Forensic pay recalculation, reinvented

Payroll compliance, rebuilt from the ground up.

For decades, checking whether people were paid correctly meant weeks of spreadsheet archaeology — and a number no one could fully explain. PayQuery rebuilds Australian wage entitlements from the timesheet up, prices every shift against the rules in force on the day, and shows the reasoning behind every figure. The forensic rigour of a specialist, with the working visible on every line.

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Every line
opens to its hours, rate, multiplier and award clause — no figure without its working.
To the date
each shift priced against the instrument in force that day — multi-year claims aren't flattened.
Verified rules
every rate approved against its source before it can price a matter — never assumed.
Nothing guessed
gaps and ambiguity are flagged for a human decision, not silently filled.
One shift · Nurses Award · Saturday evening+ $48.21 underpaid
Ordinary hours · 6 h6 × $33.19$199.14
Saturday penalty · 150%2 h × $33.19 × 1.5$99.57
Evening loading · after 6pmclause 26.2$14.30
Entitled$313.01
Actually paid$264.80
Varianceresolved in the employee's favour where records are unclear$48.21

Every figure in a PayQuery run expands to exactly this — the hours, the rate, the clause, the decision.

The shift

The same rigour, without the spreadsheet archaeology.

The old way
  • Months of manual reconstruction in spreadsheets only the author understands.
  • A single figure at the end — and a fight to explain how it was reached.
  • Rates and rules rekeyed by hand, one award change away from a quiet error.
  • Assumptions buried in formulas, invisible to the client and the other side.
The PayQuery way
  • The award becomes reusable rules — checked once, applied to every shift consistently.
  • Every dollar opens to its working: the hours, the rate, the clause, the decision.
  • The right rule for the right date, automatically — multi-year claims priced correctly.
  • Every assumption recorded with its rationale, printed in the report by design.

The result: forensic work that used to consume a specialist's weeks becomes a process you can run, review and defend — with the reasoning in plain sight at every step. That's not a faster spreadsheet. It's a different way of doing the work.

How it works

Four stages, each with a human checkpoint before anything moves money.

01 · INGEST

The award, verified at source

Select a pre-loaded award or upload an agreement. Every rate and rule is checked against the source document and approved by a person before it can price a single shift.

02 · RECONSTRUCT

Priced shift by shift

Raw timesheets are rebuilt against the rules in force on each date — penalties, overtime, loadings, public holidays, breaks — not sampled, not averaged, not estimated.

03 · RESOLVE

Ambiguity surfaced, not hidden

Duplicate identities, missing classifications, overlapping shifts and gaps are flagged for a decision. PayQuery never quietly guesses a figure that changes the answer.

04 · DEFEND

A result with its evidence

Interest, leave loading, set-off and scenario pricing assemble into a total — with the full audit trail, every assumption recorded, and the source behind every rate.

A wage figure is only worth what you can prove behind it.

Most recalculations end at a number. PayQuery ends at a number you can open up — every dollar traced back to the hours worked, the rate that applied on that date, the clause that set it, and the decision that resolved anything unclear. The reasoning is the output, not a by-product you have to take on trust.

No black box

Every figure expands to its working

Open any total and it unfolds into the shift, the rate, the multiplier and the award clause behind it. No opaque model, no spreadsheet to reverse-engineer — you can show a client, a court or the other side exactly how a dollar was reached.

Accurate to the date

The right rule, for the right period

Awards and agreements change — mid-year variations, version switchovers, historical rates. PayQuery prices each shift against the instrument actually in force that day, so a multi-year claim isn't flattened against today's rates.

Built to defend

An audit trail, not just an answer

Every rule is verified against its source before it can price a matter, every assumption is recorded with its rationale, and the source documents sit behind each rate. The scrutiny is built in — so the result stands up to it.

Built for

Employment lawyers
IR & workplace-relations consultants
Insolvency practitioners
Payroll remediation teams

The judgement stays human. PayQuery does the arithmetic and surfaces every assumption; the practitioner makes the calls and approves the result. Where an employer's records are inadequate, the defensible reading resolves in the employee's favour — and PayQuery says so, out loud, in the working.

See a recalculation you can stand behind.

We'll walk a real award through PayQuery with you — from raw timesheets to a figure that opens up, line by line, all the way to the clause.