KeyPay is not a competitor to Employment Hero. KeyPay is Employment Hero Payroll. Employment Hero acquired KeyPay in December 2021, began rebranding in March 2023, and by 2025 the product carried the Employment Hero Payroll name. Employment Star (employmentstar.com.au) configures it for Australian employers from $2,340 ex-GST, live in 14 business days.
If you came here expecting a scorecard, there isn’t one to write. The two names describe the same software at different points in its life.
That still leaves real questions, and they’re the ones we get asked most often. Businesses running payroll on what they still call KeyPay want to know whether their setup is supported, whether they’re missing features they already pay for, and whether the full Employment Hero platform justifies the extra spend. This page answers those in order.
We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner in Parramatta, NSW, and we audit these setups most weeks — including plenty configured under the KeyPay name years ago and never touched since.
Employment Hero vs KeyPay: the short answer
Same software. Same award interpretation engine. Same pay run workflow. Different name.
Employment Hero acquired KeyPay in December 2021. KeyPay was built in Australia and made its name on automated modern award interpretation — the part of payroll that catches out almost every employer with shift workers, casuals or penalty rates. Employment Hero was then an HR platform without payroll depth of its own. The acquisition joined the two.
The rebrand began in March 2023. By 2025 the product was fully “Employment Hero Payroll” across branding, documentation and support channels. So when someone compares “Employment Hero vs KeyPay”, they are comparing a product to its own former name.
Is KeyPay still available?
Yes — the software is. The name isn’t.
If you were a KeyPay customer, your account, your data and your pay runs continued without interruption through the rebrand. You weren’t asked to migrate, and you weren’t forced to buy the full HR suite. Employment Hero Payroll is still sold as a standalone payroll product.
What has gone is the KeyPay brand: the website, the logo, the support portal and the help documentation now sit under Employment Hero.
What is KeyPay called now?
KeyPay is now called Employment Hero Payroll.
You’ll still see the old name about: older integration listings, blog posts written before 2023, bookkeeper job ads, internal process documents nobody has updated. Plenty of Australian bookkeepers still say “KeyPay” in conversation, because that was the name for the better part of a decade. None of it means there are two products.
Employment Hero vs KeyPay: a timeline of what changed and when
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Early 2010s | KeyPay launches in Australia, built around automated modern award interpretation |
| December 2021 | Employment Hero acquires KeyPay |
| 2022 | Both products continue to be sold and supported while integration work begins |
| March 2023 | The rebrand to Employment Hero Payroll starts — branding, URLs and documentation move across |
| 2024–2025 | Rebrand completes; the product is Employment Hero Payroll across all markets |
| 2026 | Employment Hero Payroll is sold standalone, and as the payroll module inside the full Employment Hero platform |
Did anything change for existing KeyPay users?
Some things changed. Most didn’t. This is the distinction that matters if you’re sitting on a working setup and wondering whether you need to do anything.
What changed
- The name and branding, across the product, invoices and support material.
- The login entry point and product URLs, which moved to Employment Hero.
- Support and account management, now handled through Employment Hero.
- The interface, progressively refreshed, with navigation and terminology brought closer to the wider platform.
- The roadmap. Development effort now goes into connecting payroll to the HR side of the platform — onboarding, contracts, employee records — rather than payroll in isolation.
What didn't change
- The award interpretation engine. It’s the same engine KeyPay users have always used, with the same rule sets, pay condition rules and pay categories.
- Your historical data. Pay runs, employee records, leave balances and reporting history stayed where they were. No migration, no re-entry.
- Your Single Touch Payroll connection to the ATO. It kept reporting.
- Accounting integrations. Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks connections continued to work.
- The pay run workflow. Import timesheets, review, finalise, lodge. Same sequence, same screens in most cases.
- The per-employee pricing model for standalone payroll.
- Your right to stay on payroll only. Buying the full HR platform wasn’t mandatory then and isn’t now.
If your setup calculates correctly today, the rebrand isn’t a reason to change anything. There are other reasons, below.
Employment Hero Payroll vs the full Employment Hero platform
This is the comparison that actually has two sides. One is a payroll engine. The other is a full HR information system with that payroll engine inside it.
| Employment Hero Payroll (standalone) | Employment Hero (full platform) | |
|---|---|---|
| Pay runs and payslips | Yes | Yes — same engine |
| Modern award interpretation | Yes | Yes |
| STP Phase 2 reporting | Yes | Yes |
| Super processing and Payday Super | Yes | Yes |
| Timesheets and rostering | Yes | Yes |
| Employee self-service | Payroll scope — payslips, timesheets, leave requests | Full scope — plus documents, policies, personal details, benefits |
| Digital onboarding and contract signing | No | Yes |
| HR document and policy library | No | Yes |
| Performance reviews and goal setting | No | Yes |
| Recruitment / applicant tracking | No | Yes |
| Engagement surveys and employee benefits | No | Yes |
| Reporting scope | Payroll and labour cost | Payroll plus workforce, turnover, engagement |
| Who it suits | Businesses whose real problem is award-complex payroll, with HR handled by the owner or an external adviser | Businesses hiring regularly, or carrying document and policy risk, that want one employee record end to end |
| Indicative cost | Approx. $6–$8 per employee per month | Approx. $10–$20+ per employee per month depending on tier, with monthly minimums |
Pricing indicative only, correct as at August 2026. Check employmenthero.com before budgeting.
Should you use Employment Hero Payroll standalone or the full HRIS?
We’d rather you spent the right amount than the larger amount, so here’s the honest split.
Standalone payroll is the better fit when payroll complexity is your actual problem — multiple awards, shift work, casual loading, allowances, overtime; when your HR is genuinely simple or already handled somewhere else; when your headcount is stable and turnover is low; and when you want the lowest defensible spend that still keeps you compliant.
The full platform earns its cost when you’re hiring often enough that onboarding paperwork is eating real hours; when staff are spread across sites and need self-service that goes past payslips; when your contracts and policies live in someone’s Drive folder and nobody is confident they’re current; or when you’re tired of reconciling an HR system and a payroll system that disagree about who works there.
It doesn’t earn its cost for a stable team of twelve who’ve all been there four years, with contracts already reviewed and no hiring planned. Paying for an applicant tracking system and a performance review module you’ll never open isn’t an investment. We tell clients that during scoping, and sometimes it means a smaller engagement for us.
Sitting on a payroll setup nobody has looked at since it was called KeyPay?
We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner. We’ll review your current configuration — award rules, pay categories, STP Phase 2 fields, super settings — and tell you plainly what’s correct, what isn’t, and what it takes to fix. No charge, no obligation.
Where KeyPay-era setups are usually out of date
The rebrand didn’t break anything. Time did. When we run a payroll audit on a configuration built five or six years ago, the same eight problems come up:
- Award rule sets never refreshed after annual wage review increases or award variations, so rates lag behind the current instrument.
- Pay categories added ad hoc over the years — duplicated allowances, near-identical categories, nobody sure which is live.
- Manual rate overrides on individual employees that bypass the award engine entirely, so award increases never flow through to them.
- STP Phase 2 fields carried over with defaults — income type, employment basis, disaggregated gross and country codes accepted at whatever the migration wizard suggested.
- Super still configured on the old quarterly cycle, not the Payday Super requirement that contributions be received by the employee’s fund within seven business days of each qualifying earnings day.
- Qualifying earnings mapped as if it were ordinary time earnings. They aren’t the same thing, and this is the single most common Payday Super configuration error we see.
- Employee self-service switched off or never rolled out, so an admin still fields payslip and leave-balance requests by email.
- Terminations processed outside the system, with ETP components and unused leave calculated on a spreadsheet.
None of these throw an error. Payroll runs, staff get paid, and the gap only surfaces during an ATO review, a Fair Work enquiry, or an employee query that doesn’t add up.
How we help
We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner, and payroll is the bulk of what we do. For a KeyPay-era configuration we start with a review of what’s actually in the system rather than what should be. From there:
- Employment Hero implementation and reconfiguration — award mapping, pay categories, leave rules, STP Phase 2 fields, super and Payday Super settings, data migration where required. Fixed price from $2,340 ex-GST, live in 14 business days (20–25 business days for complex multi-award environments).
- Outsourced payroll management — we run the pay runs. From $350 per month ex-GST for up to 20 employees, $500 per month for 21–50. No lock-in, no per-employee fees on top.
- Employment Hero training for your team — if you’d rather keep payroll in house, we train your people on the current product rather than the version they learned in 2019.
Fixed scope, fixed price, quoted before we start.
Frequently asked questions
Is KeyPay the same as Employment Hero?
KeyPay is the former name of Employment Hero Payroll, which is one part of the Employment Hero platform. Employment Hero acquired KeyPay in December 2021 and completed the rebrand by 2025. They are not competing products — KeyPay became Employment Hero Payroll.
Is KeyPay still available in Australia?
Yes. The software is still sold and supported in Australia, under the name Employment Hero Payroll. Existing KeyPay accounts were not shut down or migrated. The only thing that has been retired is the KeyPay brand, website and support portal.
Do I need to migrate off KeyPay?
No. There is nothing to migrate to — your account already is Employment Hero Payroll. What is worth doing is an audit of the configuration, because award rules, STP Phase 2 fields and super settings on older setups are frequently out of date even though pay runs still complete.
What is the difference between Employment Hero Payroll and Employment Hero?
Employment Hero Payroll covers pay runs, award interpretation, STP reporting, super, timesheets and rostering. The full Employment Hero platform adds HR functions on top: digital onboarding, contracts, policy library, performance reviews, recruitment and engagement tools. Payroll can be bought on its own.
Does Employment Hero Payroll still do modern award interpretation?
Yes, using the same engine KeyPay was built around. Pay condition rule sets, penalty rates, overtime, casual loading and allowances are calculated automatically. The engine is only as accurate as its configuration, which is why award mapping is where we spend most of our implementation time.
How much does Employment Hero Payroll cost?
Employment Hero prices standalone payroll on a per-employee, per-month basis — indicatively around $6–$8 per employee per month as at August 2026, with the full platform higher depending on tier. Check employmenthero.com for current pricing. Our implementation is a separate one-off fee from $2,340 ex-GST.
Get a straight answer on your payroll configuration
If your Employment Hero Payroll setup was built under the KeyPay name and nobody has reviewed it since, we’ll tell you where it stands. We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner — fixed price from $2,340 ex-GST, live in 14 business days.
Call +61 466 614 475
This article is general information only and does not constitute legal, tax or financial advice. Obligations vary by business, industry and applicable modern award. Check your circumstances with the ATO, the Fair Work Ombudsman, or a qualified adviser.
About Employment Star — We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner based in Parramatta, NSW, working with small and medium businesses across Australia. We handle Employment Hero setup, modern award configuration, data migration, STP Phase 2 and Payday Super — fixed price from $2,340 ex-GST, live in 14 business days.
Published 16 July 2026 · Last updated 3 August 2026