SCHADS Interpretations in Astalty

Overview

Astalty's SCHADS interpreter processes approved shifts for workers employed as shift-workers under the SCHADS Award (MA000100) and translates worked hours into the correct pay-rate categories and allowance lines for payroll. The award is set per worker on their employment contract, and every interpretation surface — the Award Interpretation tab on timesheet batches, the Award Pay Report, the Award Playground and the payroll exports — interprets each worker under the award on their own contract. It does not replace the need for compliant rostering and HR practices.

Who this award covers

SCHADS covers social and community services work — for an NDIS provider that is typically disability support workers and home care workers, whether they support participants in the community or in the participant's home.

Some similar roles belong on other awards: allied health professionals go on the Health Professionals Award, nurses on the Nurses Award, and residential aged care staff on the Aged Care Award.

Putting a worker on the SCHADS Award

The award is set on the worker's employment contract:

1. Open the worker's User Profile and go to the HR tab.
2. Create (or edit) their contract — Award defaults to SCHADS Award.
3. Choose their SCHADS Classification (level and pay point) — the Base Hourly Rate fills in automatically from the current award rates. You can override the base rate if you pay above award.

A SCHADS contract also carries award-specific fields:

• SCHADS Overtime Stream — decides whether the first Mon–Sat overtime band is 2 or 3 hours (see Overtime streams).
• First Aid Allowance — entitles the worker to the weekly first aid allowance.
• Laundry Allowance — entitles the worker to the per-shift laundry allowance.
• Max Ordinary Hours Per Shift and Minimum Break Near a Sleepover — agreed variations used by the caps and alerts (see Staff Contracted Hours).

How your hours are interpreted

Shift loadings

Weekday work is classified by when the hours fall, with cross-midnight shifts treated as night work:

Weekends and public holidays

Ordinary hours and overtime

Ordinary hours are capped daily and across the pay period. Hours beyond a cap become overtime:

• Daily — 10 ordinary hours per day, or the worker's agreed cap (8, 10 or 12 hours) from their contract.
• Weekly / fortnightly — 38 hours per week, or 76 hours per fortnight.

Work that continues across midnight is treated as one continuous shift, not two separate days — a 3pm–11pm shift that continues 11pm–7am is a single 16-hour shift with 10 ordinary hours and 6 hours of overtime.

Overtime from Monday to Saturday is paid at 150% for the first band and 200% after that — the first band is 2 hours, or 3 hours for full-time workers on the Social, Community & Crisis Accommodation stream. Sunday overtime is 200% and public holiday overtime is 250%.

Casual employees

The 25% casual loading is added on top of every rate — ordinary, penalty and overtime alike. A casual working a Saturday is paid 150% + 25% = 175%, and a casual's first overtime band is 150% + 25% = 175%. This differs from the Aged Care and Health Professionals awards, where overtime compounds the loading instead.

Part-time and casual employees have a 2-hour minimum engagement, flagged as a scheduling alert.

Broken shifts

A broken shift is a day with 2 work periods and 1 unpaid break, or — by agreement — 3 work periods with 2 unpaid breaks. Astalty detects these automatically and pays:

• A broken shift allowance — a higher allowance for two unpaid breaks than for one.
• Double time for any work beyond a 12-hour span, measured from the start of the first portion to the end of the last.
• An early-morning leg on a broken-shift day does not attract the night loading.

By default even a short unpaid gap forms a broken shift. If you don't want short gaps between back-to-back supports to count, set a provider-level Broken Shift Minimum Gap under Settings → Scheduling — gaps up to that many minutes are treated as continuous work.

Sleepovers

A sleepover attracts an allowance per night, and the passive sleepover span is excluded from ordinary and overtime hours. Active work when the worker is woken is paid separately at the overtime rate, with a minimum of 1 hour per disturbance. The Award also expects at least 4 hours of active work rostered on at least one side of the sleepover, and a minimum 8-hour sleepover span — both raise scheduling alerts when breached.

A sleepover is entered as three supports: the active work before, the sleepover itself, and the active work after — see Creating a Sleepover or Active Overnight Support.

SCHADS Award changes from 1 June 2026

The interpreter automatically applies the SCHADS Award variation that took effect on 1 June 2026. Astalty selects the correct rules based on the pay period's dates, so no setting needs to change — periods that start on or after 1 June 2026 are interpreted under the updated rules, and earlier periods continue to use the previous rules.

From 1 June 2026 the interpreter changes how sleepovers interact with the work around them:

• A sleepover no longer counts as a rest break. Time spent on a sleepover is excluded when measuring the break between the shifts on either side of it, so a sleepover sitting between two shifts can no longer satisfy the minimum-break requirement on its own.
• Work on either side of a sleepover is treated as one continuous shift. The work performed before and after a sleepover is combined when calculating hours and overtime, rather than being measured as two separate shifts.
• Extended ordinary hours by agreement. Where the worker has agreed, the combined sleepover shift can have an ordinary-hours cap of up to 12 hours (instead of the standard 10), with hours beyond the cap paid as overtime.

Overtime streams: 2-hour vs 3-hour first band

Under the SCHADS Award the first overtime band on Monday to Saturday is normally the first 2 hours (paid at the first overtime rate), with the rest at the higher rate. For some employees this first band is 3 hours.

Astalty determines this from each employee's SCHADS Overtime Stream, set on their employment details:

• Disability services — the first overtime band is 2 hours for all employees.
• Social, community & crisis accommodation — the first overtime band is 3 hours for full-time employees. Part-time and casual employees stay at 2 hours.

New contracts default to Disability services. To review or change it, open the worker's HR tab and edit their contract — see Staff Contracted Hours.

Allowances

• First aid allowance — weekly, for workers with the entitlement on their contract. You can exclude cancelled shifts and/or provider travel — see First Aid Allowance in Scheduling Settings.
• Broken shift allowances — added automatically, as above.
• Sleepover allowance — per night, as above.
• Kilometre / vehicle allowance — per kilometre, for approved travel in a worker's own vehicle.
• Laundry allowance, uniform allowance and the overtime meal allowance — see the sections below.

Allowance dollar values are indexed automatically each financial year.

The on-call allowance, clothing reimbursements, recall meal allowance, telephone and heat allowances, and board-and-lodging arrangements are not calculated — see What Astalty covers under this award.

Laundry Allowance

Laundry allowance is supported as a SCHADS award entitlement. When laundry allowance is enabled on an employee's contract, the system automatically calculates the per-shift amount, applies the weekly cap, and includes it in payroll outputs. Both the per-shift rate and the weekly cap are indexed to the financial year of the pay period and update automatically with each Annual Wage Review.

Uniform Allowance

The uniform allowance works the same way. It's paid when the employer requires a uniform but, by agreement, pays an allowance instead of supplying one. When it's enabled on an employee's contract, Astalty calculates the per-shift amount, applies the weekly cap (whichever is the lesser), and includes it in payroll outputs — the per-shift rate and weekly cap are indexed to the financial year automatically. Map its pay item on the pay group to include it in the Xero export.

For providers using the Xero integration, the laundry allowance pay item mapping is optional — and only needs to be set up for employees who are entitled to receive the allowance.

Meal Allowance

Astalty can automatically add a SCHADS overtime meal allowance to a worker's timesheet when they work a long enough shift. The same setting also drives the meal allowance for the Nurses, Aged Care and Health Professionals awards.

How the allowance is calculated:

• Astalty looks at each worker's overtime per shift (the hours beyond their ordinary-hours cap for that day).
• One meal allowance is added once that overtime is more than one hour.
• A second meal allowance is added once that overtime goes beyond four hours.
• The allowance flows through to the Xero timesheet export like Astalty's other SCHADS allowances.

To turn automatic meal allowances on:

1. Go to Settings → Scheduling.
2. In the Payroll & Awards section, find Meal Allowance under Allowances.
3. Choose Create automatically for overtime to switch it on (choose Don't create meal allowances to keep it off).
4. Save your scheduling settings.

For providers using the Xero integration, the meal allowance pay item mapping is optional — you only need to map a Meal Allowance pay item if you have turned the automatic allowance on.

Scheduling alerts

Astalty raises alerts while you roster, before the hours reach payroll:

• Minimum engagement — 2 hours, part-time and casual employees
• Minimum 10-hour break between shifts (8 hours by agreement next to a sleepover — record it in the Minimum Break Near a Sleepover contract field)
• Broken shift span and shift portions
• Sleepover span and sleepover-adjacent work
• Shift duration / per-shift cap reached
• Fatigue management

See Scheduling Award Alerts for the full list and how alert behaviour is configured.

Where you see the interpretation

• Award Interpretation tab on a timesheet batch — the per-worker breakdown for the shifts in that batch.
• Award Pay Report — the same breakdown across a full pay period.
• Award Playground (under Scheduling → Award Playground) — experiment with hypothetical work records before running real timesheets.
• Timesheet exports and the Xero timesheet push — pay lines and allowances flow to payroll per worker.

Each worker's expanded view includes the interpretation trace showing which SCHADS rules were applied — which cap was reached, which overtime band was used, and when a broken-shift or sleepover allowance was added.

Award Playground

Providers can experiment with different shift scenarios — including sleepovers, active overnight periods, broken shifts and cross-midnight shifts — before processing real timesheets. The playground interprets under the award on the selected worker's contract, so for a SCHADS worker it applies the SCHADS rules described on this page.

See the Award Playground guide for how to build scenarios, use templates, pre-load an existing schedule, and set up sleepover scenarios.

Setting up Xero pay items

Pay items are mapped per pay group, and one pay group's mapping can only encode one award's rates. If you also run staff on other awards, each award needs its own pay group.

Whilst we cannot provide payroll advice based on your interpretation and application of the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010, these are the Pay Items and their suggested multipliers when setting up Xero pay items for a SCHADS pay group. You should refer to the Award, or seek professional and qualified advice, to ensure accuracy and compliance for your organisation.

Under SCHADS the Overtime Sunday and Overtime Public Holiday pay items are optional — the rates match the ordinary Sunday and Public Holiday items, which are used as the fallback. (Under the other awards they differ and must be mapped.)

For the mapping workflow itself, see Setup Pay Items and Employee Templates in Xero and Setup Pay Groups and Employees in Astalty.

Frequently asked questions

Why didn't overtime apply when a worker did a long or overnight shift?

Astalty converts hours above the SCHADS ordinary-hours caps into overtime — 10 hours of ordinary time per day/shift (or the worker's agreed cap), and 38 hours per week (or 76 per fortnight) across the pay period. Overtime only starts once a worker passes one of those caps.

Work that continues across midnight is treated as one continuous shift, not two separate days. So a 3pm–11pm shift that continues 11pm–7am is a single 16-hour shift — 10 hours ordinary and 6 hours overtime — not two short days that each stay under the cap. If a result looks wrong, check the interpretation trace or reproduce it in the Award Playground.

Does the break between shifts affect overtime?

No. The break between shifts and overtime are separate. Overtime comes only from the hours worked (the caps above). The minimum break between shifts is a rostering rule — if a worker is rostered with too little rest, Astalty raises a Minimum Break alert so you can adjust the roster, but it does not change pay or create overtime. See the next question for detail.

We rostered less than a 10-hour break between shifts — does Astalty pay a penalty?

No. Under the Award the rest break between two ordinary shifts is an entitlement: the minimum is 10 hours, reducible to 8 hours by agreement where a shift directly precedes or follows a sleepover. The Award attaches no pay penalty to a short break, so Astalty flags it as a rostering issue to fix rather than adding anything to pay.

Record a worker's agreed 8-hour sleepover-adjacent break in the Minimum Break Near a Sleepover field — see Staff Contracted Hours. Choosing 8 hours - By agreement stops a compliant 8-hour break next to a sleepover raising a false alert; a break between ordinary shifts always requires the full 10 hours.

We rostered two back-to-back shifts (a "double") — why is there an Overtime alert but no Minimum Break alert?

Because there is no break between them to measure. Shifts rostered back-to-back — for example 3pm–11pm and then 11pm–7am — are one continuous 16-hour shift, exactly as if it had been rostered as a single shift: 10 hours ordinary and 6 hours overtime (see the first question in this FAQ). When you assign either half, the Overtime alert is the flag for the double — a worker can still appear as a preferred suggestion (that reflects the participant's preferences, not compliance), so check the alert column when assigning. The 10-hour minimum break then applies after the combined shift ends, before the worker's next shift.

Does a sleepover count as the rest break between shifts?

Not since the 1 June 2026 changes. A sleepover is no longer treated as rest, so the break is measured from when the sleepover ends. For example, a sleepover finishing at 6am with the next shift starting at 3pm is a 9-hour break, not a full overnight rest. See SCHADS Award changes from 1 June 2026.

Why did a broken-shift allowance apply when there was only a small gap between clients?

This is the most common surprise. A broken shift is any day where a worker has two or three separate work periods split by an unpaid gap — and by default that holds even when the gap is short. So a worker who does one support, has an unpaid gap, then does another support on the same day is on a broken shift, and Astalty adds the allowance automatically.

If you don't want short gaps between back-to-back supports to count as broken shifts, a provider-level Broken Shift Minimum Gap setting is available under Settings > Scheduling: gaps of up to the number of minutes you set are treated as continuous work, and only a longer gap forms a broken shift.

When does Astalty add an overtime meal allowance, and how do I turn it on?

Only when you switch it on. Astalty can automatically add a SCHADS overtime meal allowance to a worker's timesheet when they work more than one hour of overtime on a shift, plus a second allowance once that overtime passes four hours. It is off by default — turn it on under Settings → Scheduling → Meal Allowance if you pay this allowance, or leave it off if you provide meals to workers on site. Full detail, including the Xero pay item mapping, is in Meal Allowance.

How do I enter a sleepover in Astalty?

A sleepover is entered as three supports, not one: the active work before, the sleepover itself (marked inactive), and the active work after. This keeps the right rates and allowance on each part, and Astalty will not combine them into a single overnight block — each part has its own clock in/out and notes. See Creating a Sleepover or Active Overnight Support.

What changed for sleepovers on 1 June 2026?

Three things, applied automatically to pay periods starting on or after 1 June 2026: a sleepover no longer counts as a rest break; work before and after a sleepover is treated as one continuous shift; and, by agreement, that combined shift can have an ordinary-hours cap of up to 12 hours. Full detail is in SCHADS Award changes from 1 June 2026.

What is a worker paid if they're woken to work during a sleepover?

The sleepover allowance covers the passive sleepover. Active work performed when the worker is woken is paid separately at the overtime rate, with a minimum of 1 hour. The Award also requires at least 4 hours of active work to be rostered or paid on at least one side of the sleepover.

Does Astalty automatically update when the SCHADS Award changes?

The interpretation logic updates automatically — Astalty applies the correct rules based on each pay period's dates, so changes like the 1 June 2026 sleepover rules are handled for you with nothing to switch on. The dollar pay rates, however, live in your payroll system (e.g. Xero) and are updated there — Astalty does not change your pay rates.

Who updates pay rates after the Annual Wage Review?

You do, in your payroll system. Astalty indexes the allowances it calculates (such as broken shift, sleepover and laundry) to the financial year automatically, but the base pay rates on your Xero pay items are maintained by you. We keep SCHADS pay-item setup checklists current with the Fair Work pay guide to help — always cross-reference the Award for your organisation.

Can Astalty tell me if my roster is SCHADS-compliant, or give payroll advice?

Astalty gives you the tools to interpret and check rosters — the interpreter, the per-shift interpretation trace, the award alerts and the Playground — but it cannot give payroll advice or confirm compliance for your organisation. How the Award applies to your situation is your decision; refer to the Award or seek qualified advice.

How can I see why a shift was paid a certain way?

When shifts are timesheet-batched, Astalty records the Award rules it applied to each worker's shifts — for example when a daily or period cap was reached, which overtime band was used, and when a broken-shift or sleepover allowance was added. You can also reproduce any scenario in the Award Playground before running real timesheets.

What Astalty covers under this award

Conclusion

The SCHADS interpreter covers ordinary hours, shift loadings, weekend and public holiday penalties, overtime bands, broken shifts, sleepovers and the first aid, laundry, meal and kilometre allowances, with an on-screen rule trace for every decision it makes. Provisions outside the engine — day-worker rules, on-call and recall, clothing reimbursements and other minor allowances, TOIL, higher duties and leave rules — must be managed through correct rostering or manual controls.