Payday super is law: what your payroll has to do before 1 July 2026

Payday super is law. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Act 2025 was assented to on 6 November 2025, alongside the Superannuation Guarantee Charge Amendment Act 2025. Both commence on 1 July 2026. From that date, superannuation guarantee contributions must be received by each employee's fund within 7 business days of the day you pay them. Quarterly super ends with the June 2026 quarter.

That is under eight months away. For a business running a $1.56 million payroll it moves about $187,000 of super a year out of a quarterly rhythm and into a fortnightly one. Here is what changed, what is still unsettled, and what to check between now and then.

What the two Acts require

Three things change at once, and the third one catches people out.

The deadline. Contributions currently have to reach a fund within 28 days of the end of the quarter. From 1 July 2026 they have to reach the fund within 7 business days of payday. The Treasury media release on the legislation gives the reason without decoration: the ATO estimates $5.2 billion of super went unpaid in the most recent year of data.

The base. The rate is still 12 per cent, but from 1 July 2026 it is calculated on qualifying earnings rather than ordinary time earnings. Qualifying earnings pull together ordinary time earnings, all commissions, salary sacrificed contributions and other amounts that were already part of salary or wages for super guarantee purposes, as set out in the ATO's summary of what changes. You will also report both qualifying earnings and your super liability through Single Touch Payroll each pay run.

The test is receipt, not payment. The clock stops when the fund receives the money with enough information to allocate it to the member. Not when it leaves your bank account. Not when a clearing house accepts it. Every day lost in the payment chain is a day charged to you, which is the part most payroll processes are not built for.

There is extra time in two places. A new employee carries an extended period of 20 business days rather than 7, to cover onboarding. The Commissioner can also determine an extended period for classes of employer affected by exceptional circumstances.

What is settled, and what is not

The Acts are settled. The start date is settled. There is no transitional year in the law and no phase-in for small employers, although several professional bodies asked for both during consultation.

Two things are not settled as I write. The regulations that reduce the administrative uplift where an employer discloses a shortfall itself have been released as an exposure draft, but they have not been made. And the ATO's compliance approach for the first year is still a draft guideline; consultation on it closed on 7 November 2025.

Plan around the Acts. Do not plan around the softeners in a draft. Three measures from the March 2025 exposure draft — a ban on advertising super funds during onboarding, the employee onboarding reforms, and tighter timeframes for funds handling contributions — did not make it into these two Acts at all.

The superannuation guarantee charge is being rebuilt

Miss the deadline today and you self-assess a super guarantee charge: the shortfall calculated on salary and wages including overtime, nominal interest of 10 per cent a year, and $20 per employee per quarter. None of it is deductible.

From 1 July 2026 the charge is assessed by the ATO rather than lodged by you, and it has four components:

• The shortfall — contributions still unpaid for that payday, measured on qualifying earnings.
• Notional earnings — interest compounding daily at the general interest charge rate. The ATO's published GIC rates show 10.61 per cent for the October to December 2025 quarter, a daily rate of 0.02906849 per cent.
• An administrative uplift — 60 per cent of the shortfall and notional earnings combined, reduced where you disclose voluntarily and where the ATO has not assessed you in the preceding two years.
• A choice loading — 25 per cent, where the choice of fund rules were not followed.

Then the penalties. If an assessed charge is unpaid 28 days after it becomes payable, the ATO issues a notice to pay. Miss the notice and the late payment penalty is 25 per cent of the outstanding amount, or 50 per cent if you have had one in the previous two years.

One change runs the other way. The new super guarantee charge is tax deductible, where the current charge is not, and late contributions become deductible as well. The general interest charge and the late payment penalty that accrue after assessment stay non-deductible — consistent with how ATO interest has been treated since 1 July 2025. Late contributions also apply automatically against the earliest payday that has not been assessed, so there is no election to lodge and no period to nominate.

What it does to cash flow

Take a Robina business paying $60,000 of qualifying earnings a fortnight. That is 26 pays and $1.56 million a year. Super at 12 per cent is $7,200 a payday and $187,200 a year. Under the quarterly rule it is about $46,800 a quarter, and it sits in the business account until up to 28 days after the quarter closes.

July 2026 is the pinch. The June 2026 quarter still runs under the old rule, so its $46,800 is due by 28 July 2026. Meanwhile every payday from 1 July 2026 carries its own 7 business day deadline. With two or three pays falling in July, that is a further $14,400 to $21,600. July 2026 therefore costs roughly $61,200 to $68,400 in super, against $46,800 in a normal quarter-end month.

Then there is the permanent change. Averaged across a quarter, super currently sits with the business for about 73 days before it has to be received: roughly 45 days of accrual, plus the 28 day tail. Under payday super it sits about 9 calendar days. Losing 64 days of that float on $187,200 a year is $187,200 × 64 ÷ 365, or about $32,800 of working capital that stops being available.

That is an example rather than a forecast, and it scales with your payroll. The important point is what kind of number it is. It is a one-off step down in working capital, not a new expense. The super was always owed. What changes is when it leaves.

What to check between now and 30 June 2026

Your payroll software. Ask the vendor for a date, not an assurance. It has to calculate on qualifying earnings, report both qualifying earnings and super liability through Single Touch Payroll, and raise a contribution off every pay run. A deadline that arrives 26 times a year will find every gap in a messy file, so this is the year to get your bookkeeping genuinely current rather than quarterly.

Your clearing house. The ATO's Small Business Superannuation Clearing House goes with the quarterly system. The ATO announced in August 2025 that it closed to new users on 1 October 2025 and will close on 1 July 2026, with existing users keeping access until 30 June 2026. If you use it, you need a replacement in place and tested before your first July 2026 pay run. The candidates are the super function inside your payroll software, a fund's own employer service, or a commercial clearing house. Test the replacement in the March or April quarter, not in the last week of June.

Your employee fund details. Because the test is receipt by the fund, a rejected contribution is your shortfall. Rejections come from wrong member numbers, superseded unique superannuation identifiers and funds that have merged. Reconcile every employee's details well before June.

Your cash flow forecast. Model July 2026 on its own, then the first full quarter under the new rule. That is ordinary forecasting and budgeting work and it is far cheaper done eight months out than discovered in a pay run.

Your pay cycle. More frequent pay runs mean more deadlines. Some employers will look at pay frequency alongside the wider way the business is run. Lengthening a pay cycle to reduce the number of deadlines has consequences for staff and for award obligations, so it is a decision to take deliberately and with advice.

If you were already planning to change accounting systems, do it before June 2026 rather than during the changeover. Moving to Xero while your first payday super deadlines are landing is the harder sequence, and there is no reason to attempt both at once.