How Fair Pay Calculator works out your pay

Fair Pay Calculator gives an estimate to help you check a pay slip. It is not the Fair Work Ombudsman, the ATO or a lawyer, and it is not financial, tax or legal advice. If anything here differs from the award, the award applies.

Where the rates come from

• Award pay rates: the Fair Work Ombudsman's pay guides for the Hospitality (MA000009), Restaurant (MA000119), Fast Food (MA000003) and General Retail (MA000004) awards, effective 1 July 2026. Retail hours, overtime, shiftwork and minimum shift rules are read from the award text on awards.fairwork.gov.au. A script reads the tables from the guides, and tests compare spot values with the guides.
• Tax, Medicare, study loan and super: ATO tax tables and withholding schedules, and Services Australia rates for Family Tax Benefit. The weekly tax tables for 2026-27 are checked against the ATO's published sample rows. Older tax years come from a third-party summary and are labelled as not yet checked line by line.
• Retail: ordinary hours are Mon to Fri 7am to 9pm, Saturday 7am to 6pm and Sunday 9am to 6pm (later if your shop trades later). Work outside those hours is overtime unless you were hired for night shifts. Not covered: baking production employees, retail apprentices, school students on a shorter minimum shift, and the 5-days-a-week and rostered-days-off rules.

How a shift is worked out

1. We start from your age, award, level and whether you are casual, part-time or full-time. Juniors get a percentage of the adult rate by age. Apprentices are paid by year of apprenticeship, not age.
2. Every minute of the shift is given a pay type: ordinary, evening, night, Saturday, Sunday or public holiday. The rate for that minute comes from the award.
3. Overtime starts when you pass the daily limit, your rostered hours, or 38 hours in the week. The first hours of overtime pay less than the later ones. Each day's overtime is counted on its own.
4. Casuals get the 25% loading and a minimum paid shift. A split shift counts as one engagement.
5. Split shifts add the split shift allowance where the award pays one. Casuals do not get it.
6. Money is worked out in whole cents and rounded once at the end of each shift.

Pharmacy, security, clerks, fitness, aged care, children's services and cleaning

For these awards we read the hours of work, penalty rates, overtime and minimum shift rules from the award text on awards.fairwork.gov.au, and the dollar rates from the pay guides effective 1 July 2026. Every figure in the pay checker is the pay guide hourly rate times the award's percentage, and we compared it with the pay guide. Allowances, broken shifts, sleepovers, on-call, rostered days off and annualised wages are not worked out. Rules that differ by award:

• Pharmacy: weekday hours before 8am and after 9pm are loaded, Saturday and Sunday have their own time bands, and nothing is ordinary before 7am. Pharmacy students and interns are not covered.
• Security: weekdays before 6am and after 6pm are paid as night. Permanent night work rates, the 8 hour break rule and call-back minimums are not covered.
• Clerks: ordinary hours are Mon to Fri 7am to 7pm and Saturday 7am to 12:30pm. Shiftwork, the 4 hour Sunday and public holiday minimum and rostered days off are not covered.
• Fitness: ordinary hours are 5am to 11pm weekdays and 6am to 9pm weekends. Casuals are paid 130% on weekends and public holidays, as the award says. The public holiday overtime rate is not stated in the award; we use 250%.
• Aged care: the shift loading is paid for the whole shift and is set by its start time. Staff on fewer than 38 hours a week only get it when the shift starts before 6am or ends after 6pm, which is not checked.
• Children's services: ordinary hours are Monday to Friday 6am to 6:30pm, so Saturday work is overtime unless you are a shiftworker. Shiftwork loadings are not covered, and neither is the 4 hour weekend minimum.
• Cleaning: a weekday shift that starts before 6am or finishes after 6pm is loaded for the whole shift. Part-time staff have a different loading, not covered here. The minimum shift is 2 hours, but the award sets it by cleaning area (1 to 4 hours).

Salary or day rate

An employee is paid for every weekday, 260 a year, including annual leave, personal leave and public holidays, and the employer pays super on top. A contractor is paid only for the days they work and pays for their own leave and super. To find the day rate that matches a salary we add super to the salary, then divide by the days a contractor could actually bill: 260 less public holidays, annual leave, personal leave and any days between contracts. The defaults are 4 weeks of annual leave, 10 days of personal leave, 10 public holidays and super at 12%; you can change all of them. Going the other way, we multiply the day rate by the days you can bill, take off your own costs, and split what is left into a salary and super.

Fringe benefits tax (FBT) is paid by the employer, not the worker. We work it out as 47% of the benefit's value multiplied by the gross-up rate: 2.0802 where the employer can claim GST credits on the benefit, 1.8868 where it cannot (ATO rates for the FBT years to 31 March 2027). Every rate and threshold on the ATO page is on our fringe benefits tax rates page, and the "Work out a benefit's value" box on the day rate screen uses them for a car, a vehicle that is not a car, and a cheap loan. For example, $11,000 of benefits with GST credits has $22,882 grossed-up value and $10,755 of FBT. FBT raises what the job costs the employer, so we show that cost and the cost per day worked, but it does not change the day rate that matches your package. Benefits above $2,000 are also shown on your income statement as reportable fringe benefits, at the type 2 grossed-up value, which counts towards some income tests. The value helper covers a car, a vehicle that is not a car, and a cheap loan. For housing, car parking or living-away allowances, take the rates from the ATO page and work out the value yourself. Exempt benefits (for example a work laptop or an eligible electric car) can be set to no FBT.

The figures are before tax and before GST. They do not include long service leave, leave loading, notice or redundancy pay, a contractor's insurance and tax, Fringe benefits such as a car, phone, bonus or salary-packaged items are added to what the day rate has to replace; value each at what it would cost you. A contractor's own business costs have their own box. Public holidays differ by state, so check how many apply to you.

What we do not cover

How sure are we about each figure?

Checked on 18 October 2026. "Checked" means we compared the figure with the official page or file. "Corroborated" means several independent sources agree but we could not open the official page. "Not checked" means it comes from a third-party summary and has not been compared with an official source yet.

How we keep it current

Rates change on 1 July each year, and sometimes during the year. Each set of rates has a start date and an end date. After the end date the pay checker shows a warning and turns off reports until the rates are updated. The date on every result shows when the rates were last checked.

Found a mistake?

Tell us. It helps everyone who uses the page. Report a mistake and include what you entered and what you expected. Please do not send your name or employer.

Update log