Outsourced payroll for Australian small business, across care and disability, health, trades, professional services and salaried teams. Award interpretation, penalty rates, STP and super, backed by ongoing payroll CPD, with your rostering or timesheet software actually aligned to Xero, not fighting it.
True Tally runs award-compliant payroll for Australian small businesses: pay items and award interpretation, Single Touch Payroll Phase 2, superannuation, and rostering-to-Xero mapping, with real depth in the SCHADS Award. From $20 per payslip, fixed fees.
We keep your payroll compliant, your Xero clean and your team paid correctly, so you can lead the organisation.
This is a dedicated payroll service from True Tally Bookkeeping. You get specialist award and payroll knowledge applied to your business, across care, health, trades and professional services, backed by a real bookkeeping team, not a call centre or a rotating roster of contractors. We complete ongoing payroll CPD (continuing professional development) and use HR Central for award interpretation questions, so classification and allowance rules stay current, not guessed at.
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Registered BAS service provider · Xero Certified · Ongoing Payroll CPD
Award interpretation, sleepover and broken shift allowances, penalty rates, casual loading, they're all quiet places for a generalist payroll process to go wrong. Nothing looks broken in any single pay run. Then a Fair Work audit, a back-pay claim, or a superannuation guarantee charge arrives, and what was a small classification error becomes a five-figure liability and a staff trust problem you can't undo overnight.
Modern awards get reviewed and updated regularly, classification thresholds shift, allowance and penalty rates move, new determinations land. We run structured internal CPD sessions on award and payroll changes across the industries we serve, so a rate change shows up in your pay runs the pay cycle it takes effect, not months later when someone happens to notice.
Most teams already roster and log time in something like Deputy, Tanda, Shiftcare, ServiceM8 or a spreadsheet, not in Xero directly. The failure point is almost always in between: shift types that don't map to the right Xero pay items, sleepover or broken-shift entries that get flattened into ordinary hours on import, casual loading applied inconsistently. We build and maintain the actual mapping between your rostering software and Xero's pay items, so what was rostered is what gets paid, every time.
A classification that was correct on someone's first day is rarely still correct a year later once their role has grown. We review classifications on a schedule, not only when something goes wrong, catching the quiet drift before it becomes a wage claim.
Award interpretation and classification, superannuation guarantee including one-off Payday Super lodgements outside the regular cycle, Single Touch Payroll filed correctly every pay run plus the annual STP finalisation declaration, state payroll tax threshold monitoring and calculations as your team grows, leave accrual, and the reconciliation between your roster and your pay run, handled end to end. You get one team accountable for the whole thing, not a processor who runs whatever numbers they're handed.
NDIS and SCHADS classifications, sleepover and broken-shift allowances, and aged-care rosters that change week to week.
See care payroll →Practitioners and admin on different awards, on-call and after-hours loadings, timesheet software mapped cleanly into Xero.
See health payroll →Overtime, allowances, apprentices and site-based crews, with award-correct pay runs, STP and super.
See trades payroll →Law, accounting, consulting and agencies, including annualised salary reconciliation against the award.
See professional payroll →Salaried employees, annualised salary reconciliation, STP and super for growing small businesses.
See payroll guide →If your roster changes weekly, spans multiple award classifications, and runs through timesheet or rostering software rather than Xero directly, this is exactly the payroll problem we're built to solve.
This is a dedicated payroll outsourcing service from True Tally Bookkeeping, an Australian Registered BAS service provider and Xero Certified Partner. If you need full bookkeeping and BAS support alongside payroll, that's exactly what True Tally does, day to day, for small businesses across Australia.
There are no silly questions. You should be across your payroll numbers at all times, our job is to make that easy.
"Our job is simple: the right person, paid the right amount, reported correctly, on time, every pay run."
True Tally Bookkeeping
Quick answer: Payroll processing is the work of paying your staff correctly and on time, calculating gross pay, applying the right award rates, penalties and allowances, withholding PAYG, accruing leave, calculating superannuation, and lodging Single Touch Payroll to the ATO each pay run. Full payroll services go further again, interpreting the award, maintaining classifications, and reconciling wages back to your BAS. True Tally provides payroll services for small businesses across Australia on a fixed monthly fee from $20 per payslip for your first 10 staff.
Planning a new hire? Our free employee cost calculator shows the true cost of an employee per year and per hour, including super, leave loading, workers compensation and payroll tax.
Payroll looks like a processing task until the day it is not. The pay run goes out, STP reports to the ATO, super is paid, and everyone assumes it is right. The real risk sits underneath, in how hours are classified and interpreted, and it usually surfaces months later as an underpayment claim, a Fair Work query or an amended STP. Tiffany writes on this for Dynamic Business, including "The Fair Work Ombudsman is going looking for payroll mistakes".
Full-service payroll covers everything beyond the visible pay run. Processing the pay is only the surface. The rest is:
Done fully, payroll stays quiet. Done as processing only, the gaps accumulate until one becomes expensive.
STP Phase 2 requires each pay to be reported to the ATO on or before payday, with income itemised into set categories: gross, overtime, allowances, paid leave and more, each reported separately rather than lumped together. If your pay items are not mapped to the right categories, every pay reports incorrectly until a reconciliation or ATO review finds it.
Super is the other hard deadline. It must reach the fund by the quarterly due date, and the ATO now data-matches super against STP, so late or short super shows up fast. We keep both correct as a standing process, not a quarter-end scramble.
Most payroll errors are not arithmetic, they are interpretation. The SCHADS Award alone has sleepovers, broken shifts, minimum engagements and a stack of allowances that rostering software will happily flatten into ordinary hours if the mapping is wrong.
Trades awards add overtime, travel and tool allowances and apprentice progression. Professional services often run annualised salaries that must be reconciled against the award each year. We interpret the award, build those rules into Xero, and review classifications as people change roles.
A small business can run its own payroll, and plenty do well, until headcount, awards or staff turnover make it a liability. The real question is not whether you can process a pay run, it is whether you can keep up with award variations and carry the risk if you get it wrong.
Outsourcing to a team that runs continuing education on award and payroll changes removes that risk for a fixed monthly fee, usually for less than the time and mistakes it replaces. Either way the standard is the same: the right person paid the right amount, reported correctly, on time.
Payroll services cover everything involved in paying your team correctly: building pay items to the award, applying penalty rates and allowances, calculating and paying superannuation, tracking leave, handling terminations and final pays, and lodging Single Touch Payroll to the ATO every pay cycle. A full payroll service also reconciles your wages back to your BAS and year-end finalisation. True Tally runs payroll services for small businesses across Australia on fixed monthly fees.
Not quite. Payroll processing is the mechanical part, running the pay run, paying staff and lodging STP. Payroll services is the broader job that keeps that processing correct: interpreting the award, maintaining classifications as roles change, keeping super and STP Phase 2 compliant, and catching errors before they become underpayment claims. Processing only keeps the lights on; full payroll services carry the compliance risk for you.
We handle payroll across care and disability (including NDIS and aged care under the SCHADS Award), medical and allied health, trades and construction, professional services and salaried teams. Each has its own award and quirks, but the underlying problem is the same: hours captured in rostering or timesheet software that need to translate accurately into Xero pay items.
Shiftcare, Brevity and Careview are rostering and timesheet software widely used across NDIS and disability support, and similar tools are common in medical and allied health. They're usually where the actual worked hours, shift types and locations live, not in Xero. If that data isn't mapped correctly into Xero's pay items, sleepover shifts, broken shifts and penalty rates get flattened into ordinary hours without anyone noticing. We build and maintain that mapping, whichever of these platforms you use.
Award variations, Fair Work Commission determinations, classification level changes and allowance updates across the modern awards our clients work under, from SCHADS to the awards covering trades and professional services. We run these internally as a standing process, not a one-off, so changes are reflected in your payroll from the pay cycle they take effect.
A fixed monthly fee based on headcount, award complexity and how many rostering or timesheet systems need to be reconciled into Xero. No surprise invoices. Book the free consult and we'll give you an actual number.
Yes. We regularly step into payroll that's been misconfigured, review classifications and past pay runs, correct what needs correcting, and rebuild the Xero-to-rostering-software mapping properly from there.
A few honest questions worth asking about whoever keeps your books:
Cheaper service does not always mean better service. We invest in continuing professional education so we deliver genuine value, not just the lowest price. As we get to know your business for the long term, we review your expense-saving opportunities and recommend better setups and cost-effective ways to cut your overheads. Honest, candid, and on your side.
We'll review your current award classifications, super and STP setup, and how your rostering software lines up with Xero, then tell you exactly what we'd change.
Book My Free Consult or call 0468 159 950