Non-compliance with employment obligations can lead to significant risk – financial and reputational.

Our robust system, along with our highly skilled consultants, will ensure your organisation meets Australian payroll compliance requirements.

Our integrated team of multi-disciplinary specialists are solely dedicated to investigating, remediating and preventing payroll non-compliance, including: payroll consulting, legal, payroll operations and systems, behavioural risk, superannuation and taxation.


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What is KPMG ThinkPay?

KPMG ThinkPay helps ensure wage compliance


KPMG ThinkPay is an end-to-end service across payroll risk and time-critical wage compliance to help address wage underpayment challenge facing Australian organisations.



Download the KPMG ThinkPay factsheet.

Faster, more accurate insights


KPMG ThinkPay is powered by our proprietary wage compliance calculator. This enables us to provide actionable insights to our clients faster and more accurately.



Read more in our frequently asked questions

KPMG ThinkPay risk and compliance services


  • Award and enterprise agreement reconciliations
  • Obligation management and compliance frameworks
  • Vulnerability assessments
  • Accrued leave and long service leave entitlements
  • Operating model and process improvement
  • Ongoing monitoring
  • Stakeholder engagement and communications
  • Workforce optimisation and analytics
  • Payroll operational relief and specialist support
  • System configuration review and support

Meet the KPMG ThinkPay team

ThinkPay in 3 easy stages

    Investigate

    Investigate

    We perform a tailored risk assessment across one or more of the following: employment obligations, people, process, technology and governance.

    Remediate

    Remediate

    Setting up remediation programs to support clients to quantify payroll risk, understand the root cause, engage with key stakeholders, and pay their employees back.

    Prevent

    Prevent

    We help clients to design, run, govern and monitor their 'Hire to Retire' value chain to prevent payroll risk. We also help clients with ongoing continuous monitoring of pay compliance.

Powered by our KPMG ThinkPay platform

Our services are powered by our automated ThinkPay platform – a cloud-based analytics solution for ongoing monitoring of pay outcomes, easy-access visualisations and reporting.



Find out more

Contact KPMG's Human Capital Risk & Compliance Service team to find out more about how we can help you.



Meet the KPMG ThinkPay team

Frequently asked questions

Why is payroll compliance important?

Non-compliance with your employment obligations exposes organisations (and potentially individuals) to financial penalties, reputational risk, regulator scrutiny and loss of trust with the workforce. Payroll compliance is nuanced and can be challenging for organisations because it requires clear understanding of employment obligations and for these obligations to be met in hiring, rostering, time recording, and payroll processing.

How is KPMG ThinkPay different from other solutions?

We combine specialist advice with the KPMG ThinkPay technology platform which gives our clients confidence when (1) identifying payroll compliance risk, (2) performing remediation of known risks, or (3) supporting our clients with pro-active on-going monitoring and governance to prevent risk.

Our platform is a cloud-based technology which automates payroll compliance for employment obligations (including awards, enterprise agreements, long service leave, other leave, superannuation) and provides:

  • a ‘clear box’ view of how payroll calculations are performed hour-by-hour;
  • root cause analysis of any identified risks; and
  • bespoke reporting of lead and lag indicators of risk.

Can KPMG help with ongoing compliance reviews?

Yes, our technology and team can provide reviews and monitoring of ongoing pay compliance.

Can KPMG ThinkPay help me prevent wage underpayment?

Yes. Beyond ongoing monitoring of payroll compliance, we have a data-driven approach to determining root cause of any identified variances across an employee’s hire to retire lifecycle. We also often support our clients with specialist advice on key change requirements (i.e. to processes or systems, to how managers and employees interact with systems), consulting support to implement these changes, or assurance support to review changes once implemented.

Can you perform a payroll audit?

Yes, we can perform a payroll audit.

What are the most common errors found in payroll audits?

Typically, we find no single point of failure and in many cases, errors are inadvertent. Often, they are caused by a combination of: (1) complex employment obligations (paired with inconsistent or an absence of clear interpretation), (2) systems and processes that have been ‘set and forget’ or were poorly designed and implemented, (3) changes in workforce demand requiring different patterns of work or additional hours of work. There is a misconception that payroll can be processed ‘at the click of a button’, underestimating the effort to get things right.

How do you undertake the wage recalculation process?

We have a data-driven methodology that has been industrialised in our our proprietary technology, the KPMG ThinkPay Calculation Engine. We believe this is leading practice as it allows us to consistently and rapidly configure employment obligations (e.g. pay rules set out in policy/business rules, awards, enterprise agreements or in legislation). Our methodology and technology has been developed and refined through hundreds of client engagements, and have held up against regulator scrutiny.

Can you assist with the legal aspects of the wage underpayment?

Yes, we can assist with legal advice where appropriate.