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Priya's Four Shifts: What Hospitality Award Penalty Rates Actually Cost You

You've got Priya down for four shifts this fortnight. She's a casual, hospitality Level 1, on the award minimum. Tuesday 10am–3pm at the café side of the venue. Friday 6pm–11pm on the bar. Saturday 4pm–close. And because you're short and she said yes, Sunday 6pm–10pm.

You published the roster on Sunday night. You budgeted for twenty hours of Priya at "about $30 an hour, give or take." Give or take is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Two of those four shifts attract penalty rates you probably haven't priced in properly, and by the time the pay run lands you're going to wonder where the money went.

This isn't a legal explainer. It's the arithmetic you should have done before you hit publish.

The base rate — and when it's just the base rate

Start with what Priya actually gets paid before anything gets multiplied.

As of the current Hospitality Industry (General) Award, a Level 1 adult casual has a base hourly rate around $24.98 (check the current figure on the Hospitality Award page — Fair Work updates minimums each July). That already includes the 25% casual loading on top of the permanent base rate of roughly $19.97. We'll come back to why that matters in a minute.

For ordinary hours worked Monday to Friday between 7:00am and 7:00pm, that's the number. No penalty, no multiplier. Just the base casual rate.

So Priya's Tuesday 10am–3pm shift, five hours, straight ordinary:

5 hours × $24.98 = $124.90.

That's your cheapest hour of the week. Every other shift on Priya's roster costs more than this one, and the gap gets wider than most operators expect. Hold onto $24.98 as the anchor.

Evening penalties — when the clock matters

Here's the first trigger a lot of operators miss because it doesn't feel like a "penalty" in the folk sense — it's not the weekend, it's not a holiday, it's just Friday night service.

Under the Hospitality Award, casuals working Monday to Friday between 7:00pm and midnight get an evening loading. The rate is 125% of the permanent base (not of the casual rate) — so the loading and the casual 25% both apply to the base rate separately, and you add them. In practice that lands the casual evening rate around $29.96/hour (permanent base × 1.25, plus the 25% casual loading on the permanent base).

Priya's Friday 6pm–11pm shift is a mix. From 6:00pm to 7:00pm she's on ordinary hours. From 7:00pm to 11:00pm she's on the evening rate.

• 1 hour × $24.98 = $24.98
• 4 hours × $29.96 = $119.84
• Friday total: $144.82

That's an extra $20 over the same five hours worked on Tuesday afternoon. Not catastrophic on one shift. Multiply it across a full Friday night bar team of six casuals and you're looking at a hundred-plus dollars a week you weren't tracking.

The lesson isn't "don't roster Friday nights." Obviously you roster Friday nights — that's when people spend money. The lesson is: know the number so you're pricing your Friday menu and cover charges around a real labour cost, not a Tuesday-afternoon one.

Saturday and Sunday — the weekend step-up

This is where the compounding gets serious.

• Saturday, a casual is on 150% of the permanent base, plus the casual loading — roughly $34.95/hour.
• Sunday, a casual is on 175% of the permanent base, plus the casual loading — roughly $39.94/hour. (Sunday rates were reduced from 200% a few years back; some operators still work off the old number, which understates the cost. Others still budget for the old rate, which overstates it. Neither is helpful.)

Priya's Saturday 4pm–close, let's call it 8 hours:

8 hours × $34.95 = $279.60.

Her Sunday 6pm–10pm, 4 hours:

4 hours × $39.94 = $159.76.

Now line them up next to Tuesday:

| Shift | Hours | Rate | Cost | |---|---|---|---| | Tuesday 10–3 | 5 | $24.98 | $124.90 | | Friday 6–11 | 5 | mixed | $144.82 | | Saturday 4–close | 8 | $34.95 | $279.60 | | Sunday 6–10 | 4 | $39.94 | $159.76 |

Priya's Sunday shift is four hours and it costs you more than her Tuesday five hour shift by $35. Her Saturday shift, hour-for-hour, is 40% more expensive than Tuesday.

None of these numbers are extreme on their own. What gets operators is that they're all sitting on the same roster, and the total for Priya's fortnight is $709.08 — not the "about $600" you'd get if you multiplied 22 hours by a mental average of $27.

Public holidays — the full multiplier

We didn't put Priya on a public holiday this fortnight. But say next week is the King's Birthday and you need her Monday 10am–3pm.

Public holiday for a hospitality casual is 250% of the permanent base, plus casual loading — roughly $54.92/hour.

That same Tuesday 10–3 shift, moved onto a public holiday:

5 hours × $54.92 = $274.60.

The same shift, same person, same tasks. $124.90 on a Tuesday. $274.60 on a public holiday. Your labour cost has more than doubled while your revenue — unless you're charging a public holiday surcharge — has not.

This is why plenty of independent venues either close on public holidays, run a stripped-back menu with a skeleton crew, or add a 10–15% surcharge. All three are legitimate decisions. Deciding by accident, because you didn't run the number, is not.

Casual loading and how it stacks (the most misunderstood part)

If you've read this far you've seen me refer twice to "casual loading on the permanent base" rather than "casual loading on the penalty rate." That distinction is where a lot of DIY roster spreadsheets go wrong.

Here's the mechanic in plain language:

• The permanent base is the anchor number in the award.
• The penalty rate (125%, 150%, 175%, 250%) is a multiplier of that permanent base.
• The 25% casual loading is also calculated on the permanent base, not on the penalty rate.
• You add the two loadings to the base — you don't multiply the casual loading on top of the penalty rate.

So a Sunday casual is not "175% × 1.25 = 218.75%" of the base. It's 175% + 25% = 200% of the permanent base. Which lands roughly at that $39.94/hour we used above.

Getting this wrong in the compounding direction (multiplying instead of adding) makes your labour cost look scarier than it is and you under-roster. Getting it wrong in the other direction — forgetting the casual loading applies at all on a Sunday because "the penalty rate already covers it" — is the more common mistake and it means you're paying more than your spreadsheet says.

If any of this feels shaky, the Hospitality Award page has the current base figures and the full rate table. Bookmark it. Fair Work updates the numbers in July every year.

What this means when you're building the roster (not paying it)

Everything above is about the pay run. But you're not doing the pay run right now — you're doing the roster. Those are two different jobs.

Payroll is HankHR's job (our sister product), or your bookkeeper's job, or whoever runs your STP submission. That's where the exact cents-per-hour calculation and the super and the leave accruals get handled.

Rostering is your job. And the rostering question is different. It's not "what does Priya cost per hour on Sunday." It's:

• Do I need Priya on Sunday, or is there a casual on my team who actually wants the Sunday hours and would take them off her hands?
• If the Sunday shift costs me $160 in wages and I'm doing $900 in revenue in that window, is that shift pulling its weight?
• Am I rostering four casuals on Saturday when three plus a well-briefed shift lead would carry the same covers?

Those are roster-design decisions. The award rate isn't there to punish you — it's there to change the cost equation you use when you make the call.

This is where a rostering tool earns its keep. Schedaddle shows you the cost implication of a shift before you confirm it, not two weeks later when the pay run lands. You drag Priya into a Sunday 6–10 slot and you see the weighted cost of that shift sitting next to her name, based on the award rates you've set. If you want to swap her for a keen casual on a lower rate, or trim the shift to three hours because your Sunday dinner rush actually ends at 9, you see the impact right there.

We don't run payroll. We're not trying to. But rostering with the penalty rates visible while you build — instead of discovering them after — is the difference between a Sunday roster you chose and a Sunday roster that just happened to you.

The full Hospitality Award breakdown is the reference; the roster is where the choices actually get made.

Most independent hospitality operators I've spoken to underestimate their Sunday and public-holiday labour cost by somewhere between 20% and 30%. Not because they don't know penalty rates exist — everyone knows penalty rates exist. Because when they're building the roster, they're thinking in headcount ("I need four on Sunday night") instead of award-weighted hours ("four people on Sunday night at $39.94/hour for four hours is $639 before any supervisor loading").

So here's the honest question to sit with before you publish next week's roster:

Does the roster you're about to send out reflect what you'll actually pay on payday — or what you're hoping you'll pay?

If you want to talk through how other independent venues are building their rosters around the award without turning it into a second job, I'm around. Drop me a line — happy to compare notes.