Payday Super Explained: The 1 July 2026 Rules for Employers

From 1 July 2026, payday super means every super guarantee contribution must be received by your employee's super fund within 7 business days of the day you pay them — the quarterly 28-day deadline is gone. The rate is unchanged at 12%, but it's now calculated on "qualifying earnings", reported through Single Touch Payroll every pay run, and enforced by a redesigned super guarantee charge that the ATO now assesses itself from your payroll and fund data. This guide walks through each rule, what it costs to get wrong, and what a small employer actually needs to change. Our payroll changes for 2026-27 guide summarises the headlines; this page owns the detail.

What changed on 1 July 2026

Payday super was legislated by the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Act 2025, which received royal assent on 6 November 2025, with supporting regulations and ATO legislative instruments following in 2026. Here's the old system against the new one.

Rule	Quarterly super (to 30 June 2026)	Payday super (from 1 July 2026)
When super is due	28 days after the end of each quarter	Received by the fund within 7 business days of each payday
Calculation base	Ordinary time earnings (OTE)	Qualifying earnings (QE)
SG rate	12%	12%
Maximum contribution base	Applied per quarter	Applied annually ($270,830 for 2026-27)
New employee's first contribution	Normal quarterly deadline	20 business days after their first payday
Late payment	SG charge from quarter end, late payment offset available	New SG charge assessed by the ATO for each payday, no offset
Reporting	STP reported OTE and super liability	STP must report QE and super liability year to date
ATO clearing house	Small Business Superannuation Clearing House	Closed 1 July 2026
Fund allocation of your payment	Up to 20 business days	Fund must allocate or return within 3 business days

Everything else about who you pay super for hasn't changed — the eligibility rules, choice of fund, stapled funds and the 12% rate carry over.

The 7 business day rule

The test is when the contribution is received by the fund with enough information to allocate it to the member's account — not when you click "pay" and not when your clearing house takes the money. The clock starts on the day you pay wages (the ATO calls this the "QE day") and runs for 7 business days.

A business day is any day other than a Saturday, Sunday, or a public holiday that applies across an entire state or territory. That definition is national: a state-wide public holiday anywhere in Australia knocks a day off everyone's count, even if your business and your employee's fund are in a different state. Regional holidays (a single town's show day, for example) still count as business days.

Example: you pay staff on Thursday 3 September 2026. Counting business days — Friday 4, then Monday 7 to Friday 11, then Monday 14 — the contribution must be sitting in each employee's fund by Monday 14 September 2026.

In practice that means authorising super on payday, or the next morning at the latest. Payroll software providers say their clearing house runs typically take several business days from authorisation to fund receipt, and the fund then needs time to allocate the money to the member. Authorising super on the same day you run payroll is the only comfortable way to stay inside 7 business days.

The 20 business day allowance for new employees

The first time you contribute to a fund for an employee — typically a new starter, or an existing employee who's switched funds — you get 20 business days from their first payday instead of 7. This covers the time it takes to collect their fund details, request a stapled fund from the ATO if they don't nominate one, and set the fund up in your system.

The ATO's own example shows how the national business-day rule bites here: a new employee first paid on 9 July 2026 had a due date of 7 August 2026 — 20 business days, once the Northern Territory's territory-wide Picnic Day on 3 August is excluded. After that first contribution, the employee's super is due within the normal 7 business days like everyone else's.

What if the fund bounces your payment?

Funds must now allocate a contribution or return it within 3 business days of receiving it (down from 20). A returned payment doesn't reset your clock, so a wrong member number or an out-of-date fund USI can turn an on-time payment into a late one. Get every employee's fund details verified before their first pay run.

Qualifying earnings vs ordinary time earnings

Qualifying earnings (QE) is the new single base for both calculating your 12% and measuring any shortfall. For most employees it produces the same figure as OTE did, but it isn't identical.

Payment type	Ordinary time earnings (old)	Qualifying earnings (from 1 July 2026)
Wages and salary for ordinary hours	Included	Included
Casual and shift loadings on ordinary hours	Included	Included
Paid leave (annual, sick, long service)	Included	Included
Most allowances and bonuses	Included	Included
Commissions	Generally included	All commissions included, even for work done entirely outside ordinary hours
Salary-sacrificed super	Counted in the OTE base since 2020	Included — amounts sacrificed into super that would otherwise be QE
Overtime (clearly identifiable)	Excluded	Excluded
Salary sacrificed to non-super benefits (car, laptop)	—	Excluded
Expense reimbursements	Excluded	Excluded
Most termination payments	Excluded	Excluded

Two practical points. Overtime is only excluded if it's clearly identifiable as overtime in your records and pay setup — if you can't separate it, all hours count as ordinary hours. And because QE now includes all commissions, sales-heavy businesses that previously excluded some commission from OTE may see a small increase in super.

The super rate for 2026-27 and the annual contribution cap

The super guarantee rate is 12% of qualifying earnings for 2026-27. It stepped up to 12% on 1 July 2025 and there's no further legislated increase, so it holds at 12% unless the law changes.

The maximum contribution base — the earnings ceiling above which you don't have to pay SG — is now an annual figure instead of a quarterly one: $270,830 for 2026-27 (as at September 2026). It's calculated from the concessional contributions cap of $32,500 for 2026-27, so once you've paid an employee $270,830 of qualifying earnings in the year, you can stop paying SG for them for the rest of that financial year. For the vast majority of small-business payrolls this never comes into play.

STP reporting: transitional in 2026-27, mandatory from 1 July 2027

Each payday from 1 July 2026 you're required to report two year-to-date amounts for every employee through Single Touch Payroll: qualifying earnings and super liability. The ATO uses this data, matched against what funds report receiving, to check whether super arrived in full and on time. For each payday it subtracts the previous YTD qualifying earnings from the current figure and multiplies by 12% to work out what you owed.

For the 2026-27 year the ATO is running a transitional approach: it'll still accept STP reports showing OTE and super liability rather than QE, and you don't need to apply for a deferral if you start reporting QE at some point during the year. The catch is that from 1 July 2027, STP reports that don't include both QE and super liability will be rejected and penalties may apply. Not reporting QE during 2026-27 also increases your risk of the ATO's compliance attention, so switch as soon as your software supports it.

Your payroll software should handle the change by mapping pay items to QE. Check that your overtime, allowance and salary-sacrifice pay codes are set up correctly, because a mis-tagged item flows straight into the figure the ATO uses to calculate what you owe.

The redesigned super guarantee charge

Miss the 7 business days and you're liable for the super guarantee charge (SGC) for that payday. The ATO can now assess it itself from STP and fund data — there's no quarterly SG statement, and the old late payment offset is gone. The charge has four parts:

Component	What it is
Final SG shortfall	The unpaid super for that payday (12% of QE less anything the fund received on time)
Notional earnings	Interest on the shortfall at the general interest charge (GIC) rate, compounding daily from the day after your 7-business-day deadline (in the ATO's example, a 4 January 2028 payday starts accruing interest on 14 January) until the shortfall is paid or the day before the ATO assesses it
Administrative uplift	Starts at 60% of the shortfall plus notional earnings, reducible based on your behaviour
Choice loading	25% of the contributions affected where you didn't follow an employee's choice of fund

The GIC rate for July–September 2026 is 11.43% a year (as at September 2026), and it resets quarterly. Notional earnings start the day after your 7-business-day window closes and stop as soon as the fund receives enough to clear the shortfall, so a contribution that lands a day or two late carries only a day or two of interest — a fast fix keeps it tiny.

How the administrative uplift drops

The 60% uplift is the part you control. Two reductions stack:

Your situation	Reduction
Voluntary disclosure lodged within 30 days of the payday	40 percentage points
Lodged 31–60 days after the payday	35 percentage points
Lodged 61–120 days after the payday	30 percentage points
Lodged more than 120 days after the payday	15 percentage points
No ATO-initiated SGC assessment in the 2 years to that payday	20 percentage points

A first-time slip disclosed within 30 days: 60% − 40 − 20 = 0% uplift. The same slip from an employer the ATO has assessed in the past two years: 60% − 40 = 20%. No disclosure at all and the ATO finds it through data matching: the full 60%.

The voluntary disclosure statement replaces the old SG statement. Pay the missing contribution to the fund first (that stops notional earnings accruing), then lodge the disclosure.

What happens if you don't pay the SGC

The SGC is due the day the ATO makes the assessment. If it's still unpaid 28 days after the ATO issues a Notice to Pay, a late payment penalty of 25% of the outstanding SGC applies — 50% if you've copped the same penalty in the previous 24 months. GIC also accrues on the unpaid SGC (though not on the penalty). Company directors can be made personally liable for unpaid SGC through the director penalty regime.

Deductibility has changed — in both directions

For paydays from 1 July 2026, the shortfall, notional earnings, administrative uplift and any choice loading are all tax deductible, as are the late contributions themselves. That reverses the old rule, where none of the SGC was deductible. What stays non-deductible is GIC on an unpaid SGC assessment and the 25% or 50% late payment penalties — so the cost of ignoring an assessment is steep on an after-tax basis.

Two illustrations

Using a $960 fortnightly contribution (12% of $8,000 qualifying earnings) and the current GIC rate:

• Caught a few days late, paid, disclosed, clean record. Notional earnings on $960 for, say, five days past the deadline come to about $1.50. Uplift nil. Total SGC: under $2, and it's deductible.
• Ignored for six months, found by ATO data matching. Thirteen fortnights of shortfall ($12,480), notional earnings of a few hundred dollars, then 60% uplift on the lot — an assessment in the order of $20,500. Leave that unpaid for 28 days after the Notice to Pay and a non-deductible 25% penalty of roughly $5,000 lands on top, plus GIC.

Same underlying miss, wildly different outcome. Speed is the whole game under payday super.

The ATO's first-year approach

The ATO's Practical Compliance Guideline PCG 2026/1 says employers who genuinely try to do the right thing between 1 July 2026 and 30 June 2027, and who fix problems quickly, won't be the focus of compliance action. Its enforcement effort in year one is aimed at employers who aren't attempting to move to payday super or aren't paying super at all. Treat that as a statement about where the ATO points its resources, not an exemption: the SGC still exists in law, and the best protection is paying on payday and disclosing quickly when something goes wrong.

The ATO clearing house has closed — what to use instead

The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House (SBSCH) took its last payments at 11:59 pm AEST on 30 June 2026 and closed permanently on 1 July 2026. New registrations had already stopped on 1 October 2025. If you relied on it and haven't set up a replacement, you're already past the deadline — and your super since 1 July 2026 is likely late.

Your options, all of which use the SuperStream standard:

1. Super payments built into your payroll software. Xero's Auto Super, MYOB's Pay Super and QuickBooks Online (through Beam) let you pay super from the same screen you run payroll, which is the simplest way to guarantee you authorise it on payday. Check whether your plan includes it or charges per batch.
2. A super fund's clearing house. Several large funds offer a clearing house free to registered employers. It works even when your employees are spread across different funds.
3. A commercial clearing house. Standalone providers used by bookkeepers and payroll bureaus, usually on a per-transaction or subscription fee.

Whichever you pick, run a test batch and confirm how many business days the provider needs from authorisation to fund receipt. That number, not the 7-day rule, sets your real deadline.

Cash flow: super leaves the account every payday

Under quarterly super a small employer could hold roughly three months of super and pay it in one lump by the 28th of the following month. Under payday super the money goes out with every pay run. Weekly payroll means weekly super — 52 payments a year instead of 4.

Worked example: fortnightly payroll of $8,000

Say you pay two staff a combined $8,000 of qualifying earnings every fortnight.

	Quarterly super (old)	Payday super (new)
Super per pay run	Nil — accrued	$960 (12% × $8,000)
Payment size	About $6,240 each quarter (6.5 fortnights)	$960 every fortnight
Payments a year	4	26 (27 in a 27-pay-period year)
Deadline	28 days after quarter end	Received by the fund within 7 business days of each payday
Annual total	$24,960	$24,960 ($25,920 with 27 pays)

The annual amount is identical. What changes is timing: that $960 must be in your account on payday, every payday, rather than banked up for the quarter. Payday Thursday 3 September 2026 → $960 in the funds by Monday 14 September 2026, and the same again a fortnight later (remembering that any state-wide public holiday in the window pushes the deadline out a day).

For the first year this compresses cash flow, because in July 2026 many employers paid both the final June-quarter lump (due 28 July 2026) and the first fortnightly payday super contributions. Going forward, the fix is simple accounting hygiene: treat super as part of the cost of each pay run — gross wages, PAYG withholding and 12% super all committed on the same day — and either keep the super in a separate account or set your payroll software to debit it automatically. Our cash-flow management guide covers building the buffer.

Payday super compliance checklist

Work through this once, then it runs itself.

1. Confirm your payroll software is payday-super ready — it calculates on qualifying earnings, reports QE and super liability through STP, and can pay super each pay run.
2. Replace the SBSCH if you used it: built-in payroll super, a fund clearing house, or a commercial clearing house. Test a batch.
3. Find out your provider's processing time in business days and set an internal rule to authorise super on payday.
4. Audit pay codes. Overtime must be clearly identifiable; allowances, bonuses, commissions and salary sacrifice must be tagged so they land in QE correctly.
5. Verify every employee's fund details — fund USI, member number and TFN — before their first pay run. A 3-business-day bounce can make you late.
6. Build the 20-day process for new starters: collect choice-of-fund form, request stapled fund details from the ATO if needed, set up the fund, pay within 20 business days.
7. Budget super into every pay run. If you pay weekly, super leaves weekly.
8. Switch STP reporting to QE during 2026-27 — it's mandatory from 1 July 2027 and reports without it will be rejected.
9. Set a fix-it protocol: if a payment is late or bounces, pay the shortfall immediately and lodge a voluntary disclosure within 30 days of that payday.
10. Keep super records for five years — payments, fund details, choice forms and STP confirmations.

If payroll is already stretching you, a bookkeeper or BAS agent can run the pay-and-super cycle for you — under payday super that's a weekly or fortnightly job, not a quarterly one.

Key takeaways

• From 1 July 2026, super must be received by the fund within 7 business days of payday; new employees' first contribution gets 20 business days.
• The SG rate is 12% for 2026-27, now calculated on qualifying earnings — OTE plus all commissions and salary-sacrificed super — with an annual maximum contribution base of $270,830.
• STP must report QE and super liability each payday; the ATO accepts OTE-based reporting through 2026-27 but rejects reports without QE from 1 July 2027.
• Late super triggers the new SG charge: shortfall plus notional earnings at the GIC rate from the day after the 7-business-day deadline plus an administrative uplift of up to 60% — reducible to nil with a voluntary disclosure within 30 days and a clean two-year record.
• The SGC is now deductible, but GIC on unpaid assessments and the 25%/50% late payment penalties aren't.
• The ATO Small Business Superannuation Clearing House closed on 1 July 2026 — pay through your payroll software, a fund clearing house or a commercial clearing house, and plan cash flow for super leaving every payday.

Where to get help

• ATO Payday Super hub — the official rules, checklists and worked examples: ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/super-for-employers
• ATO: the new super guarantee charge — component-by-component detail and voluntary disclosure: ato.gov.au — What happens if you don't pay super correctly
• ATO general interest charge rates — check the current quarter's GIC: ato.gov.au/tax-rates-and-codes/general-interest-charge-rates
• Your accountant, bookkeeper or BAS agent — for setting up pay codes, choosing a clearing house and handling a voluntary disclosure if something goes wrong.