The job already knows the hours. Payroll re-types them.
Most trade businesses keep two sets of hours: the time booked against jobs in ServiceM8 or Simpro, and the time a bookkeeper types into Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks payroll. Automating timesheets to payroll means one set, reconciled before the pay run — with award interpretation left to your payroll product and your bookkeeper, not to us.
Why you end up with two sets of hours
The job system records when someone was on a job. Payroll needs when someone was at work. Those are not the same number, and the gap between them is where the second timesheet comes from.
ServiceM8 is explicit about this. Its Automated Timesheet Sync add-on exports clock-on and clock-off shift times to Xero, MYOB Business or QuickBooks Online at the end of each pay period, rounded to the nearest 15 minutes or exact, and its help page states that "Clock On/Off times are different to Check In/Out times for jobs" (ServiceM8 Help, Automated Timesheet Sync, checked September 2026). So the hours that cost the job and the hours that get paid are two separate records inside the same product.
Simpro sends timesheet details to Xero as part of its accounting link (Simpro, Xero integration, checked September 2026). Third-party connectors exist on top of that, and the reason they sell is telling — one pitches itself as the way to "stop maintaining two sets of timesheets, one for payroll and one for job sheets" and adds the break and overtime calculations the native export does not do (SyncEzy, checked September 2026).
Nobody set out to build two timesheets. It is what happens when one product owns the job and another owns the pay run, and a person in the office is the join.
What the law requires of the hours record
You have to keep time and wages records for 7 years, and for anyone paid on time worked the record has to show the hours, including when overtime started and finished (Fair Work Ombudsman, Record-keeping, checked September 2026). Pay slips have to go out within 1 working day of pay day, even when the employee is on leave (Fair Work Ombudsman, Pay slips, checked September 2026).
Those rules are enforced on small businesses, not just on the headlines. In 2024–25 the Fair Work Ombudsman issued 743 infringement notices for record-keeping and pay slip breaches, worth $838,000 in fines, alongside 1,220 compliance notices recovering $8.2 million for 3,438 workers (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2024–25 annual report media release, 29 October 2025). The headline figure the same year was $358 million back-paid to more than 249,000 workers.
A hand-typed timesheet is not illegal. It is just the version most likely to be wrong when an inspector asks for it, because the source it was typed from is in a different system and nobody kept the link.
What changed on 1 July 2026
Three things landed on the same day, and each one makes the reconciliation matter more than it did last year.
- KNDR·01Minimum wage $26.44 an hourThe national minimum wage rose 5.97% to $26.44 an hour and $1,004.90 a week, and modern award rates rose 4.75%, from 1 July 2026 (ABC News on the Fair Work Commission decision, 2 June 2026). Every hour mis-recorded is now worth more.
- KNDR·02Payday Super: 7 business daysFrom 1 July 2026 a super guarantee contribution is on time only if the fund receives it within 7 business days of paying the employee; late means the super guarantee charge (ATO, Payment deadlines for Payday Super, checked September 2026). The rate is 12% (ATO, Super guarantee, current rate). A pay run held up by a timesheet query now has a super deadline behind it.
- KNDR·03STP on or before every pay daySingle Touch Payroll has to be reported on or before each pay day for arm's-length employees. The only concession is for small employers — 19 or fewer payees — reporting closely held payees quarterly (ATO, STP concessional reporting for closely held payees, checked September 2026). There is no concession for "the timesheets were late".
What we build here, and what we refuse to build
We will not build award interpretation. Penalty rates, allowances, overtime thresholds and the Building and Construction General On-site Award are the job of a payroll product that is maintained when the award changes, and of the person who signs the pay run. A custom rules engine for awards is a liability with your name on it.
That is not a small caveat. The Fair Work Ombudsman's Employer Advisory Service passed its 10,000th piece of written advice in 2024–25 and reports that questions about award coverage are common across industries (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2024–25 annual report media release, 29 October 2025). If professionals need written advice to work out which award applies, a script should not be deciding it.
What we build is the reconciliation in front of payroll. Job hours from ServiceM8 or Simpro, shift hours from the same system or a separate clock, and paid hours in Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks — compared per person per day, with the gaps listed for a human before anything is submitted. The approved set is then pushed to payroll once, not typed.
The value is in the exception list. A person who booked nine hours to jobs and clocked seven is a question. A person who clocked ten and booked four is a different question. Both are currently found — if at all — weeks later, by the customer or the accountant.
The arithmetic
Average weekly ordinary time earnings for Australian full-time adults were $2,083.70, seasonally adjusted, in May 2026 — about $55 an hour over a 38-hour week before on-costs. Add 12% super and the loaded figure is about $61 an hour before leave, insurance or a vehicle (ABS, Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, May 2026; ATO, Super guarantee, current rate).
Now count the hours in your office, not ours. If somebody spends three hours a week collecting, chasing and re-typing timesheets, that is 3 × $61 × 52, or roughly $9,500 a year at the average wage — before a single correction, and before the payroll product you already pay for.
The product is not where the cost sits. Xero includes payroll for 2 people on Grow at $78 a month, 5 on Comprehensive at $107 and 10 on Ultimate at $143, prices including GST (Xero AU pricing, checked September 2026). The join between the job system and that payroll is what nobody quotes for, and it is the part that costs the three hours.
Where this does not pay
Salaried staff on fixed hours. There is nothing to reconcile, and a bookkeeper running the same pay run each fortnight is already the cheapest version.
Fewer than about five hourly employees. The build cost is roughly the same at five as at twenty-five, and at five the two-timesheet problem is a ten-minute conversation on a Friday.
And if the real problem is that people do not clock on, no reconciliation fixes it — it just produces a longer exception list. That is a process to fix first, and the reasons are on the what-not-to-automate page. Subcontractor hours are a different problem again, covered on the subcontractor page.
What we have not measured, and what we would measure for you
There is no reliable published Australian figure for how long collecting and reconciling timesheets before a pay run takes in a small business, and we are not going to borrow one from a vendor whitepaper to make this page more persuasive. Most numbers you will see quoted for this were produced by companies selling the fix.
What we would do instead is count it on one of your jobs. Follow a single job end to end, note every time a human touches this step, and multiply by what that person costs loaded. That is a real number about your business and it takes an afternoon.
You can run the arithmetic yourself first — the leak calculator uses ABS, Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, May 2026 for the wage default and ATO, Super guarantee, current rate for super, and returns a range rather than a single confident figure. If the range comes back under our minimum engagement, that is a real answer and you should stop there.
The questions people actually ask.
01Can’t the payroll software just do this?
It does the payroll. The gap is between the job system and the payroll product — ServiceM8, for example, exports shift times, not job times, so the comparison between what was booked and what was paid still happens by hand. If your job and payroll systems already agree every fortnight without anyone checking, you do not need us.
02Will it get the award right?
No, and we will not build anything that claims to. Award interpretation stays with your payroll product and the person who signs off the pay run. What we build is the check that the hours going into that product match the hours on the jobs.
03Where are your case studies?
Not published, because we do not have measured before-and-after numbers we can stand behind yet, and a case study without them is a story. Kindra AI was founded in 2025. When the measurements exist they will appear here with the sample size attached.
Stop bending.
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Bring the one flow that keeps costing you a Tuesday afternoon. We map it live and tell you what we'd build, what we wouldn't, and what it costs.