Support

Yearly Modern Awards refresh

admin Last updated 26 April 2026

The Fair Work Commission updates Modern Award rates each year on 1 July following the Annual Wage Review. Your HR Toolkit pulls these updates automatically so the rates on your job profiles stay current.

How the refresh works

  • The platform runs an automated refresh once a year, on 2 July at 04:00 UTC. (That’s the morning of 2 July AEST, which catches the 1 July effective date reliably.)
  • The refresh fetches the latest classification rates from the FWC’s Modern Awards Pay Database (MAPD) API.
  • Each award classification on your job profiles is updated with the new rate.

You don’t need to do anything for the refresh itself. Just be aware that on 2 July, the rates on your job profiles will move.

What changes (and what doesn’t)

  • Rates change. The FWC’s published minimum rate for each classification updates.
  • Classifications and award structures don’t usually change. New awards are rare; existing classifications stay where they are.

Your obligation: pay rates on actual employees

The platform’s automatic refresh updates the classification’s rate. It does NOT automatically update the pay rate on each employee’s record. You still need to:

  1. Review each employee’s pay rate after 1 July.
  2. If their pay rate is below the new classification minimum, update it.
  3. If your organisation pays above the minimum (e.g. award + 10%), apply the same uplift on top of the new minimum.

The Award compliance report helps you spot employees whose pay rate is below the new minimum.

Out of cycle changes

Sometimes the FWC issues out-of-cycle variations to specific awards (rare, but happens). The annual refresh wouldn’t catch those until the next 1 July. If you suspect an out-of-cycle change has happened:

  • Check the FWC website for your specific award.
  • Trigger a manual refresh by hitting the refresh action on the award’s classification page (admin only).
  • Or contact support@yourhrtoolkit.com.au if you can’t find the refresh control.

Manual refresh trigger

The platform has an admin-only manual refresh available for cases where:

  • The FWC has updated rates outside the annual cycle.
  • A bug or downtime caused the automatic refresh to miss.
  • You’re verifying a specific classification’s current rate.

The refresh hits the FWC API, parses the response, and updates the relevant classifications’ rates in your platform. The process takes seconds for a single award.

Compliance alerts

When rates change (annual or otherwise), the platform may surface compliance alerts for any employee whose current pay rate is now below the classification minimum. These alerts appear on the admin dashboard. Treat them as the priority of priorities — paying below award is a serious compliance issue.

Permissions

The automatic refresh runs as a system process; no admin action required. Manual refreshes are org admin only.

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