreement. Our findings rely on these confirmations. Where a classification is ambiguous, the service defaults to the conservative (lower-risk) reading rather than assuming an underpayment.

You must not upload employee tax file numbers. Where possible, pseudonymise employee names using initials or codes.

4. Price and payment

There is no fee to find out whether discrepancies exist. If none are identified, the service is free and nothing is charged.

If discrepancies are identified, a price is calculated based on the scale of what was found and shown to you before you pay for the full report — you always see the price before you're charged, and you're never charged to simply find out whether you owe something.

Payment is by card, processed by Stripe; your card details never touch our servers. Once the full report has been unlocked and delivered, the fee is non-refundable except as required by the Australian Consumer Law.

5. Delivery

Results are calculated automatically and are typically available in the same session, within minutes of upload. If the data supplied is incomplete or unreadable, your report will say so explicitly rather than guess, and will tell you what's needed to complete the picture.

Every finding is labelled with a confidence level (High / Medium / Low) based on the quality of the source documents and the amount of ambiguity in the data. Findings are also labelled confirmed, estimated, or informational — only confirmed findings are included in any remediation documents.

6. Data handling

Files are transferred over an encrypted connection, processed on a single secured machine, never shared with third parties, never sold, and never used to train any model. All uploaded files and working data are permanently deleted within 30 days of delivery of your report. Full detail is in our Privacy & data handling policy, which forms part of these terms.

7. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Award Compliance's total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the service — whether in contract, tort (including negligence), statute or otherwise — is limited to the amount you paid for the audit.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any consumer guarantee, right or remedy under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot lawfully be excluded. Where liability can be limited, it is limited (at our option) to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

We are not liable for decisions you make, or refrain from making, on the basis of a report, nor for penalties, back-payments or other liabilities of your business, which exist independently of any report.

8. Confidentiality

We treat all data you supply, and every report we produce, as strictly confidential. We will not disclose them to any third party except as required by law. We will never contact your employees.

9. General

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. If any provision is found unenforceable, the remainder continues in force. We may update these terms; the version in force when you place an order applies to that order.