Most award pay errors in cleaning and security businesses don't come from someone misreading the award. They come from the hand-overs: the roster says one thing, the timesheet says another, the award interpretation rules were set up for last year's sites, and payroll pays whatever arrives. Fixing it means being able to trace every pay line back to the shift that caused it, across every system it passed through. This article explains where the chain breaks, what the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) has found when it checks these industries, and what a traceable pay calculation looks like. It is not legal or payroll advice; check your award obligations with the FWO or an employment adviser.
Why cleaning and security pay is hard to get right
The Cleaning Services Award 2020 and the Security Services Industry Award 2020 are not unusually complicated on paper. The trouble is how many rules apply at once to a workforce spread across many sites:
- Casual, part-time and full-time staff on different loadings.
- Early morning, night, weekend and public holiday penalties.
- Minimum engagement periods, broken shifts and overtime.
- Allowances that only apply at some sites or for some duties.
- Site-specific arrangements written into a client contract but not into payroll.
A guard who covers a Saturday night shift at short notice, at a site with its own allowance, touches almost every one of those rules in a single shift. Multiply that by hundreds of shifts a week and small set-up errors turn into real underpayments.
What the Fair Work Ombudsman has found
The FWO has looked at both industries many times. According to the FWO's national cleaning services follow-up campaign (2012–13), 222 of the 578 cleaning businesses audited (38%) had not met all their workplace obligations, and underpayment of the minimum hourly rate was the most common problem. The campaign recovered more than three-quarters of a million dollars in back pay for over 1,200 cleaners.
Security has a similar record. In January 2025 the FWO announced court action against the former operator of a security business in Perth, alleging 44 casual guards were deliberately underpaid a total of $911,292 between December 2019 and May 2022. According to the FWO, the guards were paid flat rates of $21 to $25 an hour no matter when they worked, so casual loadings, weekend and public holiday penalties, overtime and shift allowances were missed.
Two things have raised the stakes since then:
- Underpayment can now be a crime. From 1 January 2025, intentionally underpaying wages or entitlements can be a criminal offence. Honest mistakes are not covered, but you need to be able to show how your pay was calculated to prove a mistake was honest.
- Records must hold up. Employers must keep time and wages records for 7 years. If those records live in three systems that don't agree, they are hard to defend.
Where the chain breaks between systems
In a typical cleaning or security business, the path from shift to payslip looks like this:
- Roster. Shifts are planned in a rostering tool (Deputy, Microkeeper, Humanforce or similar), often by site supervisors.
- Attendance. Staff clock on and off with a phone app, a kiosk or a paper sign-in sheet that someone types in later.
- Award interpretation. Rules turn the hours into ordinary time, penalties, overtime and allowances.
- Payroll. The interpreted hours are exported to payroll, mapped to pay items, and paid.
- Client invoice. The same hours (or the contracted hours) are billed to the client.
Award-interpreting rostering tools do the calculation well when they are set up correctly. The errors usually sit around them:
- Re-keyed hours. Paper sign-in sheets typed into the roster, or roster changes typed into payroll. This is double entry (the same information typed into two systems), and every retype is a chance for a wrong number.
- Pay item mapping. The rostering tool exports "Saturday penalty" but payroll maps it to the wrong pay item, so the rate is wrong in every pay run until someone notices.
- Site rules nobody updated. A new client contract adds a site allowance, but it only exists in the contract file, not in the interpretation rules.
- Corrections made in the wrong place. Payroll fixes the hours to get this week's pay out. The roster still shows the old hours, so next week the same error comes back and the client invoice doesn't match.
- Rate changes on 1 July. The annual wage increase is loaded into one system but not another, or loaded with the wrong start date.
All of these share one root cause: there is no single source of truth (one place everyone takes the number from) for who worked which shift, at which site, under which rules. The roster, payroll and invoices are separate data silos (information stuck in separate systems), and the reconciliation between them happens in someone's head or a spreadsheet, if it happens at all.
How to make pay calculations traceable
You don't need to replace your rostering or payroll software to fix this. You need the systems connected properly and a routine that proves they agree.
Pick one place for each fact
- Shift times: the attendance record, once approved. Not payroll.
- Award rules and site allowances: the interpretation rules, set from the award and the client contract together.
- Pay items: one documented mapping from each interpreted pay category to a payroll pay item.
If payroll finds a wrong shift, it goes back to the roster to be fixed and re-exported, so the roster, payroll and invoice stay the same.
Connect the systems instead of retyping
Paper sign-in sheets and manual exports are where most errors start. An integration (systems passing information to each other automatically) between attendance, rostering and payroll removes the retyping. Where an off-the-shelf connector exists, use it; where it doesn't fit your sites or awards, a small custom link can do the job. See our business process automation work for how we approach this.
Check three totals every pay run
- Approved hours in the roster for the period, by site.
- Hours imported into payroll, by pay category.
- Hours billed to clients, by site.
If the three don't match, find out why before the pay run closes. Done as an automatic report, this takes minutes rather than an afternoon.
Keep an audit trail
An [audit trail](/guides/plain-english-glossary#audit-trail) (a record of who changed what, and when) for shift edits and rule changes is what lets you show the FWO that an error was a mistake and was fixed. It also tells you which rule caused it.
What it looks like when it's fixed
On Monday morning, the payroll officer opens one report. For every site it shows rostered hours, approved hours, paid hours and billed hours side by side, with any differences flagged. Each pay line on a guard's payslip can be clicked back to the shift, the site and the award rule that produced it. When the 1 July increase lands, the new rates are loaded once and flow to the roster, payroll and the client price schedule together. And when a client asks why their invoice changed, the answer takes one search, not a week. The same joined-up hours also show what each site really earns; see our post on facility services profit by site and contract.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't award interpretation software enough on its own?
It does the calculation, but only with the rules and mappings it is given. Most errors we see sit in the set-up, the exports to payroll, and corrections made outside the system. The software needs to be connected and checked, not just switched on.
How far back do I need to keep time and pay records?
Employers must keep time and wages records for 7 years under the Fair Work rules. Check the Fair Work Ombudsman's record-keeping guidance for exactly what must be kept.
What should I do if I find an underpayment?
Work out the amount, pay it back, and fix the cause so it doesn't repeat. The Fair Work Ombudsman has guidance on correcting underpayments. Get employment advice if the amounts or periods are large.
Can you fix this without changing our rostering or payroll software?
Usually, yes. Most of the work is connecting what you already have, cleaning up the pay item mapping and setting up the checks. Replacing software is rarely the first step.
Where to start
If your roster, payroll and invoices tell three different stories, our facility services page shows how we work with cleaning and security businesses. For a full map of how pay flows through your systems and where it breaks, the $5,000 Process & Systems Audit gives you a written report. Or book a free initial chat to talk it through.
Sources: FWO national cleaning services follow-up campaign report · FWO media release, 16 January 2025 · FWO: criminalising wage underpayments