What is the core difference between MicrOpay and Affinity?
MicrOpay has been part of Australian payroll for decades. It passed from the Commonwealth Bank to Softline in 2002, into Sage when Sage acquired Softline, and to The Access Group in 2021 as part of Access's purchase of Sage's Australian and Asian businesses. It has a large installed base, and Access has kept it current: STP Phase 2, a Payday Super release (9.5 SP1) with Qualifying Earnings and the annual Maximum Contribution Base, an integrated super clearing house, and an "Evo" layer adding dashboards, analytics and an AI Copilot. For organisations that know MicrOpay well and want continuity, that is a real strength.
Affinity built its business on a different problem: AU/NZ payroll complexity at scale. Modern awards, enterprise bargaining agreements, Holidays Act calculations, STP Phase 2 and Payday Super – handled natively in one platform, for both sides of the Tasman. Affinity does one thing – payroll for Australia and New Zealand – with award interpretation built into the engine, pre-payslip intelligence, and three delivery models on one database.
The question is which problem you are actually trying to solve. If you want to stay on a familiar, Windows-based Australian payroll application with straightforward pay conditions, MicrOpay is built for that. If you need native interpretation of many awards and EBAs, genuine NZ Holidays Act depth, or the option to hand payroll to a managed team without changing platform, Affinity is built for that.
How do Affinity and MicrOpay differ in how they're built?
The fundamental difference is not features. It is what each provider was designed to optimise for.
- Built, implemented, and supported entirely within AU/NZ
- Every product investment goes into AU/NZ payroll accuracy and compliance
- 40+ years of AU/NZ payroll innovation – 10+ industry firsts
- Three delivery models on one platform: SaaS, Supported, Fully Managed
- 500,000+ employees processed – ISO 27001 framework, single AU/NZ database
- Long-established Australian payroll application with a large installed base
- Windows software on the customer's servers, or hosted by Access (Access Payroll Online)
- STP Phase 2 and Payday Super releases, with integrated super clearing
- Evo layer: dashboards, analytics and AI Copilot (some features in higher tiers)
- Owned by The Access Group, a UK-headquartered global software group with a broad payroll and HR portfolio
Why this matters: MicrOpay sits within a large portfolio of Access payroll and HR products, including sister products such as Definitiv and WageEasy. Affinity's engineering effort goes into one AU/NZ payroll platform. Neither approach is wrong – but it affects where award interpretation, workforce management and NZ depth live, and whether you get them natively or through additional products.
How do the features compare?
This table compares the two products across payroll and workforce capabilities. MicrOpay's capabilities should be confirmed directly with The Access Group for your specific requirements.