Your industry is the complexity
Generic payroll software treats your sector's hardest rules as edge cases. We treat them as the job.
A council runs six agreements at once. A community services provider runs sleepovers, broken shifts and travel time. A retailer runs junior rates that change on a birthday. The payroll engine is the same – what changes is which parts of it carry the load for you.
Affinity is payroll software for mid-market and enterprise organisations across Australia and New Zealand, built for the sectors where pay rules get hard – retail, manufacturing, professional services, social services and local government. Modern Award, enterprise agreement and New Zealand collective agreement interpretation, labour costing and compliance all run natively, with three delivery models to match your team.
We Get It
You have been told your rules are unusual. You have been asked to simplify your business so it fits the software. You have watched the genuinely hard clauses get handed back to your payroll team to do by hand.
Affinity has spent 40+ years building payroll for Australian and New Zealand complexity, and now runs pay for over 500,000 employees. Not adapted for this market – built for it.
Find your sector
Each page covers the rules that actually make your payroll hard, and which part of the platform handles them.
Retail
From rosters that change daily across every store to labour cost you can see before the week is costed.
Manufacturing
From EBA and collective agreement clauses your system hands back to payroll to rules modelled once and run every pay.
Professional Services
From reconstructing project cost at month end to labour cost attributed the moment it is incurred.
Social Services
From SCHADS sleepovers and travel time absorbed by three people to award interpretation that just runs.
Local Government
From six agreements held together by institutional memory to one payroll that holds all of them.
Not listed?
Logistics and transport, construction and infrastructure, utilities, education, media and hospitality all run on Affinity too.
Straight Answer
Every payroll vendor will tell you they're experts in your industry
So here is the honest version. Payroll is ubiquitous, and the arithmetic is trivial – rate × units = pay. That equation is identical in a supermarket, a foundry, a law firm, an aged care home and a council depot.
The hard part
The hard part
The easy part
What differs between sectors – the only thing that differs – is how hard it is to establish that rate and those units. A sleepover. A broken shift. A junior's birthday falling mid-cycle. A higher duties day. An Australian RDO drawn down against a banked balance. A New Zealand relevant daily pay calculation on a week of variable hours. That is where payroll gets hard, and it is the only kind of industry expertise worth paying for.
The five sectors above are here because we have done that work in them many times over, so we can be specific rather than vague. But the engine underneath is not sector-specific, and neither are we. If your rules are complex and locally regulated, the label on your industry matters less than you would think.
Tell us the rule your system can't hold – whatever sector you're in.
Different sectors, the same four problems
The rules differ. What breaks underneath them rarely does.
Rules the system won't hold
Every sector has clauses the vendor called an edge case and handed back to you. Affinity automates at two levels so the non-standard cases stay in the system.
Calculation AutomationLabour cost you see too late
By the time cost reaches a report, the decision has been made. Scheduled, actual and budgeted cost side by side, before the pay run.
CostingA back office carrying it all
Complexity does not scale with headcount. Three delivery models let you decide how much of the cycle your team actually runs.
Compare delivery modelsCompliance exposure that compounds
An interpretation error repeated every fortnight becomes a back-pay project. Errors get caught before pay day, not after.
Payroll IQLooking for your role instead?
The industry pages cover what your sector's rules demand. The role pages cover what changes in your week.
Starting a payroll review?
Two free guides for the two decisions that come before a vendor conversation – whether the change is worth making, and how to judge who can make it.
Build a payroll business case that gets approved
Cost the status quo, value the change, and get to the payback, ROI and NPV a board actually decides on. Includes a savings estimator and a board-ready template.
Choosing a payroll provider
Define what you actually need before you compare a single vendor – then turn it into a scored brief every vendor answers. Includes an RFP template and weighted scoring tool.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Affinity organise payroll by industry?
Because in Australia and New Zealand the industry is the complexity. A council runs six enterprise agreements at once. A community services provider runs sleepovers, broken shifts and travel time under SCHADS. A retailer runs junior rates and penalty windows that change by state, then changes again across the Tasman. The payroll engine is the same – what differs is which parts of it do the heavy lifting for you.
My sector isn't listed. Does that mean Affinity isn't a fit?
No. These five pages cover the sectors we are asked about most often, but Affinity is built for AU/NZ payroll complexity generally – we also support logistics and transport, construction and infrastructure, utilities, education, media and hospitality. If your payroll is complex and locally regulated, it is worth a conversation. Get in touch
Do different industries need different delivery models?
Often, yes. Organisations with an experienced in-house payroll team usually run SaaS. Sectors with lean back offices and high award complexity – community services, aged care and disability in particular – more often choose Supported or Fully Managed. Councils and agencies frequently start Supported because it fits procurement and audit expectations. You can change model as your team changes.
Should I read the industry page or the page for my role?
Read both, in that order. The industry page explains how Affinity handles the complexity specific to your sector. The role pages explain what changes day to day for payroll managers, HR leaders, finance directors, IT and procurement.
Does Affinity handle both Australian and New Zealand operations?
Yes, natively and in one platform. Modern Awards, enterprise agreements, STP Phase 2 and payday super on the Australian side; the Holidays Act, payday filing, KiwiSaver and ACC on the New Zealand side. Trans-Tasman organisations run both from a single system rather than reconciling two.
Tell us the rule your system can't hold
Every sector has one. Bring us the clause, the roster pattern or the allowance your current vendor calls an exception.
Talk to someone who actually understands AU/NZ payroll. No sales pressure, just honest advice about whether we're the right fit.