Choose Sentrient if your gap is organisational compliance infrastructure: induction and refresher training, policy sign-off, performance reviews and audit-ready records.
Choose Fitz HR if your gap is the daily decisions: what to pay a casual on Sunday, how to handle a no-show, whether a warning letter will hold up — answered from your award, any hour, at a flat price that doesn’t scale with headcount.
What Each Platform Actually Is
Sentrient is built around three products: a compliance management system (legally endorsed online courses written with Mills Oakley Lawyers — sexual harassment, bullying, privacy and more — plus policy management), a GRC system for risk and audit readiness, and an HR management system covering recruitment, onboarding, learning, performance reviews, engagement surveys and leave. It serves Australian and New Zealand businesses of all sizes and is priced per user per month.
Fitz HR is award-grounded AI HR software for Australian small business. Tell it your modern award — Hospitality, Restaurant, Retail, Manufacturing, SCHADS, Health Professionals or Children’s Services — and every answer, pay rate and document is grounded in that award, verified against the Fair Work Ombudsman Pay Guides. It generates compliant documents (contracts, warnings, PIPs), includes 24/7 crisis support with qualified HR professionals, and is flat-priced from $0.
The Question That Decides It
Ask yourself what actually keeps you exposed: “my staff haven’t done compliance training” or “I’m not sure I’m paying and managing people correctly under my award”?
Sentrient answers the first. Award interpretation and award pay-rate guidance are not part of Sentrient’s published feature set — its own buying guides on award interpretation point readers toward payroll and rostering tools for that job. If your team is employed under a modern award, the questions that generate back-pay claims and unfair dismissal exposure — classifications, penalty rates, loadings, casual conversion, termination process — sit outside what a training-and-policy platform does.
That second problem is the entire reason Fitz HR exists.
Pricing: Per User vs Flat
The structural difference matters more than the sticker price. Sentrient’s HR Management System is listed on Capterra at around A$25 per user per month (July 2026), with its compliance system from around A$10 per user per month. Per-user pricing counts heads on the books — and award-covered small businesses in hospitality, retail and care run casual-heavy rosters where headcount far exceeds full-time equivalents.
The casual-headcount trap: a cafe with 15 staff on the books — many working one or two shifts a week — pays per-user software for all 15. At around A$25/user/month, that’s roughly $4,500 a year whether those staff work 4 hours a week or 40.
Fitz HR’s pricing (published at fitzhr.com/pricing): Free — $0 forever. Starter — $249/year. Pro — $449/year. Business — $899/year. Flat, regardless of headcount. No lock-in. No per-seat billing. Cancel anytime.
Feature Comparison
| Capability | Fitz HR | Sentrient |
|---|---|---|
| Core job | Award-grounded HR answers & documents | Compliance training, policies & HR lifecycle |
| Award pay & penalty guidance | ✓ 7 awards, FWO-verified | ✗ Not a published feature |
| AI HR assistant (24/7) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Compliant document generation | ✓ Situation-specific | Policy & template library |
| Crisis Mode / after-hours escalation | ✓ Callback within 15 min | ✗ |
| Legally endorsed training courses | ✗ | ✓ With Mills Oakley Lawyers |
| Onboarding & recruitment workflows | ✗ | ✓ |
| Performance reviews & surveys | PIPs & guidance, not review cycles | ✓ |
| GRC / audit management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Pricing model | Flat: $0–$899/year | Per user/month (listed ~A$10–$25) |
| Cost, 15-person team (HR product) | $249–$449/year | ~$4,500/year at listed rates |
| Free offer | ✓ Free tier, forever | 2 months free |
| Setup | ✓ 60 seconds, no implementation | Platform rollout to all users |
Sentrient details from its public website and Capterra listing, July 2026. Sentrient’s training library and lifecycle modules are genuine strengths — this table maps fit, not quality.
Where Each Platform Wins
- Award-specific pay, penalty & allowance answers (7 awards)
- AI HR assistant available 24/7, answers in under 90 seconds
- Documents generated for your situation and award clauses
- Crisis Mode — qualified HR professionals on call
- Flat pricing that ignores headcount — built for casual-heavy teams
- Free forever tier; running in 60 seconds
- Legally endorsed compliance training library (Mills Oakley)
- Policy management with tracked sign-off
- Recruitment, onboarding & performance review cycles
- GRC, risk and audit-readiness tooling
- Fits larger orgs needing training records at scale
Can You Run Both?
Yes — and for some businesses that’s the right answer. Sentrient handles induction training and policy sign-off; Fitz HR handles the daily award decisions, documents and crises. They don’t overlap much in what they do — only in whose budget they come from.
If the budget only allows one and your team is employed under a modern award, weigh the frequency of each risk. Training happens at induction and annually. Pay and process decisions happen every roster, every pay run, every incident — and they’re where underpayment claims and unfair dismissal costs actually come from.
Who Should Choose What
You run an award-covered small business — a venue, shop, workshop, care service, clinic or childcare centre. Your staff are shift-based and casual-heavy. You want the right answer on pay, process and documents at 10pm on a Saturday, at a flat price that doesn’t grow every time you hire a casual.
Your priority is compliance training records, policy management and structured HR lifecycle processes across a stable, larger workforce — and per-user pricing fits your headcount profile. Its legally endorsed course library is a genuine strength Fitz HR doesn’t offer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between Fitz HR and Sentrient?
Does Sentrient tell me what to pay staff under my award?
How does Sentrient pricing compare to Fitz HR?
Can I use Fitz HR and Sentrient together?
Is Fitz HR a good Sentrient alternative for a small business?
Your Award, Answered — From $0
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