Seven rostering mistakes that increase your wage bill

Written by Roster Flow. Published 29 July 2026.

A shift nobody has questioned in months. A quick request to stay back. A Sunday costed like a Tuesday. Each looks small on the roster, and each is paid for again in every pay run until someone changes it.

The award rules below are from the Restaurant Industry Award 2020, the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 and the General Retail Industry Award 2020, as consolidated to 1 July 2026. Other awards set different rules, so confirm yours with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool.

Where the wage bill is decided

Payroll adds up what the roster set in motion. The cost of a week comes down to three things the roster decides: how many hours are worked, when they fall and who works them. The same hour can cost very different amounts depending on the day, the time and whether the person is full-time, part-time or casual.

That is why a roster with the same total hours as last week can cost more, and why most of the fixes below change the shape of the roster rather than the number of people on it.

Mistake 1: copying last week’s roster

Copying last week is the fastest way to build a roster and the easiest way to keep paying for shifts the business no longer needs. A second closer added for a busy month stays on after the month ends. A morning shift built around a delivery keeps its early start after the delivery moves. Nobody decides to keep these hours. They just never get questioned.

• Start from next week’s trade. Forecast sales or bookings by day and by hour, then build shifts to match. Forecasting staffing from weekly sales sets out the method.
• Question one shift a week. Check the trade in its first and last hour and ask whether you would roster it if it were new.
• Label temporary shifts. A note such as "extra closer until the sale ends" makes it obvious when the reason has gone.

Mistake 2: starting and finishing everyone together

When everyone starts at opening and finishes at close, the roster pays for a full team through the quiet hours to have one at the peak. Most small businesses have one or two rushes a day, and the hours either side need fewer people.

Take a cafe covered by the Restaurant Industry Award that rosters four people from 7:00 to 15:00 on weekdays, each with a 30 minute unpaid meal break, so each shift is 7.5 paid hours. The counter is busy from 7:30 to 9:30 and from 12:00 to 13:30. If the fourth person is a casual and works 11:00 to 14:00 instead, a 3 hour shift is too short to carry a meal break under the award’s break table (clause 16.2), so that shift drops from 7.5 paid hours to 3.

That is 4.5 hours a day, or 22.5 hours across five weekdays. At an example cost of $36 an hour including super, it is $810 a week. The lunch rush keeps four people and the morning rush has three, so watch a few mornings before making the change permanent. Overstaffing and understaffing shows how to find the hours that are in the wrong place.

Mistake 3: rostering shifts shorter than the minimum

Every award sets a minimum engagement: the least an employee is paid for each time they come in. Roster someone for less and you pay the minimum anyway, for time that was never planned as work. Sending someone home early runs into the same rule. The minimums differ between awards and between casual and part-time employees.

The fix is to make short shifts worth their minimum. A 2 hour lunch cover under the Restaurant award can be exactly right. Under the Retail award the same cover costs 3 hours, so give it a job for the third hour, such as restocking or the afternoon delivery, rather than paying for an hour of standing around.

Mistake 4: keeping part-time staff back without checking the rule

Asking a part-time employee to stay back is the quickest way to cover a gap, and it is often the most expensive. Under the Restaurant and Hospitality awards, a part-time employee is paid at overtime rates for all time worked beyond their rostered hours, beyond an average of 38 hours a week or beyond the award’s daily maximum (clause 10.13(b) of both awards). Additional hours can be put on the roster ahead of time inside the employee’s availability (clauses 10.6 and 10.7), but the hour after a rostered finish is overtime.

The General Retail Industry Award works differently. A part-time employee is paid at the overtime rate for time worked beyond their guaranteed hours (clause 10.8), unless the employer and employee agree to vary the regular pattern of work and record the agreement in writing, which can be a text message. For extra hours on a particular shift, the agreement must be recorded before the end of that shift, and a variation cannot take the employee to 38 or more ordinary hours a week (clause 10.6). The employer keeps a copy (clause 10.7).

• Know your award’s rule before asking anyone to stay back, and before promising them it is paid at their usual rate.
• Roster the extra hours in advance where you can, so they are planned hours rather than a late request.
• Under the Retail award, get the agreement in writing first, and keep it with your payroll records.
• Watch for a pattern. If someone works the same extra hours week after week, talk to them about changing their agreed hours rather than paying for the gap each week.

Mistake 5: costing every hour at the same rate

A roster costed at one average hourly rate hides the most expensive hours of the week. Under both the Restaurant Industry Award and the General Retail Industry Award, ordinary hours worked by full-time and part-time employees on a Sunday are paid at 150% of the minimum hourly rate. A 6 hour Sunday shift therefore costs the same in base pay as 9 hours on a weekday morning.

Casual employees have their own columns in both tables, which include the casual loading. Current rates for each classification are on the Restaurant Industry Award pay rates and General Retail Industry Award pay rates pages.

• Cost each day at its own rate, not at one average for the week. The weekend and public holiday hours calculator separates those hours.
• Move flexible work into cheaper hours. Stocktake, deep cleaning and prep that can wait for a weekday should not land on a Sunday by habit.
• Treat public holiday weeks as their own roster. The public holidays page lists the dates for each state.

Mistake 6: leaving breaks off the roster

Breaks that are not on the roster get taken late, cut short or skipped when it gets busy, and some awards put a price on that. Under the Restaurant Industry Award, if an employee is not allowed to take an unpaid meal break at the rostered time, the employer pays 50% of the employee’s ordinary hourly rate extra from when the break was due until it is taken or the shift ends (clause 16.5). The Hospitality award has a similar rule for shifts of more than 6 hours, with the extra 50% running from 6 hours after the start (clauses 16.5 and 16.6).

The General Retail Industry Award says the timing and length of rest and meal breaks are to be included in the roster (clause 16.3), and an employer cannot require an employee to work more than 5 hours without a meal break (clause 16.5(c)).

• Give every break a start time on the roster, not just a note that one is due.
• Roster breaks before or after the rush, and stagger them so the floor is never left short.
• Record breaks as they are taken, so a missed one is caught before the pay run. Recording unpaid breaks covers how.

Mistake 7: publishing without costing, and never checking what was paid

A roster that is not costed before it goes out can only be judged once payroll is done, and by then the week has been paid for. A roster that is costed but never compared with the timesheets misses the other half of the problem: early clock ins, late finishes and shifts added during the week.

• Cost the draft before you publish. Total the hours by day type and compare the estimate with the week’s wage budget.
• Keep the published version, so there is a fixed roster to compare against.
• Compare rostered and actual hours every week, person by person. Comparing rostered and actual labour costs explains how to read the gap.
• Approve the differences before payroll, rather than paying whatever the timesheet says.

Fixing them without breaking the rules

Several of these fixes change people’s hours, and the awards set rules for how that happens. Under the Restaurant Industry Award, a full-time or part-time employee’s roster can be changed by mutual agreement or with 7 days’ notice (clause 15.3(d)), and the Hospitality award says the same (clause 15.5(d)).

Under the General Retail Industry Award, a part-time employee’s regular pattern of work, other than their guaranteed hours, can be changed with 7 days’ written notice, or 48 hours in an emergency, and must not be changed from week to week to avoid award entitlements (clause 10.10). Guaranteed hours change only by agreement. For other employees, a permanent roster change needs at least 7 days’ written notice, extended to at least 14 days in total if the employee disagrees (clause 15.9(e)). The award also points to clause 35 for the requirement to consult employees about roster changes, so talk to the people affected before a new pattern starts.

In practice, the savings from a better roster usually arrive in the next roster cycle, not this afternoon. Plan the change, give the notice and consult, then let the new pattern do the work.

A weekly check that catches all seven

1. Forecast the weekStart from expected trade by day and hour, not from last week’s roster.
2. Shape the shiftsStagger starts and finishes so people arrive for the rush and leave as it ends.
3. Check every minimumMake sure each casual and part-time shift meets the minimum in your award, and give short shifts useful work.
4. Check part-time hoursKeep part-time employees inside their availability and agreed hours, and record any agreed variation in writing where the award requires it.
5. Cost by day typeCost weekday, evening, Saturday, Sunday and public holiday hours separately against the budget.
6. Place the breaksGive every break a start time that works around the busiest part of the shift.
7. Compare after the weekCheck rostered against actual hours for each person and approve the differences before payroll.

The roster cost calculator estimates a week before you publish it. Roster Flow then covers the week itself: availability and leave from staff phones, the roster published to everybody at once, clock ins that become timesheets, and approved hours sent to Xero, MYOB or a CSV file.

Sources

• Fair Work Commission: Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119]
• Fair Work Commission: Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 [MA000009]
• Fair Work Commission: General Retail Industry Award 2020 [MA000004]
• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award

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