How Pay the Nanny cut payroll processing time by 50% with Employment Hero

About Pay the Nanny

Pay the Nanny does exactly what it says: it’s a payroll service designed to simplify the complex world of employing a nanny. Whether you’re a parent in Australia dealing with PAYG, leave or Super, or a parent in New Zealand navigating PAYE, Leave or ACC, Pay the Nanny acts as the go-between, making domestic employment obligations straightforward.

Founded by Mark Hudson in 2019 after a client asked his accounting firm how to, yep, pay their nanny, the service has since scaled to thousands of payrolls a year across both sides of the Tasman. With a lean team of three, Mark wears many hats: founder, strategist, customer support, and the occasional tool-wielder when duty calls.

Growing pains with a patchwork system

Before Employment Hero, Pay the Nanny was operating on a delicate ecosystem of cobbled-together software. One platform for billing, another for payroll, another for timesheets, and then came the spreadsheets and reconciliation headaches.

“We’d send out 100 invoices and try to match that with 100 payrolls. If the numbers didn’t line up, even a 1% discrepancy could be thousands of dollars,” Mark recalls.

Not only was the manual work time-consuming, but the risk of human error was ever-present. Their existing software stack couldn’t provide the visibility, accuracy, or integration that a growing business needed.

“It kind of worked with a few clients,” Mark admits. “But as we scaled, it got too hard to manage.”

The Hero in the high chair

Mark had one big requirement when shopping for a payroll solution: seamless API integration with their own existing software. He didn’t want to build a payroll engine from scratch, but needed one that would plug effortlessly into the software they had already developed for clients.

“There aren’t many payroll platforms with API access that aren’t enterprise-level, and enterprise-level means enterprise cost,” he explains. “Employment Hero gave us exactly what we needed without blowing out the budget.”

Crucially, it worked across both Australia and New Zealand. The tax calculations might differ, but the platform interface and API structure were the same, allowing for one unified approach across both countries.

“That cross-country functionality is huge. It just works out of the box.”

Payroll processing time halved, thousands of dollars saved

Today, payroll processing at Pay the Nanny is a far cry from its spreadsheet-laden past.

Everything starts with the nanny inputting their timesheet. Once approved by the parent, the billing is generated, funds are collected, and a payment file is automatically created and pushed to Employment Hero for payroll processing. Then it loops right back: clean, reconciled, and ready to report.

“From the user’s side, there’s only one login. They don’t have to jump between three different systems anymore,” says Mark. “It’s now a one-stop shop.”

The impact? A dramatic reduction in time spent, and even more importantly, near-elimination of costly manual errors.

“We’ve easily cut payroll time in half. But more than that, we’ve saved thousands of dollars by avoiding reconciliation mistakes.”

Favourite features

Mark doesn’t hesitate when asked what features he loves most.

“The API. It’s just simple, it works, and it’s highly customisable. We can build what we need around it without hosting our own payroll engine.”

He also gave a shout-out to the platform’s intuitive pay condition rules:

“They’re awesome. You can set really smart, customisable pay conditions without reinventing the wheel. Everything just works straight out of the box.”

And what about customer service?

“I’ve never had to use it, which is probably the best compliment you can give software.”

The final word

If you’re a small business managing payroll complexity across borders, Mark’s advice is simple:

“We always recommend Employment Hero Payroll. It’s affordable, easy to use, and powerful enough to handle big, complex needs.”

Want to experience Employment Hero for yourself?

Employment Hero is your all-in-one Employment Operating System for HR, payroll, and recruitment built to simplify compliance, automate admin, and empower your people. From onboarding to offboarding, we streamline every step of the employee lifecycle so you can spend less time on processes and more time scaling your business.

Want to see how companies like Waterware are transforming their HR operations and driving real business impact? Book ademo with our business specialists today.