In September 2022, updates to several modern awards introduced strict reconciliation requirements for employees on annualised salaries. Employers must:

• Perform a reconciliation every 12 months (or upon termination) to ensure the annual salary covers all award entitlements.
• Identify any "outer limit" breaches, which occur when an employee works more overtime or penalty hours than what is accounted for in their annualised arrangement.
• Compensate for any shortfalls identified during the reconciliation period.

The PCC feature automates this audit by comparing actual gross pay against the standard per-hour award rates for the shifts recorded in the system.

This feature is specifically designed for businesses using the platform's automated award compliance tools. To use the PCC feature, your organisation must:

• Use pre-packaged Awards: You must have installed an official modern award package supplied by the platform. The system relies on the built-in logic and rule sets of these packages to calculate comparison costs.
• Configure employee records: Each relevant staff member must have a Pay Conditions Comparison record set up in their employee file.

Access to the feature depends on user permissions:

• Full Access: Complete oversight of configuration and reporting.
• Edit all employee details: Required for managing the comparison records within employee files.
• Reports permission: Required specifically to generate and export the reconciliation data.

The platform uses a background calculation job to determine the "award-based cost" of worked shifts. For these calculations to be accurate, the system relies on the following pillars:

• Timesheets and Work Types: Employees must complete approved timesheets for all shifts (including leave). Using correct Award work types ensures the system correctly interprets pay condition rules.
• Award Versions and Tags: The system applies pay rates based on the specific award version active during the work period. Allocating the correct Award tags to employee PCC records ensures rules are interpreted accurately.
• Standard Rule Sets: Comparison costs are determined strictly by pre-packaged Employment Hero award rules. Custom rules are ignored, and even disabled rules are used to interpret timesheet data for compliance purposes.
• Shift Segmentation: The logic breaks shifts into segments to apply the correct pay category (Ordinary, Overtime, or Penalty). It identifies and excludes time for automatic breaks, ensuring you are not over-costing shift time.
• Automated Triggers: The calculation job is automatically triggered when a pay run is finalised or when an employee's PCC record is individually or bulk configured.

For deep-dive audits, this logic is fully detailed in the Excel export, which provides a line-by-line analysis showing the exact pay rate template, rule set, and location applied to each segment of work.