Animal Care and Veterinary Services Award
Three-sector award - vet surgeons, support staff (vet nurses, kennel hands, animal attendants), and inspectors (RSPCA, council, etc.) - with completely different rate structures, penalty regimes and overtime rules per stream. Vet surgeons are the trickiest case: their overtime is not a multiplier regime at all.
Fully built. Rates, allowances, penalties and any required apprentice / junior rates are all wired to the rate resolver and have been verified against the consolidated award text and the latest pay guide.
Official Fair Work rates. This award’s minimum pay rates are synced directly from the Fair Work Commission’s Modern Awards Pay Database and updated automatically when the Commission changes them - including the annual wage review - so payroll always uses the current legal minimums without a manual update.
What's built
- Three sectors with separate classifications: vet_surgeon, support, inspector.
- Sector-scoped penalty rates - vet surgeon public holiday is 2x (cl. 27.3) while non-vet PH is 2.5x (cl. 21.1, 27.2).
- On-call regimes for both vet surgeons and non-vet streams.
- Junior rates.
- Overtime / penalty rules wired to the resolver for support and inspector streams (standard time-and-half / double-time pathway).
Known limitations
- Vet surgeon overtime is NOT a multiplier regime (cl. 20.2) - the resolver checks AwardConfiguration keys (vet_surgeon_overtime_method, vet_surgeon_overtime_rate_basis) and applies comp time at ordinary rate or an allowance instead. If your vet surgeons rely on the standard time-and-half / double-time path, the result will be incorrect - confirm the configuration matches your enterprise agreement / contract.
- Vet surgeon and inspector streams are hourly-only in the pay guide. Weekly rates are stored as hourly × 38 to satisfy the schema, but the hourly rate is authoritative.
- No apprentice rates - animal care / veterinary science isn't an apprenticeship trade.
Setup & special instructions
- Assign each employee to one of the three sectors before pay run: vet_surgeon, support, or inspector. Each has its own rate scale, allowances and penalty rules.
- Vet surgeons: confirm your overtime arrangement (comp time at ordinary rate / allowance / contractual pathway) and ensure the AwardConfiguration vet_surgeon_overtime_method is set accordingly. Do NOT assume time-and-half / double-time will apply automatically.
- Vet surgeon public holiday rate is 2x (cl. 27.3) - half a multiplier lower than the non-vet 2.5x.
- Casual minimum engagement has a special 2.5-hour case (cl. 11.5) when very specific conditions are met - separate from the standard 2-hour minimum. Set the min_engagement_casual_special configuration if your enterprise meets the trigger conditions.
- • Veterinary clinics
- • Animal welfare
- • Pet care
- • RSPCA and council inspectors
The consolidated award text is the authoritative source. Always confirm specific obligations against the award itself - Mployr's implementation status reflects what we've seeded; it does not replace legal advice.
Want to see this award running on your data?
We can demo a pay run on the animal care & veterinary award using sample employees in a sandbox tenant - including any of the special-instruction steps above so you can see exactly what your team's day-to-day looks like.
Book a demo