For Manufacturing
Your agreement is the product of hard bargaining – your payroll system should hold it
Most vendors automate the easy clauses and hand the rest back to your payroll team. That is not automation. That is a handover.
24x7 rotating rosters that cross midnight, shift loadings, overtime cascades, site allowances, RDO banking, annualised salary reconciliation – modelled once and run every pay, across every agreement you bargained, Australian enterprise or New Zealand collective.
Affinity's manufacturing payroll software holds enterprise agreements in Australia and collective agreements in New Zealand, for producers and distributors running 24x7 rotating shifts, loadings, site allowances, RDO banking and annualised salary reconciliation. Configuration covers the standard clauses, a custom rules layer holds the rest, and labour cost is attributed by line, shift and plant.
Who This Is For
This is for manufacturers, food producers and distribution operations across Australia and New Zealand running continuous or rotating shifts under enterprise agreements in Australia or collective agreements in New Zealand – where the payroll rules were negotiated, not downloaded.
If you have a spreadsheet that exists purely because the system couldn't hold a clause, this page is for you.
The clauses you fought for
shouldn't become manual work.
The challenge
- • Continuous and rotating shifts that span midnight
- • Multiple concurrent agreements across sites and classifications
- • Site, dirt, height, tool and leading hand allowances
- • Australian RDO accrual and banking, shift swaps, overtime cascades
The impact
- • Every EBA renegotiation becomes a change request and a wait
- • Annualised salary reconciliation done by hand, or not at all
- • Back-pay runs that consume weeks
- • Labour cost per line and shift arriving after the month closes
A better way
You negotiated those terms for a reason. A payroll system's job is to hold them – not to tell you which ones it can manage and hand the rest back.
The Rules You Actually Run
Built for ANZ shift work, not adapted for it.
24x7
Continuous and rotating rosters interpreted as shifts, not calendar days
Many agreements
Concurrent EBAs in Australia and collective agreements in New Zealand, one pay run
Allowances
Site, dirt, height, tool, leading hand and first aid, triggered by conditions
12 elements
Labour cost split by line, shift, plant, project and cost centre
Two levels of automation, so nothing gets handed back
First, far more is handled in configuration than other payroll systems allow – pay codes, code groups and informational codes that calculate automatically. Then, for whatever's left, a custom rules layer holds the edge cases a standard system can't.
- Night shifts crossing midnight paid as one shift, with the right loading
- Overtime cascades, recall, minimum breaks and shift swaps interpreted from actual time
- Australian RDOs that accrue, bank and draw down against the agreement
- Australian annualised wage arrangements reconciled against actual hours, so you can evidence the arrangement still covers the entitlement
How the two levels work
Configuration
Shift loadings, penalties, allowances, overtime and Australian RDO accrual – handled as pay codes and code groups that calculate themselves.
Custom rules layer
The clause your last vendor called an exception. Modelled once, run every pay, no spreadsheet.
If the data and logic can be expressed, we model it. That is the difference.
Labour cost by line, shift and plant – before the month closes
Labour is your biggest controllable cost and the hardest to see. Affinity attributes it as it is incurred, so operations can act on it while the shift pattern can still be changed.
- Up to 12 cost elements, so one employee's time splits across line, shift, plant, project and cost centre
- Scheduled vs actual vs budget, side by side, before the pay run
- Overtime and penalty spend visible while the roster is still open
- Timesheets validated against roster, exceptions flagged before payroll sees them
Labour cost, week to date
Illustrative view. Night shift overspend is visible on Wednesday, not at month end.
Journals that land clean in your ERP
Traditional payroll systems force you to adapt your financial reporting to their export templates. Affinity works the other way around: describe the GL format you need in plain English, and the export is generated to match.
- Plant and cost-centre level detail carried through from costing
- Configured in hours, not weeks of back-and-forth with a technical team
- File or REST API delivery into SAP, Dynamics, Oracle or whatever you run
- Time and attendance, HRIS and ERP connected rather than double-handled
Pay run to ledger
Your path to an agreement that runs itself
Bring us the clause that breaks things
Send the agreement. We parse it and show you exactly which provisions land in configuration and which need the custom rules layer.
Prove value in two cycles
Run parallel against real historical pay runs. The numbers match before anything switches over – your production schedule is not a dependency.
Absorb the next EBA without a project
When the agreement is renegotiated, the change is a configuration change – not a change request and a six-month wait.
What's at risk?
Without Affinity
- Spreadsheets that exist because the system couldn't hold a clause
- Every EBA renegotiation becomes a vendor change request
- Annualised salary reconciliation done manually, or not at all
- Overtime overspend discovered after the month closes
- Back-pay exercises that consume weeks of payroll capacity
With Affinity
- Every negotiated clause modelled in the system, including the awkward ones
- Agreement changes absorbed as configuration, not as a project
- Annualised arrangements reconciled against actual hours automatically
- Labour cost by line and shift while the roster is still open
- Journals that land clean in the ERP, first time
We know you've heard this before
You have sat through demos where every question got a yes, and then discovered the yes had conditions. We are not going to pretend switching payroll is painless. Here's the truth:
"We can't stop production to implement."
You don't. Implementation runs in parallel with your current system – we configure and test against real historical data and run parallel cycles until the numbers match. Nothing switches over until they do.
"Our allowances are specific to our site."
Most are. Allowances are configured as pay codes triggered by the conditions that earn them – classification, location, task, shift type – rather than added manually by a payroll officer who has to remember which ones apply.
"We've been burned by a global vendor."
Usually by one that treats ANZ shift work as a localisation. Affinity is designed and supported in Australia and New Zealand. Modern Awards, enterprise agreements, STP Phase 2, payday super, the Holidays Act and KiwiSaver are native, not workarounds.
"Our next EBA will change everything again."
It will, and that is the point. Because rules are modelled rather than hard-coded, a renegotiated agreement is a configuration change you can make on your own timeline instead of joining a vendor development queue.
"No system can automate our rules."
Most can't. Affinity automates calculations at two levels – powerful configuration first, then a custom rules layer for the genuinely non-standard cases other systems hand back to you. If the data and logic can be expressed, we model it once and run it every pay.
Explore Calculation AutomationImagine an EBA that just runs
Picture this: the new agreement is signed on Friday. On Monday your payroll lead configures the changed clauses, tests them against last period's data, and it is done. No vendor ticket. No spreadsheet workaround. No six-month wait.
Meanwhile the plant manager can see night shift running over budget on Wednesday and change the roster before it costs anything. And your journals land in the ERP without finance touching them.
That's not a dream. That's Affinity.
Trusted by manufacturers across ANZ
"With Affinity's support, we finally have the perfect balance of control and expert guidance. Their help with system configuration, reporting, and ongoing support has not only saved us time but also given us the confidence that our payroll is solid and reliable."– HR Manager, Manufacturing Business
"User-friendly product and best of all, the Affinity team provides fantastic customer service support which is personable, competent and convenient."– Payroll Operations Lead, George Weston Foods Limited
Affinity supports over 500,000 employees across Australia and New Zealand – from straightforward salaried payrolls to complex 24x7 manufacturing and distribution operations.
Read customer storiesWhich delivery model fits a manufacturer?
Most manufacturers have an experienced payroll team and want to keep control. The question is how much backup they want behind it.
SaaS
Your team runs payroll on the platform, with full control over configuration and the rules layer.
Explore SaaSSupported
You run it, with our specialists behind you for EBA changes, peak periods and the complex cases.
Explore SupportedFully Managed
We run the cycle end to end. Suited to operations consolidating a lean corporate function.
Explore Fully ManagedAlso Worth Reading
What changes day to day, depending on where you sit.
Straight Answer
Every payroll vendor will tell you they're experts in manufacturing
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.
We have done that work in manufacturing many times over, which is why this page can be specific rather than vague. But the engine underneath is not sector-specific, and neither are we – Affinity also runs payroll across logistics and transport, construction and infrastructure, utilities, education, media and hospitality. 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.
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
Can Affinity handle our enterprise agreement, not just the award?
Yes, and this is the reason most manufacturers move. Affinity automates calculations at two levels: far more is handled in standard configuration than other systems allow, and then a custom rules layer holds the genuinely non-standard clauses – the ones another vendor would hand back to your payroll team to do manually. If the logic can be expressed, we model it once and run it every pay.
How does Affinity deal with 24x7 rotating shifts that span midnight?
Shifts are interpreted against the agreement rather than the calendar day, so a night shift crossing midnight is paid as one shift with the correct loadings, not split across two days. Continuous and rotating rosters, shift swaps, recall, overtime cascades and minimum break provisions are all handled in interpretation.
What about site allowances, RDO accrual and annualised salaries?
Site, dirt, height, tool, leading hand and first aid allowances are configured as pay codes that calculate automatically from the conditions that trigger them. In Australia, RDOs accrue, bank and draw down against the agreement's rules. Annualised salary arrangements are reconciled against actual worked hours so you can evidence that the annualised amount still covers the entitlement.
Can we see labour cost by production line, shift and plant?
Yes. Costing splits labour across up to 12 cost elements, so a single employee's time can be attributed to line, shift, plant, project and cost centre without a month-end spreadsheet exercise. The same split flows through to the general ledger.
How do journals get into our ERP?
You describe the GL format you need in plain English and Affinity generates the export to match – cost-centre and plant-level detail included – rather than asking you to reshape your chart of accounts around a rigid template. Delivery is by file or API into SAP, Dynamics, Oracle or whatever you run.
We can't stop production to implement a payroll system. How does that work?
Implementation runs in parallel with your current system, not instead of it. We baseline your existing pay runs, configure and test against real historical data, and run parallel cycles until the numbers match before anything switches over. Your production schedule is not a dependency.
Does this work for our New Zealand plants too?
Yes. Where an Australian site runs an enterprise agreement, a New Zealand site runs a collective agreement, and both are modelled the same way – shift loadings, allowances, overtime and leave interpreted from actual worked time. Holidays Act calculations, payday filing, KiwiSaver and ACC are handled natively, so a trans-Tasman manufacturer runs one payroll rather than two.
What would payroll look like if it just worked?
One AU/NZ platform that keeps journals clean, catches errors before they land, and gives you back the hours you are spending on checking.