How Humanforce helps Childcare providers simplify pay compliance

The Childcare & Early Learning sector plays a vital role in supporting families and nurturing future generations — but for operators, compliance can feel like a maze. From the National Quality Framework (NQF) to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), maintaining accurate records, ratios and payroll compliance is an ongoing challenge.

Thankfully, modern workforce technology can make a world of difference. The Humanforce Time & Attendance solution provides real-time visibility, automation and audit-ready reporting that simplify compliance — freeing leaders and educators to focus on what matters most: high-quality care and education.

Understanding the compliance landscape

Childcare & Early Learning organisations must comply with several key pieces of Australian legislation and standards, including:

• National Quality Framework (NQF) and Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011 (Cth) – sets out staffing ratios, qualification requirements and obligations for accurate attendance records

• Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and Children’s Services Award 2010 – regulates pay rates, working hours, breaks, overtime and penalty entitlements

• Work Health and Safety (WHS) Act 2011 – requires providers to manage fatigue and ensure safe working conditions

• Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) – governs the secure handling of employee and child information

Non-compliance with any of these can lead to serious financial penalties, funding risks and reputational harm. According to the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI), most breaches stem from manual processes and outdated systems that can’t keep pace with regulatory demands.

How Humanforce simplifies time and attendance, pay and compliance

The Humanforce Time & Attendance solution replaces manual systems with accurate, automated and award-aware time tracking, giving centre directors and managers confidence that every shift is correctly logged, verified and paid.

Educators can clock in using the Humanforce Work App, QR codes or biometric kiosks, ensuring every clock-on and clock-off is authenticated and stored securely. These digital records eliminate paper-based processes and reduce administrative workload, freeing up valuable time for educational programming and family engagement.

At a management level, Humanforce captures and consolidates attendance data across multiple rooms or locations, providing a clear and auditable view of who’s working, where, and for how long. This makes it easier to manage compliance obligations like staffing ratios, qualifications, and rest breaks — particularly when educators move between classrooms or centres throughout the day.

Integrates with Humanforce Payroll and several third-party systems

Time & Attendance is natively integrated with Humanforce Payroll, as well as third-party payroll and HR systems, eliminating double handling of data. Once attendance is approved, it flows automatically into payroll, reducing the likelihood of overpayments, underpayments, and compliance breaches. For providers managing multiple sites or mixed employment types — permanent, part-time and casual — this end-to-end visibility is invaluable.

Key features that support legislative compliance

• NQF and National Regulations: Maintain accurate attendance records and ensure educator-to-child ratios are met. Real-time dashboards and alerts help identify when ratios are at risk, allowing managers to take immediate corrective action.

• Fair Work Act and Award Compliance: Integrated with Humanforce Awards & Compliance to automate wage calculations, overtime, allowances and loadings under the Children’s Services Award — ensuring every educator is paid correctly for every minute worked.

• Advanced scheduling insights: Integration with Humanforce Rostering & Scheduling provides a complete picture of hours rostered versus hours worked, helping maintain compliance with working-time limits and budgeted labour costs.

• WHS Act: Automatically tracks breaks and working hours to prevent fatigue risks and support safe staffing practices. Built-in notifications alert managers to breaches of maximum work hours or insufficient rest periods.

• Privacy Act: ISO 27001-certified data protection ensures employee information is securely stored and transmitted, supporting compliance with privacy and record-keeping obligations.

• Audit readiness: Attendance, payroll and compliance data are securely stored and can be exported instantly for audits or licence renewals, without the need for manual paperwork or reconciliation.

With intelligent automation and secure cloud-based access, Humanforce removes the uncertainty from compliance to deliver a single, trusted source of truth for attendance, pay, and regulatory data.

A smarter way to manage compliance and care

By unifying time, pay and compliance data, Humanforce helps Childcare & Early Learning providers operate more efficiently and confidently. Managers gain visibility into staff ratios, hours worked and overtime costs, while educators benefit from accurate pay and transparent communication through the Humanforce Work App.

This combination of automation and visibility empowers centres to reduce compliance risk, improve workforce wellbeing and make smarter staffing decisions. Most importantly, it creates space for educators to focus on what they do best — delivering exceptional care and learning experiences.

About Humanforce

Humanforce is the all-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK.

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses.

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.