The Fair Work Commission issued the Annual Wage Review 2025 decision on 3 June 2025.
As part of the review, the National Minimum Wage increases by 3.5% taking the minimum wage to $24.95 per hour or $948.00 per week. In accordance with s.286(5) of the Fair Work Act 2009 this determination does not take effect in relation to a particular employee until the start of the employee’s first full pay period that starts on or after 1 July 2025.
Fair Work Commission Annual Wage Review 2025 summary of decision
The HIGA Award 2020 update pdl file for use in WageEasy contains changes to Payrates, Allowances and Superannuation effective from 1 July 2025.
Important: If you have made any custom changes to your Award settings, then DO NOT apply the Award update pdl, instead, make these changes manually to each Award.
Allowances:
Payrates: Base Pay Rates:
Junior Payrates:
There is a separate updated PDL file for the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 Juniors available. This update contains many rates, 70 in total. If you only pay one or two junior rates you may find it easier to manually add or update these rates yourself.
Awards:
Shift Loadings: Casual, Full Time, Part Time Awards
Script: Full Time and Part Time Awards only
For the payment of Split Shift Allowances (HIGA Broken Work day allowances)
Ensure allowances for payment of Split Shift loadings have Allowance No: entered
HIGA Broken Work Day Up to 3 Hours – Allowance No: HIGASPREAD2
HIGA Broken Work Day 3+ Hours – Allowance No: HIGASPREAD3
Superannuation changes effective 1 July 2025, in each Award:
The statutory Superannuation Guarantee percentage increases from 11.5% to 12%
The Superannuation Guarantee quarterly contribution cap decreases from $65,070 to $62,500
The Superannuation Guarantee (SG) minimum monthly pay threshold ($350/$450 per month) has been removed from the SGL Monthly Gross Pay calculation which means this value needs to be changed to $0 in all awards
Other items to check
General | General | Pay Rate Decimal Places
By default, “Pay Rate Decimal Places” are now set to 2.
See Fair Work Act 2009 with regards to rounding to 2 decimal places. All Fair Work Base payrates are set to 2 decimal places in WageEasy however where this Award setting is higher than 2, loadings will pay to this set number of decimal places. To meet with Fair Work requirements, this setting has been changed to 2 decimal places.
Note: Consider also the setup of any Period Overtime if it is being calculated over multiple pay periods. The date entered for Period Start will be removed with the Award upgrade.
If you need further information on how to apply these changes or would like to inquire with regards to booking a consultant, please contact the Access WageEasy Help Desk on 1300 924 332 or raise a support case through the Access Customer Success Portal
Update Instructions (for Desktop only):
Download the above file to C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Wage Easy Payroll\Association Data\Australia.
If it downloaded to your DOWNLOADS folder, copy the file into the default location as shown above.
Go to WageEasy, Setup, Association, select the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 icon, Edit.
Select the Internet tab.
Within the Internet tab, tick the items you want to update i.e. Allowances, Awards, and Base Pay Rates, then select Update Now.
Note: Do not tick Tax Tables and Rebates.
Select Next.
Load from Disk File. Click on the 3 dots (Ellipsis) to navigate to the location (i.e. C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Wage Easy Payroll\Association Data\Australia) where you saved your Hospitality Industry General Award 2020_2025-26_UPDATE.Pdl file to. Once you have located the file, select Open, Next, Finish.
Close using the close door icon (NOT the red cross) and select Close in the Edit Association Details box.
Repeat this process for each company file.
You are now ready to pay your employees.