The rules changed on 1 January 2025. From that date, intentional wage underpayment became a criminal offence in Australia under the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Act 2023. As a result, individuals can face imprisonment and companies can be fined up to AUD $7.825 million (equivalent to 25,000 penalty units, or three times the underpayment amount if that figure is greater) for deliberate underpayment of wages or entitlements. That risk lands hardest on trade businesses. Paying a crew under a building, plumbing or electrical award involves apprentice progression rates, travel allowances, RDOs, stacked penalty loadings and strict ATO Single Touch Payroll (STP) Phase 2 reporting. An investigation into what actually works reveals a clear pattern. The best payroll software for an Australian trade business depends on two variables: crew size and award complexity. Everything else is detail.
The Compliance Problem Nobody Budgets For
Australia runs 121 Modern Awards. Non-compliance penalties reach $93,900 per breach for businesses and $18,780 for individuals. Furthermore, underpayment claims can trigger backpay obligations stretching back six years. The Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020 (MA000020) sits among the most complex awards in the country. It covers dozens of classifications with allowances that stack on top of base rates. For example, Saturday work attracts time-and-a-half for the first two hours, then double time after that. Sundays and public holidays also climb to double time.
Apprentices add another layer of complexity. Their wages shift based on age, apprenticeship stage, training completion and whether they are adults or school students. Tool allowances run $22 to $40 per week, and travel, meal and laundry allowances stack on top of that. TAFE attendance also counts as ordinary paid time rather than leave. Getting all of that right by hand, every pay run, is precisely where trade businesses get caught.
Best for Award Complexity: Employment Hero
For crews employed under heavy awards, Employment Hero stands out as the clear choice. It is the most-used payroll and HR platform in the Australian market and the recognised market leader for award interpretation. Its native, automated Australian award engine tracks allowances, overtime thresholds and public holiday rates as workers log hours. Importantly, the system handles the interpretation itself, which removes the manual judgment calls that create liability. There is also a detail worth noting here. QuickBooks AU Payroll runs on the same Employment Hero payroll and award engine. As a result, businesses already keeping their ledger in QuickBooks get the same interpretation power without switching platforms.
Best All-Rounders: Xero and MYOB
Most trade businesses pick their payroll based on the job management software they already run, whether that is ServiceM8, Tradify, Fergus or AroFlo. In that space, two platforms dominate. Xero is the most widely used accounting platform in Australia. Payroll is now included at no extra per-employee cost on plans starting at $35 per month for the Ignite tier. For businesses already running their books in Xero, turning on payroll means pay runs, STP filing, super and leave all live in one system. When a crew member closes out a job on site, timesheet data flows straight through to the ledger.
MYOB takes a different pricing path. Unlike Xero, which scales its pricing in bands as headcount grows, MYOB offers unlimited payroll on flat-rate higher tiers like AccountRight Plus. This makes it the most cost-effective choice for larger and growing crews. It also brings deep built-in project job costing, and it handles complex awards through add-ons like Tanda or Wageloch. The practical split between the two comes down to scale and budget. Xero suits small teams of roughly 2 to 20 people, offers a strong app ecosystem and uses tiered pricing by headcount. MYOB, by contrast, better serves larger crews and builders who need built-in job costing and a flat monthly rate for unlimited staff.
Best for Sole Traders and Micro Crews: Payroller and Easy Business App
A sole trader with one apprentice or a couple of casual subbies does not need a full accounting engine. Paying for one is overkill. Payroller offers free STP-compliant payroll for single-employee pay runs through its mobile app. It is built for quick STP reporting, automated superannuation tracking and mobile pay runs straight from the job site. Similarly, Easy Business App fills a comparable gap as a highly affordable, stripped-back option for micro-businesses that need simple payslips and nothing more.
The Deadlines That Should Drive the Decision
Two compliance dates make this decision urgent rather than optional. First, STP Phase 2 is now the permanent reporting standard for all Australian employers, with no further extensions or deferrals. The biggest risk sits in incorrect payroll mapping. Disaggregated gross, allowances, overtime, deductions and child support items must all land in the correct STP categories. Incorrect allowance coding ranks among the most common Phase 2 misconfiguration errors in Australian payroll systems. Because construction awards are so allowance-heavy, this issue hits tradies harder than most. The mandatory finalisation deadline is 14 July each year.
Second, Payday Super takes effect from 1 July 2026. From that date, employers must pay superannuation within 7 business days of each payday. Employment Hero, Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, Reckon, Microkeeper, Rippling and ADP have all confirmed readiness. Therefore, any business still running super quarterly through manual processes needs software that automates this well before the deadline arrives.
The Bottom Line
There is no single best payroll platform for Australian tradies. Rather, there is a best platform for each operating profile. Award-heavy crews under building, plumbing or electrical awards should look first at Employment Hero, or QuickBooks Payroll if the ledger already lives there. Small teams wired into the tradie app ecosystem will generally get the smoothest workflow from Xero. Larger crews and builders chasing predictable costs and built-in job costing will find MYOB the stronger fit. Meanwhile, sole traders with one or two on the books can run Payroller or Easy Business App and skip the heavy engines entirely.
The stakes have shifted from inconvenience to criminal exposure. Penalties of $93,900 per breach, six-year backpay windows and jail time for deliberate underpayment mean the software decision is now a risk decision. Businesses that match their payroll platform to crew size and award complexity before July 2026 will spend the next few years building. Those that do not will spend them explaining themselves to the regulator.
