Payday Super at Month-End: The Super Payable Check

For years, 28 October was super day as well as BAS day. The July to September quarter's contributions had to reach the funds within 28 days of quarter-end, and the super payable account in Xero quietly filled up for three months before being cleared in one payment.

This year, for wages paid since 1 July, there is no quarterly super deadline on 28 October. The September BAS is still due, but super now runs to a different clock. That changes what a healthy super payable balance looks like at month-end, and it turns that balance into one of the more useful checks in your close.

What changed on 1 July 2026

Payday Super replaced the quarterly system. The main rules, as Mercer Super sets them out:

• Contributions generally must be received by the employee's fund within 7 business days of payday. Under the old rules they had to be received within 28 days after the end of each quarter.
• The first contribution for a new employee, or the first to a new fund, must be received within 20 business days of their first payday.
• Super on out-of-cycle payments such as bonuses, commissions or back pay is not due until 7 business days after the next usual payday.
• A public holiday in any Australian state or territory does not count as a business day, wherever your business is based. A holiday covering only part of a state, such as a local show day, still counts.
• The ATO's Small Business Superannuation Clearing House closed on 1 July 2026.

Super is now calculated per pay period on qualifying earnings. As Clayton Utz explains, qualifying earnings replace ordinary time earnings as the single base for both the SG amount and the SG charge. Xero's Payday Super FAQs put the rate at 12% of each employee's qualifying earnings for each pay period, and note that both qualifying earnings and super liability are reported through Single Touch Payroll.

One detail matters more for the books than it first appears. The deadline is about when the fund receives the money, not when it leaves your bank. A payment that was sent on time but bounced back for a wrong member number has not reached the fund at all.

What it does to the super payable account

Under the quarterly system, a large super payable balance at the end of August was normal. It was simply two months of accrued contributions waiting for the quarterly payment.

Under Payday Super, the balance should be small and young. At any month-end it should hold only super for pay runs close enough to the end of the month that their 7 business days have not yet run out, plus any first contributions for new starters still inside their 20 days. Anything older than that is not timing. It is either a payment that has not been made, a payment that was returned, or a posting error.

That makes ageing the balance a real control. If you can explain every dollar in super payable by pay date, you have shown that super is up to date. If you cannot, you have found the problem before the ATO does.

A worked example

Take a brand that pays fortnightly, with pay runs on 15 October and 29 October. Each pay run has $40,000 of qualifying earnings, so each generates $4,800 of super at 12%.

The closing balance of $4,800.00 is fully explained by one pay run whose deadline falls in early November. That is a clean result.

Now suppose the closing balance were $9,600.00 instead. The extra $4,800.00 belongs to the 15 October pay run, whose 7 business days ran out well before month-end. Under the quarterly system it could have sat there unremarked until the quarterly payment. Under Payday Super it is an overdue contribution, and the month-end review is where it should be caught.

The same logic works the other way. A balance of $0.00 at 31 October would also be wrong in this example, because the 29 October super should still be accrued. A zero there usually means super was expensed without the liability being raised, or a payment was matched to the wrong pay run.

The checks for your close

1. Age super payable by pay date. List the closing balance by the pay run it came from. Every amount should belong to a pay run still inside its 7 business days, or a new starter's first contribution still inside 20.
2. Tie the liability to payroll. Total the super from each pay run posted in the month and compare it with the credits to super payable. A difference points to a manual journal or a pay run posted outside the payroll module.
3. Tie the payments to the bank. Each super debit in the bank feed should match a payment batch, and each batch should clear a specific pay run's liability. Match by batch, not by a lump sum.
4. Check for returned payments. A returned contribution puts the liability back. Until it is fixed and resent, the money has not reached the fund, so a return late in the month is worth chasing before you sign off.
5. Watch out-of-cycle pays and new starters. Commissions and back pay run to the next usual payday plus 7 business days, and new starters have 20. These are the items most likely to look overdue when they are not, or to look on time when they are not.

Timing between your bank and the fund

Because the deadline is when the fund receives the money, the date on your bank statement is not the date that counts. Xero's auto super, for example, typically pays funds within four business days, and a batch approved after the 4pm AEST banking cut-off is debited the next business day. Whatever you use, the gap between approving a batch and the fund receiving it uses up part of the 7 days. A batch approved late in the week, before a public holiday somewhere in Australia, has less room than the calendar suggests.

If you were one of the businesses that used the ATO's clearing house, check that every employee is now set up in whatever replaced it. A pay run whose super has nowhere to go will show up in super payable as an old balance.

The first year

The ATO has said how it will approach the start of the new rules. Its finalised guideline, PCG 2026/1, confirms a risk-rated compliance framework of low, medium or high for the first year, 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027. The cost of missing a deadline is still real: the SG charge includes notional earnings and an administrative uplift of up to 60% of the shortfall, and Clayton Utz notes that a late contribution can reduce the charge but cannot reduce it to nil. Whether a particular late payment matters is a question for your accountant. Knowing that it exists is a question for your close.

Bringing it back to the close

Payday Super does not add a new account to your ledger. It changes what the old one should look like. A super payable balance that can be traced line by line to recent pay runs is proof that super is current, in the same way a clearing account at zero is proof that every payout has been accounted for.

That is the principle behind how we approach payouts at Vert: every balance should be explainable from its source transactions, to the cent, before the month is signed off. If you want to see that applied to your Shopify, Stripe, PayPal and Afterpay payouts, you can join the pilot.