System improvements to updating employee pay category rates

Available from 13 July 2026

This update is to inform you of changes we’ll be implementing as part 1 of an ongoing project to improve the integrity of employee pay rate changes triggered when:

-Pay category rate loading value is updated
-Pay category penalty loading value is updated
-Pay category rate unit is updated

The ultimate aim of this project, that will take effect in a subsequent release, is to prevent issues arising when multiple updates are occurring at the same time that, in some instances, create duplicate employee pay category records which subsequently cause errors when:

-Installing an Award update (AU region)
-Creating a pay run
-Accessing an employee’s Pay Run Defaults or Pay Rates screen and/or trying to make edits via those screens

What are the changes that will be evident to users?

In the upcoming phase 1 release scheduled for 13 July 2026, several visual and technical enhancements will be introduced for users:

1. UI progress badge: When a pay category is in the progress of being updated or there are updates queued or an update has failed, we will display a badge next to the applicable pay category in the Business Settings > Pay Categories screen to highlight this. The reason for including this is so that users can make best practice decisions. For eg, users shouldn’t be creating pay runs nor reapplying pay rate templates whilst pay category updates are still in progress. In the instance of a failed status, users can re-save the pay category change so the updates can be re-processed.
‍
2.New property in pay category endpoints: A new “queueStatus” property will be added to the Pay Category APIs. Values for this property will be:

-Queued: pay category update/s are queued or in progress.
-UpToDate: pay category update/s have completed or no update is queued.
-Failed: pay category update/s have failed.
-New webhook: A new webhook event ‘Business Pay Category Updates Applied’ will be available. This new webhook acts as a safeguard, firing only after the completion of pay category changes. This ensures you know precisely when the entire operation is finished and whether it has successfully completed.

Recommended preparation for integration partners

To prepare for these enhancements, integration partners can take the following steps:

-Update User Interfaces: Utilize the QueueStatus property returned via the API to provide visual updates within your own UI.
-Implement Webhook Consumers: Establish a consumer for the new webhook to automatically reset the QueueStatus in your interface once updates are successfully applied.
-Testing: Partners can validate their implementation in a test environment by manually setting the QueueStatus to "Queued" and triggering the webhook via a webhook test.