Available for the following plans: Payroll - Plus
Available for the following User Access levels: Full Access, Restricted User (Reports permission)
The Pay Conditions Comparison (PCC) Report captures all pay conditions comparison calculation data and determines the variance between what salaried employees were actually paid versus what they would have earned on a standard hourly arrangement. By comparing actual gross earnings against award-based costings, the report highlights potential shortfalls and tracks overtime and penalty hours to help identify breaches of "outer limit" arrangement limits.
This article will show you how to manage the following:
Generate the comparison report
- Navigate to the Reports menu and select Payroll.
- Click the Pay conditions comparison report option.
- Select your filters:
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Service period: This is determined by the employee’s service start date.
- Current service year: The active 12-month period where the anniversary has not yet lapsed. (e.g., If a start date is 12/3/20 and you run the report in May '26, the current year is 12/3/26 to 11/3/27).
- Previous service year: The recently completed 12-month period (e.g., 12/3/25 to 11/3/26).
- Pay Run/Date Range: Alternatively, filter by a specific finalised pay run or a paid date range of finalised pay runs.
- Employee/Location/Entity: Filter by specific staff, locations, or employing entities.
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Service period: This is determined by the employee’s service start date.
- Tick Only include employees with negative variances to exclusively show staff with pay shortfalls.
- Click Run Report to view the comparison data in the interface.
Helpful Hint
If an employee does not appear in the filter search, it is because they do not have a PCC record configured in their employee file.
Understand report columns and results
The report interface provides several key columns to help you audit pay accuracy:
- Paid Earnings: Total gross earnings processed per finalised pay run for the selected period.
- Comparison Earnings: The total award-based cost calculated from the employee's PCC record and imported timesheets.
- Variance: The difference between Paid and Comparison earnings. Negative amounts (shortfalls) are highlighted in red.
- Variance %: The variance amount expressed as a percentage of the paid earnings.
- Total Hours: The total timesheet hours imported into the pay run.
- Overtime & Penalty Hours: A breakdown of hours worked in these categories to identify "outer limit" breaches.
Technical Note
If comparison earnings appear as zero, it may mean timesheets were not included in the pay run. If the calculation job is still in progress, you will see a message stating: "Comparison costings for this date range are currently in progress. Report cannot be generated at this time."
Export detailed audit data
Click Download to export the data. The PDF matches the browser interface, while the Excel export provides granular data:
- Select Excel from the download options.
- Choose whether to tick Show employee breakdown details in one worksheet. Ticking this creates one consolidated "Comparison Breakdown" tab; leaving it unticked creates a separate tab per employee.
- Review the Comparison Breakdown: Provides a line-by-line analysis of every timesheet, including:
- The pay rate template and rule set applied.
- Specific timesheet start/end times and segments (including automatic breaks).
- The applicable pay category (Ordinary, Overtime, or Penalty) and specific cost for each segment.