Top tips to meet the Payday Super 7 business day timeframe

Follow these tips to help ensure super reaches your employees’ super funds at the right time.

Under Payday Super, payments must be received by your employees’ super funds within 7 business days after payday.

ATO understand it may take time to adjust to this new requirement. Employers who genuinely try to do the right thing will not be the focus of our compliance action in the first year.

Here are ATO’s top tips to help keep payments on track.

Check the super fund will accept payments

The new member verification request (MVR) allows your payroll software or clearing house to verify that an employee’s super fund details are valid, and the fund can accept a payment.

ATO encourage you to use the MVR:

• before making a payment to a super fund for the first time
• where employee details have changed
• if a payment has been previously rejected.

For new employees or payments to a super fund for the first time, you have 20 business days for the initial contribution.

Although many super funds are already responding to MVRs, not all super funds are ready. You should check with your payroll provider or clearing house to ensure the fund is ready before sending them an MVR.

Monitor your payments

Super funds now have 3 business days to allocate or reject a payment.

If a payment is rejected, review the error message, correct any missing or incorrect details, and resubmit it to the correct fund. You generally don’t need to contact the fund first, as most issues can be resolved by fixing the information.

Know where to find errors and how to fix them

Make sure you:

• understand common errors and where error messages appear – this varies across payroll providers having different products, so check their help content or review documentation
• act quickly if a payment is rejected or returned – correct an error as soon as possible so your payment can be resubmitted.

Check your payroll provider supports Payday Super

Payroll providers are continuing to update their products to help to make Payday Super simpler.

You can use the Super product register for information on Payroll providers to help you select the right one for your business. Note, this register is not exhaustive. There may be other products available which are not listed here.

For more useful tips and examples, take advantage of our Payday Super resources.

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Source: ATO