For Professional Services
Your people are the cost base – you should be able to see where they went
The payroll itself is straightforward. Everything downstream of it – project cost, entity splits, the remuneration round – is where your month actually goes.
Affinity attributes labour cost to project, client and entity at the point of pay, produces journals your finance system accepts as-is, and takes the annual remuneration cycle out of spreadsheets.
Affinity is payroll software for engineering, consulting, legal and accounting firms across Australia and New Zealand. It runs multiple entities and both countries in one platform under Australian awards or New Zealand individual employment and collective agreements, reports labour cost by project and client, and integrates with the HRIS you already use – ISO 27001:2022 certified, with data hosted onshore.
Who This Is For
This is for engineering, consulting, legal, accounting, architecture and IT services firms across Australia and New Zealand – largely salaried, often multi-entity, and entirely dependent on knowing what their people cost and where that cost went.
If your project margin depends on a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds every month, this page is for you.
Simple payroll.
Anything but simple reporting.
The challenge
- • Labour cost that has to land against projects, clients and entities
- • Bonuses, commissions and salary packaging on top of base
- • An annual remuneration round run in spreadsheets
- • Multiple ABNs and NZBNs, pay cycles and trans-Tasman operations
The impact
- • Finance reconstructs project cost manually at month end
- • Partners see margin weeks after the work was done
- • The remuneration cycle leaks – version control, not policy
- • Confidential pay data circulating in email attachments
A better way
In a people business, labour cost visibility is not a finance nicety – it is the P&L. The attribution should happen when the cost is incurred, not be reconstructed after the fact.
What Actually Makes It Hard
It was never the pay calculation.
Attribution
Cost split by project, client, matter and cost centre at the point of pay
Multi-entity
Several ABNs and NZBNs, pay cycles and both AU and NZ in a single platform
Rem cycle
Bands, adjustments, bonuses and commissions with approval workflow
ISO 27001
Role-based access on pay data, hosted in Australia and New Zealand
Cost attributed when it happens, not reconstructed later
Most firms answer "what did that project cost us?" with a monthly exercise in mapping timesheets to payroll to the general ledger. Affinity does the split at the point of pay, so the answer is already there.
- Labour cost split across project, client, matter, entity and cost centre
- Fully loaded cost including on-costs, leave provision and super or KiwiSaver
- GL export described in plain English and generated to match your finance system
- Direct BI connection for Power BI and Tableau margin reporting
One senior consultant, one fortnight
Illustrative view. The same split flows straight into the journal – no month-end mapping exercise.
The remuneration round, out of spreadsheets
Annual remuneration shouldn't take months. Salary bands, proposed adjustments, bonus and commission calculations, budget modelling and approvals all sit in one place – and the approved outcome flows into payroll instead of being re-keyed from a workbook.
- Centralised salary data with bands and comparators
- Model the budget impact before you commit to it
- Approval workflow with an audit trail, not an email chain
- Role-based access, so confidential data stays confidential
The annual cycle, in one place
Low-touch for your people, best-of-breed for your stack
A salaried professional workforce needs very little from payroll – until it needs something, and then it needs it immediately. Self-service and digital workflow handle that without adding headcount, and Affinity sits alongside the HR platform you already chose.
- Payslips, leave, and personal details self-served on any device
- Onboarding, role change and salary review as digital forms that write back to payroll
- Integrates with Workday, SuccessFactors, ELMO, HiBob and Cornerstone by API or file
- Your HRIS stays the system of record – Affinity does the pay
Best of breed, not one big box
Connected by REST API or file, so data moves once and nobody re-keys it.
Your path to margin you can see
Map how cost should be attributed
We work through your project, client and entity structure and design the cost split once, so it stops being a monthly decision.
Prove value in two cycles
Run parallel and compare the journal you get against the one your team builds by hand. The difference is the business case.
Take the rem round off the critical path
Move the annual cycle into the platform before your next review period, and get those weeks back permanently.
What's at risk?
Without Affinity
- Project margin known weeks after the work is done
- Month-end cost mapping done by hand, every month
- The remuneration round consuming your HR team for a quarter
- Confidential pay data moving around in attachments
- Multi-entity reporting reconciled rather than reported
With Affinity
- Cost attributed to project and client at the point of pay
- Journals that land in the finance system without rework
- A remuneration cycle measured in weeks, not months
- Role-based access on every piece of pay data
- Entities and both countries reported from one platform
The five things firms say to us
Professional services firms are usually the hardest to convince, because the payroll genuinely does work. Here's the honest answer to each.
"Our payroll is simple – we just need it to work."
And it probably does. The question is what happens after the pay run: how long month-end cost attribution takes, how the remuneration round is run, and how long it takes a partner to see project margin. That is where the cost is hiding.
"We already have an HRIS."
Keep it. Affinity is deliberately best-of-breed and integrates with Workday, SuccessFactors, ELMO, HiBob and Cornerstone. Your HRIS stays the system of record for people data; Affinity does pay, cost and compliance.
"Our remuneration data is highly confidential."
Which is a strong argument against running it in spreadsheets. Affinity is ISO 27001:2022 certified with role-based access control and a full audit trail, and hosts data in Australia and New Zealand.
"We're too small for enterprise payroll."
Complexity is not the same as headcount. A 200-person firm with four entities, a bonus scheme and project-level cost reporting has more payroll complexity than a 2,000-person single-entity business. Size is not the qualifier – structure is.
"We don't have anyone to run payroll internally."
Then don't. Fully Managed means our team runs the cycle end to end, which suits firms that would rather not build a payroll function to support a back office of one.
Explore Fully Managed payrollImagine month end without the mapping
Picture this: it's the third working day. The journal is already in the finance system, split by project, client and entity, and nobody built it. Your practice leads can see margin on their own engagements without asking anyone.
And the remuneration round that used to eat a quarter of your HR team's year is a workflow that closes in a fortnight, with an audit trail attached.
That's not a dream. That's Affinity.
Why professional services firms take us seriously
We would rather show you what we know than quote someone at you.
500,000+
employees paid across Australia and New Zealand, from straightforward salaried payrolls to the genuinely complex.
12 elements
labour cost can be split across – enough to hold project, client, entity, practice and cost centre at once.
AU & NZ
STP Phase 2, payday super, payday filing, KiwiSaver and the Holidays Act handled natively in one platform.
ISO 27001
certified to ISO 27001:2022, with role-based access and data hosted onshore.
Which delivery model fits a professional services firm?
The deciding factor is usually whether you want to employ a payroll specialist at all.
SaaS
Your finance or HR team runs payroll on the platform. Straightforward when the payroll itself is straightforward.
Explore SaaSFully Managed
We run the cycle end to end – common where the back office is deliberately small and payroll is not a role anyone owns.
Explore Fully ManagedSupported
You run it, with our specialists behind you – useful through the remuneration round and year end.
Explore SupportedAlso Worth Reading
What changes day to day, depending on where you sit.
Straight Answer
Every payroll vendor will tell you they're experts in professional services
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 professional services 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
Our payroll is mostly salaried. Isn't Affinity overkill?
The payroll itself may be simple; the reporting rarely is. Professional services firms come to Affinity for cost attribution – knowing what labour cost sat against which project, client or entity – plus remuneration cycles, bonuses and commissions, and multi-entity consolidation. That is where the manual effort actually lives.
Can we attribute payroll cost to projects and clients?
Yes. Labour cost can be split across cost centres, projects, clients and entities at the point of pay, not reconstructed afterwards. Finance sees the attribution in the same cycle the cost is incurred, and the same split carries into the journal.
How does Affinity handle the annual remuneration review?
Remuneration management moves the review cycle out of spreadsheets: salary bands, proposed adjustments, bonus and commission calculations, budget modelling and approval workflow all sit in one place, with the approved outcome flowing straight into payroll rather than being re-keyed.
We already have an HRIS. Does Affinity replace it?
No – Affinity is deliberately best-of-breed. It integrates with HR platforms including Workday, SuccessFactors, ELMO, HiBob and Cornerstone via REST API or file, so your HRIS stays the system of record for people data and Affinity does the pay.
Can we run multiple legal entities in one system?
Yes. Multiple entities, ABNs and NZBNs, pay cycles and both Australian and New Zealand operations run in a single platform, with reporting that consolidates across them or separates them as the statutory picture requires.
Is our remuneration data secure and confidential?
Affinity is ISO 27001:2022 certified, with role-based access control that means remuneration data is visible only to the people who should see it. Data is hosted in Australia and New Zealand.
We have entities in both Australia and New Zealand. Does that run in one system?
Yes. Multiple ABNs and NZBNs, separate pay cycles and both jurisdictions sit in one platform, with project and client cost attribution consistent across them. Australian STP Phase 2 and payday super run alongside New Zealand payday filing, KiwiSaver, ACC and Holidays Act leave calculations, and reporting consolidates or separates the entities as your statutory picture requires.
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.