What does a Level 1 tech cost an Australian MSP all in?

The all in cost of one Level 1 tech

An A$65,000 salary becomes about A$78,000 of payroll cost once you add super, leave loading, payroll tax and workers compensation. Add the cost of hiring the person and the kit they use, and the seat reaches about A$91,000 a year, 40% above the number in the job ad.

This is a worked example for a tech in New South Wales at an MSP above the payroll tax threshold. It describes no client.

The last three cost lines come from our planning assumptions, so swap in your own. Shorten the stay to one year and the hiring lines double, which adds about A$9,750 a year. Below your state's payroll tax threshold, the same seat costs about A$86,500 a year, or A$52 an hour.

What salary to budget for a Level 1 tech

Budget A$60,000 to A$70,000 for a Level 1 helpdesk tech in Australia. Payscale puts the average base at A$60,163, and SEEK puts advertised Support Technician pay in the ICT industry at A$67,751. We use A$65,000 on this page because it sits between the two public figures.

The government figure runs high for this seat because it counts senior support staff too. Of the 1,289 small Australian MSPs in our job ad data, too few print a Level 1 pay range to report¹³. Most owners set this number from the last hire and a recruiter's opinion, so check it against the table before you budget.

Why A$55 an hour and not A$33

Divide A$65,000 by a full year of hours and you get a number that flatters the hire. You pay for 1,976 hours and get about 1,650 at the desk, so the fair rate divides the all in cost by the hours you can use: A$90,771 over 1,650 hours is A$55.

Payroll cost alone gives you A$47 an hour. Use A$55 when you price a job or test a new tool, because A$55 is the figure your profit and loss feels once the hiring bill and the kit land.

Payroll tax by state

Payroll tax adds A$2,947 to A$4,973 a year to this seat once your wages pass your state's threshold. Super counts as wages, so you pay the tax on the super too. A small MSP pays nothing, and an MSP near the line pays the full rate on each new dollar of wages.

Source:⁵

We count staff at A$73,675 each, the salary, super and loading in the example above. Your senior engineers earn more, so your MSP reaches the line with fewer people. Check your own wages against the threshold before you add this line.

What other salaries cost

Each A$5,000 of salary adds about A$6,750 to the all in cost, and about A$4.09 to every hour. The table runs the same assumptions at four salaries, so you can read off the rate for your own desk and price 17 minutes of tech time on a ticket.

A tech on A$80,000 costs you A$67 an hour for the same ticket admin. Your senior people do plenty of that typing as well, so your real average sits above the A$55 we use.

What an open Level 1 seat does to your desk

An open seat stops the salary and keeps the work. On 1 November 2026 we counted 31 open Level 1 and helpdesk roles at 27 small Australian MSPs, and 20 of those roles, at 17 MSPs, had already been open for 25 days or more¹³. The tickets in those seats landed on the people left.

A 20 person Perth MSP lived this one. Staff turnover left holes on the desk, the hiring market did not fill them, and each new hire needed months before they pulled their weight¹⁵. It took the routine work off the desk with six AI workflows inside its PSA, and the case study records $200,000 saved¹⁵.

Read the Perth case study for what it built. A five person MSP took the same path at a smaller scale and got its owner off the tools.

Worked example: what ticket admin costs a 600 ticket desk

Ticket admin costs you more than most owners budget, because it hides inside the salary line. Take an MSP in Western Australia running 600 tickets a month, with techs at A$55 an hour. Seventeen minutes of admin on each ticket is 170 hours a month. That is A$9,350 of tech time spent typing, sorting and routing.

This example describes no client. The 17 minutes comes from our pricing page¹⁴.

Your techs get those 170 hours for fixing. All AI workflows run inside the PSA they already use, from the moment a ticket lands to the moment it closes. See the workflows.

The plan pays for itself at 64 tickets a month, where 17 minutes a ticket at A$55 passes A$990. A 600 ticket desk clears that inside three working days.

Check the number on your own tickets

Run your last 50 tickets through the free Test Drive. It takes about two minutes online, with no sales call and nothing to install, and it shows the technician hours Cobotic would have given back. Then start your first month for A$99, with all AI workflows live in under 15 minutes.