An Employment Hero implementation moves your employee data, payroll settings and modern award rules onto the platform in a set sequence: scoping, migration, award configuration, integrations, a parallel test pay run, training, then go-live. Employment Star (employmentstar.com.au) runs this end to end from $2,340 ex-GST, live in 14 business days.
Most Employment Hero projects don’t come unstuck on the software. They come unstuck on sequence — award rules configured before anyone has confirmed which award each employee actually sits under, or a go-live booked for the same week as end of quarter.
The platform is not the difficult part. The difficult part is the order you do things in. What follows is the sequence we use on every implementation, the business days each phase takes, and what we need from you to hold that timeline.
What an Employment Hero implementation actually involves
Buying a licence and creating an account takes about ten minutes. That is not an implementation.
An implementation is the work of getting your real rules — pay rates, classifications, allowances, penalty rates, leave accruals, approval chains, superannuation settings — into the platform accurately enough that the first live pay run produces the same numbers your old system did, and every run after that produces the right numbers faster. Most SMBs we work with take both the HR and payroll modules, because the value sits in the join between them: a new hire moving from onboarding straight into a payroll record without anyone retyping a bank account number.
Cost sits outside this guide — we’ve broken down Employment Hero implementation cost breakdown separately. Ours is a fixed one-off fee from $2,340 ex-GST.
Phase 1 — Discovery and scoping (2 business days)
We map what you have: headcount by employment type, which modern award or agreement covers each group, how many pay cycles you run, your current system, your accounting package, and which processes are held together by a spreadsheet only one person understands.
Two questions do most of the work. Which award covers each role, and at what classification level? If you can’t answer that confidently, that’s the finding, and it needs resolving before configuration. Is there anything unusual about how you pay people? Annualised salaries, above-award rates with set-off clauses, shift loadings, on-call, higher duties. Unusual is fine; unusual and undocumented is the problem.
We finish with a written configuration scope, a go-live date tied to a specific pay period, and a list of decisions we need from you.
Phase 2 — Data preparation and migration (3 business days)
Timelines slip here, almost always for one reason: the export from the old system is incomplete.
We need employee master data, banking and superannuation details, tax details, current leave balances, and year-to-date payroll figures for this financial year. If you’re migrating mid-year those figures matter enormously — they carry through to Single Touch Payroll reporting and each employee’s income statement at year end.
Before anything is loaded we clean it: duplicates, employees who left in 2023, casuals with no recorded classification, leave balances that don’t reconcile. Then we load and reconcile against the source — headcount, total leave liability, total year-to-date gross, total year-to-date PAYG. If those four don’t match, we don’t move on.
Phase 3 — Payroll and modern award configuration (3 business days)
Employment Hero Payroll runs an award interpretation engine — the same one KeyPay users have relied on for years — that applies award rules automatically once configured. Configured well, it calculates overtime, penalties, allowances and casual loading without anyone thinking about it. Configured carelessly, it applies the wrong rule consistently and quietly, to every employee, every fortnight.
We set up pay schedules and periods, earnings and deduction categories, leave categories and accrual rules, public holiday calendars matched to the correct state, and the award rule sets themselves. Where you pay above award, we build set-off logic so the system still tests against the award floor.
Payday Super configuration
Payday Super commenced 1 July 2026. Contributions must now be received by the employee’s fund within seven business days of each qualifying earnings day, replacing the quarterly cycle.
The trap is the term itself. “Qualifying earnings” is a new concept and it is not identical to ordinary time earnings. Payroll systems carried forward an OTE flag against every earnings category, and if those flags are left untouched, super is calculated on the wrong base from your first pay run onwards.
So we work through each earnings category and confirm its qualifying earnings treatment, set the super guarantee rate against the ATO’s published schedule, confirm fund and clearing house details, and set payment timing so contributions are received — not just sent — inside seven business days.
The ATO’s PCG 2026/1 sets out a risk-based compliance approach for the first year to 30 June 2027: employers paying on payday with occasional late contributions that are promptly fixed are likely to be treated as low risk. If contributions aren’t received in time, the superannuation guarantee charge applies, including interest compounded daily and a possible administrative uplift.
Phase 4 — Integrations (1 business day)
Employment Hero Payroll connects to Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks, posting your payroll journal into the accounting file after each run.
The work is mapping, not connecting. Every earnings category, deduction, tax and superannuation line needs to point at the correct account in your chart of accounts. If you track wages by department, cost centre or location, that mapping is built now — retrofitting it after three months of posted journals is unpleasant.
Where you use separate time and attendance software, we set up that feed so approved hours flow into the pay run rather than being keyed in. If you’d rather hand the function over once it’s built, that’s what our our payroll outsourcing service does, from $350/mo ex-GST for up to 20 employees.
Phase 5 — The parallel test pay run (2 business days)
We process a complete pay run in Employment Hero for the same period you last processed in your old system, then compare the two line by line: gross, tax, super, net, and every allowance and deduction, per employee.
Where numbers differ, one of three things is true — the new configuration is wrong, the old system was wrong, or the data is wrong. All three happen. This is the only reliable way to find out which, and it’s the step most self-managed implementations skip.
It’s also where genuine historical underpayments surface. If your old award interpretation was incorrect, a correct configuration produces a different number and you’ll need advice on remediating the difference. Far better found in a test than in a Fair Work claim. We don’t sign off until every variance is explained.
Phase 6 — Training (1 business day)
Training splits by role. Payroll administrators need the full cycle: timesheet imports, exceptions, adjustments, terminations, STP lodgement, and what to do when something looks wrong. Managers need approvals, rosters and leave. Employees need three things — submit a timesheet, request leave, find a payslip — and if that takes more than fifteen minutes to teach, the setup is too complicated.
We run it live and record it, so the recording becomes induction material for whoever holds the role in eighteen months. For deeper capability than go-live requires, that’s what our our Employment Hero training service sessions cover.
Phase 7 — Go-live (1 business day)
Go-live is a live pay run, processed in Employment Hero, with us on the call. We schedule it against a normal pay period — never the first pay of a financial year, never a quarter close, never the week before a Christmas shutdown. Employees are told beforehand what will look different on their payslip and who to ask if something’s wrong.
We lodge the STP event, confirm the payment file matches the net pay total, confirm superannuation is queued to meet the seven-business-day receipt window, and confirm the journal posted correctly.
Phase 8 — Post-go-live support (1 business day, then ongoing)
Handover day covers documentation, admin permissions and the checklist your team runs each cycle without us. Then we stay across the next two pay runs. Cycle two is when the questions arrive — a new starter, a termination, a public holiday, the first month-end reconciliation. Cycle three is usually where it stops being a project and becomes a routine.
The 14-business-day timeline, mapped
| Phase | What happens | Business days | Running total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Discovery and scoping | Award mapping, current-state review, scope sign-off | 2 | Day 2 |
| 2. Data preparation and migration | Export, clean, load, reconcile to source | 3 | Day 5 |
| 3. Payroll and award configuration | Pay categories, award rules, leave, Payday Super | 3 | Day 8 |
| 4. Integrations | Xero/MYOB mapping, time and attendance feed | 1 | Day 9 |
| 5. Parallel test pay run | Full run against prior period, variance analysis | 2 | Day 11 |
| 6. Training | Role-based sessions, recorded | 1 | Day 12 |
| 7. Go-live | First live pay run, STP lodged, journal posted | 1 | Day 13 |
| 8. Post-go-live handover | Documentation, permissions, cycle checklist | 1 | Day 14 |
| Total | 14 |
That’s the standard path: one award or a straightforward salaried workforce, one or two pay schedules, clean data. Multi-award workforces, enterprise agreements, several entities, rostered shift environments or messy historical data typically run 20 to 25 business days — and we tell you which one you are during discovery, not at day 12.
Wondering whether your Employment Hero setup is doing what it should?
We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner. Send us your current configuration and we’ll tell you what’s working, what isn’t, and what it would take to fix it — no charge, no obligation.
What we need from you
Timelines slip on the client side far more often than the partner side. These are the inputs that decide whether a project lands in 14 business days:
- A named project owner with authority to decide pay rates and classifications without escalating each one.
- A complete employee export: legal name, date of birth, start date, employment type, award and classification, pay rate, ordinary hours.
- The award or agreement covering each group, confirmed rather than assumed.
- Current employment contracts, particularly any with annualised salary or set-off clauses.
- Year-to-date payroll figures for this financial year: gross, PAYG and super, per employee.
- Superannuation fund details, member numbers and your clearing house arrangement.
- Leave balances at the migration date — annual, personal/carer’s, and long service where it applies.
- Three recent pay runs in full, so the parallel run has something to test against.
- Admin access to your accounting file and the ability to approve the connection.
- Roughly six hours of your payroll person’s time, spread across the fortnight.
- Policies and documents for new starters to acknowledge, if you’re switching on onboarding.
Item 3 moves timelines most. Classification uncertainty is common, entirely fixable, and much cheaper to sort out in week one.
Where implementations go wrong
Configuring before deciding. Building award rules while the classification question is open guarantees rework.
Skipping the parallel run. It feels like a two-day saving. It’s the step that catches configuration errors before they reach a bank account.
Migrating dirty data. Every duplicate, wrong classification and unreconciled balance you carry across becomes a permanent feature of the new system.
Going live at the wrong moment. End of financial year, quarter close and the fortnight before a shutdown are all bad weeks to change payroll systems.
Treating onboarding as an afterthought. It’s where compliance documents are captured, and it needs configuring deliberately — the detail is in our Employment Hero onboarding checklist.
How we run Employment Hero implementations
We’re a certified Employment Hero implementation partner based in Parramatta, NSW, working with small and medium businesses across Australia.
Implementation is a fixed one-off fee from $2,340 ex-GST with a commitment to 14 business days to go-live for a standard build, or 20 to 25 for complex multi-award environments. That covers discovery, data migration, award configuration, Payday Super and STP Phase 2 setup, accounting integration, the parallel test pay run, role-based training, go-live support and two pay cycles afterwards.
No lock-in contract, no per-employee fee. If you’d prefer we keep running payroll rather than hand it back, our our Employment Hero implementation team and outsourced payroll can be combined.
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.
Frequently asked questions
How long does an Employment Hero implementation take?
We commit to 14 business days from kickoff to go-live for a standard build — one or two awards, clean data, a single entity. Multiple awards, enterprise agreements or several entities typically run 20 to 25 business days. What moves it most is how quickly you supply complete data.
Can I set up Employment Hero myself?
You can, and plenty of businesses do. The risk sits in modern award configuration, superannuation earnings bases and mid-year migration of year-to-date figures — errors that repeat silently every pay run. If your workforce is salaried, single-award and small, a self-managed setup is realistic.
What data do I need to provide?
Employee master data, award and classification for each employee, pay rates and hours, bank and superannuation details, tax details, leave balances at the migration date, and year-to-date payroll figures for this financial year. We also ask for three recent pay runs to test against.
Does implementation include Payday Super configuration?
Yes. Payday Super commenced 1 July 2026, so it’s part of every build. That covers qualifying earnings treatment for each earnings category, super guarantee rate settings, fund and clearing house details, and payment timing set so contributions are received within seven business days.
What happens to my payroll history?
Year-to-date figures for this financial year are migrated so Single Touch Payroll reporting and income statements stay correct. Prior years generally remain in your old system. Those records must be kept for seven years under the Fair Work Act, so we confirm you have an accessible archive first.
Do I have to change my pay cycle?
No. We configure Employment Hero around your existing schedules — weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or several in parallel. If discovery suggests consolidating would reduce cost or error rate we’ll say so, but that’s your call.
Get your Employment Hero implementation scoped
We’ll map your awards, review your data and give you a fixed scope and date before you commit to anything.
Implementation from $2,340 ex-GST, live in 14 business days, no lock-in contract.
+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 28 June 2026 · Last updated 3 August 2026