Payday Super Ready Checklist

With the upcoming Payday Super changes, small businesses need to make sure that they are ready on day one when the legislation comes into effect on 1 July 2026. Our Payday Super checklist will help you get ahead of the chaos come tax time.

1. Get Payday Super-compliant payroll

You can’t be worrying about whether the software you’re using is compliant with Payday Super. You need payroll software you can trust to do 2 things:

1. Report qualifying earnings and super liability through STP reporting to the ATO, and
2. Pay super contributions in your employees’ chosen super fund within 7 business days of qualifying earnings.

These 2 are non-negotiable, as without them, you aren’t compliant. If you’re using cloud payroll software, the provider is likely already working on or has a solution for Payday Super. If you are unsure, start comparing.

2. Super clearing house covered

Part of the new payday compliance is paying superannuation contributions into your employees’ superannuation funds within 7 business days of salary and wages. You need a super clearing house service that can do that for you. The best way to get your super contributions paid quickly is to use payroll software with an integrated super clearing house service.

By having your payroll all-in-one, you create a single workflow, reducing errors, making your payroll tasks faster and more efficient, and lowering the likelihood of missed, late, or underpaid super contributions.

3. Adjust payroll process for more frequent payments

Under the previous quarterly deadline convention, handling payroll and super payments felt like separate workflows. After all, payroll processes would either be a weekly/fortnightly/monthly event for some employers, and super payments would occur 4 times a year.

This habit needs to change as you need to go from thinking ‘pay salary and wages now & super later in the year’ to ‘pay salary, wages & super now’.

Combining these two separate pay events by creating a single workflow will help you adjust. This is where your payroll software and super clearing house service need to communicate and resemble something like this:

Pay run event > Report STP (qualifying earnings + super liability) > Pay salary and wages through business account > pay super through a super clearing house service.

By breaking down your new payroll process, you make it easier to follow, and it will become second nature.

A good way to break it down is: the pay run event and reporting of that pay run is your declaration, and your payment of salary and wages plus super is your action. Without completing your declaration or action, your payroll process is incomplete.

4. Confirm Employee classifications

Employing someone and paying them can be complicated. When conducting a pay run, each employee can be under a different employment type (full-time, part-time, or casual) and under a different award or enterprise agreement. For awards and enterprise agreements, your responsibility is to make sure that what you have in place aligns with the definition of qualifying earnings.

These should align, but don’t assume they do. Go over which pay items in your award or enterprise agreement count toward super contributions, and cross-reference them with what constitutes qualifying earnings.

5. Confirm employee super fund details

Mistakes under payday super are costly because you don’t have much time to correct them, and the financial repercussions can compound. Trying to comply with the new changes by using the right payroll software, implementing the right processes, and paying the correct amounts can leave employers skipping an important step — confirming your employees’ chosen super fund.

This takes little time, but if it means the difference between a correct, on-time contribution and a rejected one, do it.

6. Update Cash Flow Forecasting

Going from 4 quarterly super contributions to potentially 52 is bound to affect cash flow management for every Australian business. Your super contributions shift from a future liability to an immediate cash expense.

For example, say you have 3 employees, and you pay them $75,000 each (super inclusive). This makes the total super contribution for those employees $9,000 each. Under Payday Super, this employer pays their employees fortnightly, which would look like this:

$9000/26 = $346.00 (rounded down to nearest dollar) >
$346 per employee >
$1,038.00 per fortnight or $2,076 per month

This could pose an operational cash flow issue for businesses, especially those operating on tight margins. A similar problem/pitfall arises when businesses face BAS commitments: they spend money (GST collections) they don’t own but are holding for the ATO. You should share the same sentiment for Payday Super. The money you put aside for salary and wages needs to include super, as you are holding that money, not spending it.

7. Practice ‘Payday Super’ payments

The best way to get ready for Payday Super is to practice. Set aside a time when you can pay salary and wages, plus super, at the same time and see the difference. You may find that the ‘taking small bites of the apple’ (Payday Super payments) is better for your cash flow than the lump sum contributions at the end of each quarter.

Important note: The last quarterly payments for employers’ super contributions before Payday Super comes into effect are on the 28th April for January, February, and March, and on the 28th July for April, May, and June 2026. When practising your ‘Payday Super’ process, keep a note of when you pay super and what quarter those payments are allocated to. You do not want to confuse yourself about what you have and haven’t paid when meeting your superannuation contribution obligations.

Making sure you’re Payday Super ready

Don’t leave Payday Super until it’s too late — ramp up now and put your business ahead of the curve. Take this time to refine your payroll process and iron out any issues you’d otherwise face at tax time when Payday Super comes into effect.