The time of year is upon us where Fair Work Commission decides to increase the government mandated pay rates for almost all awards in Australia. This happens every year usually on the first full pay week after the 1st July.
There are 3 times of the year that we implore you to consider your menu pricing models as there are 3 government mandated increases in your costs every year and these are consistent dates every year.
The first should be around late January for when excise duty increases the cost of beer, spirits and other excisable beverages on the 1st February every year.
The second should be around late June for when the Fair Work Commission increases Pay rates in all of the hospitality related awards.
And lastly consider your menu pricing model around late July again for when excise duty increases again for the second time in a year on the 1st August every year.
We cannot emphasise enough how important it is to get in front of these well known and anticipated cost increases in at least these 3 points in the trading year by reviewing your menu pricing model to ensure you remain profitable.
We also emphasise that considering that most Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast restaurant, bar, hotel and cafe trade happens in the second part of the year, namely from October onwards, the August price increase is imperative so that you're going into the busiest part of your year with a profitable menu model that will see you make enough profit to ride out the sometimes quiet periods of Jan-Mar of the following year.
In light of this, we'd like to show you a quick way of updating the Pay Rates in BOSSII to ensure you have a real time cost of your labour so that you're not months down the line realising that your payroll is not where you thought it was.
Go to BOSSII Admin -> Management -> Reports -> Staff Reports -> Choose the "Update Pay Rates & Super" report
Should you not be able to see that report, it means your access level hasn't been exposed to that report. Please contact your business owner or support@bossii.com to ensure that you can see this report and adjust the pay rates as required.
The report is a simple enough table that opens on screen as per below
The report will show all the available Pay Rates in your BOSSII dataset
If there is a Superannuation increase (as there is on July 1, 2025) then choose the "Update Super" button at top and enter the new value of Superannuation. As of 1 July, 2025 superannuation is now 12% for all Restaurant, Cafes and Hospitality venues in (not limited to) South East Qld.
If you are updating the Pay Rates, choose the "Update Pay Rate" box to allow the "New Rate" column of the report to be unlocked.
From there simply type in the new value of each of the pay rates as per your applicable award from the Fair Work website https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay-and-wages/minimum-wages/pay-guides#a-to-z-list-of-awards into the "New Rate" column down the right hand side.
If there are pay rates with an "Old Rate" of $0 then there is no need to update those records and you can simply skip them.
For the Casual pay rates, type in the base hourly rate from your award document ie: the rate EXCLUDING casual loading (which is the same as the Perm Part Time / Full Time rate) as the Pay Rate setup will automatically add the casual leave loading onto those pay rates as soon as you press OK on this report. Assuming the pay rate has been setup in that fashion, which out of the box, this is how we at BOSSII set them up however we cant be responsible for any changes made to Pay Rates subsequently by staff over time.
Once finished simply choose the OK button at bottom of screen and a finish screen will appear as below
You have now finished the Pay Rates update for this year for all staff.
In future versions we are working to automate this for all Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast Restaurants, Bars, Hotels and Cafes, but this update should help in the meantime.
One final note. If you have already completed this weeks Roster or any future Rosters, those are still going to be costed at the rates at the time of their creation. Therefore go into this weeks Roster or any future Rosters and choose the "Recalculate Staff Cost".
This will ensure that your new pay rates apply to the rosters already created. Any future created rosters will be costed with the pay rate values at the time of their creation but we recommend that when creating a roster, get in the habit of pressing that button in case someone has made changes to pay rates that you werent aware of.
Any questions about this please feel free to reach out to bossii support on support@bossii.com or for more urgent support, call 1300 805511 (option 2)
