Employment Hero implementation in Australia typically costs $1,500–$15,000 ex-GST as a one-off partner fee, separate from Employment Hero’s ongoing per-employee subscription. Employment Star (employmentstar.com.au) charges a fixed fee from $2,340 ex-GST for a standard single-award implementation, with go-live in 14 business days. Complex multi-award builds are quoted on scope.
Almost every pricing conversation we have starts in the same confused place. Someone has a figure from Employment Hero’s website, a different figure from a partner quote, and no clear sense of which is monthly and which is the thing they pay once. They’re two separate purchases from two separate businesses, and until you’ve untangled them you can’t compare anything to anything.
What follows is what implementation costs in Australia in 2026, what sits inside those numbers, what quietly gets added later, and how to bring the total down without ending up with a system somebody has to rebuild in eighteen months.
Two costs, not one — and buyers confuse them constantly
This is the table to screenshot.
| Employment Hero platform subscription | Implementation | |
|---|---|---|
| Who charges it | Employment Hero | Your implementation partner (us, or someone like us) |
| How often | Ongoing, billed monthly | One-off |
| How it’s calculated | Per employee per month, usually with a monthly minimum | Fixed fee for a defined scope, or hourly |
| Indicative 2026 figures | Publicly reported ranges vary by plan family and source: roughly $10–$14 per employee per month for HR-only tiers (minimums around $100–$140/month), and roughly $20–$60 per employee per month for bundled HR and payroll tiers (minimums around $200–$600/month). Standalone payroll is reported at roughly $6–$8 per employee per month. Indicative only, correct as at August 2026 — check employmenthero.com/pricing. | From $2,340 ex-GST with us for a standard single-award setup. Market-wide, $1,500 to $15,000+ depending on complexity |
| What you’re buying | Access to the platform | The configuration that makes it correct for your business |
| If you skip it | You have no software | You have software nobody configured — the most expensive outcome of the three |
| Negotiable? | Plan tier and contract term; promotional offers run from time to time | Scope. A tighter, better-defined scope costs less |
This matters commercially because the subscription is the number people anchor on, and it’s the one they have least control over. Implementation is the smaller line item and the one that determines whether the subscription was worth paying at all.
What Employment Hero implementation costs in Australia in 2026
Implementation is priced on complexity rather than headcount, though the two usually move together. Below is what we see across the Australian partner market.
These bands are indicative estimates based on publicly advertised Australian partner pricing and our own quoting as at August 2026. They aren’t a published benchmark and no partner is obliged to price this way — treat them as a sanity check on a quote you’ve been given, not a rate card.
| Business profile | What a proper scope covers | Indicative market range (ex-GST) | With Employment Star |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–20 staff, single award, no unusual integrations | Core HR and payroll config, one award built and tested, employee data import, accounting integration (Xero or MYOB), STP Phase 2, Payday Super setup, role-based training, go-live support | $1,500 – $3,000 | From $2,340, live in 14 business days |
| 21–50 staff, single award, allowances and penalty rates, timesheets or rostering | Above, plus timesheet and rostering config, allowance and penalty rules, leave balance migration, manager approval workflows | $3,000 – $6,000 | From $2,340 plus scope, 14 business days |
| 51–200 staff, multiple awards or an enterprise agreement | Above, plus multi-award interpretation, EBA rules tested against worked examples, multiple locations or cost centres, approval hierarchies, parallel pay run | $6,000 – $15,000 | Quoted on scope, 20–25 business days |
| NDIS / SCHADS, multi-entity, or a history of acquisitions | Above, plus SCHADS interpretation (broken shifts, sleepovers, client-based rates), multiple ABNs, historical data cleansing, remediation of prior errors | $12,000+ | Quoted on scope, 20–25 business days |
A cafe with ten casuals on one award and a disability services provider running SCHADS across four entities are not the same project, and any partner quoting them the same number hasn’t looked properly at either.
What pushes the price up
Five things account for nearly all the variation between a $2,340 job and a $12,000 one.
Award complexity. One award is a known quantity. Two or more, or an enterprise agreement, means each rule set has to be built and tested against worked examples before anyone trusts a pay run. SCHADS, the Hospitality Industry General Award and the Restaurant Award reliably take longest.
Data condition. Clean records in one consistent format import quickly. Records spread across three spreadsheets, a legacy payroll system and a filing cabinet, with inconsistent start dates and leave balances nobody can reconcile, take hours before a single field is mapped. This is the largest swing factor we see, and the one most within your control.
Integrations. Xero and MYOB are routine. A rostering tool, a time and attendance system or anything requiring custom API work moves from configuration to development, and prices accordingly.
Entity structure. Multiple ABNs, multiple locations, cost centre reporting or intercompany allocations multiply the configuration rather than adding to it.
Historical remediation. If a prior system calculated something wrong, someone has to work out how wrong and for how long. That should be quoted separately, not buried in an implementation fee.
Hidden costs that don't appear on the quote
Integration work discovered mid-project. Scope a quote around the integrations you know about and you’ll find one you didn’t. Ask for every system touching employee data to be listed in the scope document, including the ones people forget — like the rostering spreadsheet a site manager keeps privately.
Data cleansing by the hour. Some partners include a fixed allowance of cleansing hours and bill beyond it. Ask what the allowance is, and the rate past it, in writing, before you sign.
Training that turns out to be a walkthrough. A one-hour group demo is not training. If your payroll officer and managers aren’t across the system they build manual workarounds, and the platform never delivers what you bought it for. We’ve written separately about training your team on Employment Hero and what each role needs.
Post-go-live support. The questions that matter only appear in the first two or three real pay runs. Find out whether that window is included or billed. It’s the most common gap between a low quote and a complete one.
Award updates and compliance changes. Rates move each July, and obligations change — Payday Super compliance checks became a live issue for every employer on 1 July 2026. Ask who maintains your configuration when the rules move.
Been quoted a number you can't make sense of?
We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner. Send us the quote. We’ll tell you what’s in it, what isn’t, and what it would cost us to do the same scope — no charge, no obligation, no pressure to switch.
Six ways to reduce your implementation cost without cutting corners
- Clean your employee data before anyone quotes it. One spreadsheet, consistent date formats, every employee’s award and classification, current leave balances, super fund details. It’s the highest-value hour you’ll spend on the whole project and it can move you down a pricing band.
- Identify your awards and gather the paperwork up front. Enterprise agreements, employment contracts, any written policy that affects pay. If your partner has to work out which award applies, you’re paying consulting rates for something your bookkeeper could confirm in an afternoon.
- Insist on a fixed price against a written scope. Hourly implementations have no ceiling. A fixed fee forces the scope conversation to happen before the money is spent, which is where it belongs.
- Ask what triggers a variation. Not whether there could be one — what specifically causes one, and at what rate. Get it in the scope document.
- Sequence it. Payroll, awards and STP first, because those carry legal consequences. Performance reviews, engagement surveys and advanced reporting can follow once people are using the platform confidently.
- Ask about timing. Employment Hero has run promotional offers on implementation from time to time. Ask us, or Employment Hero directly, whether anything is running when you’re ready to buy.
Why partner choice changes both the price and the outcome
There are two models in this market and the quotes look similar.
A volume partner onboards as many businesses as possible with a light-touch process. You get a low number and a lot of self-service, and you do more of the configuration than you expected. That works fine for a simple business with clean data and one award.
A consulting-led partner spends time on your situation before configuring anything. It costs more upfront and it’s the only sensible option once awards get complicated.
What makes this a real decision is the cost of getting it wrong. Incorrect award interpretation produces incorrect pay, and incorrect pay produces underpayment claims. Intentional underpayment of wages became a criminal offence under Commonwealth law from 1 January 2025 — the Fair Work Ombudsman (fairwork.gov.au) has the detail. Against that, the gap between a $2,340 implementation and a $1,500 one is not where you want to be optimising.
Ask any partner three questions: how many businesses on your award have you configured, will you run a parallel pay run before go-live, and who fixes it if a pay run is wrong in week three.
What we charge, and what's in it
We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner in Parramatta, working with businesses across Australia, and our pricing is deliberately plain.
From $2,340 ex-GST, fixed, one-off. Not monthly, not per employee. Go-live in 14 business days for a standard single-award implementation, 20–25 business days for complex multi-award environments. No lock-in and no per-employee fees on our side.
That covers system configuration, award interpretation built and tested, employee data migration, your accounting integration, STP Phase 2, Payday Super setup, role-based training for your payroll and HR administrators, a supervised first pay run, and written handover documentation of how everything was configured and why.
Outside it: custom API development, historical payroll remediation, multi-entity structures and enterprise agreement builds. We quote those separately rather than folding them into a headline number.
If you’d rather not run payroll at all, our outsourced payroll service starts at $350 a month ex-GST for up to 20 employees and $500 a month for 21–50. Full detail on our fixed-price Employment Hero implementation, and an example of how we work in the how we helped Ortus Financial.
When to implement
Going live at the start of a financial year or quarter simplifies reporting and cuts the part-period data that has to be migrated. Not essential, but it saves work.
More useful: start planning three to four months before your current payroll contract expires. Businesses that leave it to the last month either pay for an expedited implementation or renew a contract they didn’t want for another year. And if you’re still on a quarterly super process left over from before 1 July 2026, that’s a reason to move now rather than at a tidy point in the calendar.
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.
Employment Hero implementation cost FAQs
How much does Employment Hero implementation cost in Australia?
Indicatively $1,500 to $3,000 ex-GST for a small business on a single award, $3,000 to $6,000 with timesheets and penalty rates, and $6,000 to $15,000 or more for multi-award or enterprise agreement environments. We charge a fixed fee from $2,340 ex-GST for a standard single-award implementation.
Is the implementation cost the same as Employment Hero's subscription?
No. Employment Hero charges an ongoing per-employee monthly subscription for the platform itself. Implementation is a separate one-off fee charged by your partner for configuring it. You pay both, to two different businesses, and they’re calculated in completely different ways. Confusing the two is the most common mistake buyers make.
Can I implement Employment Hero myself?
You can, and for a simple business with clean data and one award it’s viable. The risk sits in award interpretation, super timing and STP Phase 2 configuration, where errors stay invisible until they produce an underpayment. Weigh the saving against remediating a year of wrong pay runs.
How long does Employment Hero implementation take?
We go live in 14 business days for a standard single-award implementation and 20–25 for complex multi-award environments. Market-wide, straightforward setups run two to four weeks and complex ones six to twelve. Clean data is the biggest determinant of which end you land on.
What's included in the Employment Hero implementation cost?
With us: system configuration, award interpretation built and tested, data migration, accounting integration, STP Phase 2, Payday Super setup, role-based training, a supervised first pay run and written handover documentation. Custom API work, historical remediation, multi-entity structures and EBA builds are quoted separately.
Does Employment Hero charge its own implementation fee?
Employment Hero delivers implementation through certified partners, who each set their own pricing. The platform charges subscription fees; the setup fee comes from the partner you choose. That’s why quotes vary so widely for what looks on paper like exactly the same job.
Get a fixed number before you commit
We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner. Tell us your headcount, your awards and what systems you’re running, and we’ll give you a fixed price and a go-live date — from $2,340 ex-GST, live in 14 business days. No lock-in, no per-employee fees.
+61 466 614 475 · info@employmentstar.com.au
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 22 July 2026 · Last updated 3 August 2026