Payroll & super
SuperStream is the mandatory electronic standard for paying superannuation contributions in Australia. Employers must send contribution payments and the linked data (employee details, fund, amounts) together in the standard format through payroll software or a clearing house, so funds can allocate money to member accounts automatically.
Before SuperStream, employers paid each employee's fund separately by cheque or transfer with paper remittances, and funds spent weeks matching money to members. SuperStream standardised the whole channel: every contribution travels as an electronic payment plus a structured data message containing the employee's TFN, fund ABN and unique superannuation identifier (USI), and the contribution amounts. Funds must allocate contributions to member accounts within three business days of receiving both parts.
In practice small employers meet the standard one of two ways: SuperStream-enabled payroll software that sends contributions directly as part of the pay run, or a commercial clearing house that accepts one payment and one file covering all employees and distributes it to their funds. Self-managed super funds can receive SuperStream contributions too; the employee must give you the SMSF's ABN, bank details and electronic service address. The only meaningful exemptions are contributions to your own SMSF from a related-party employer and personal contributions by sole traders. The ATO SuperStream pages describe the standard and employer obligations.
SuperStream stopped being background plumbing when payday super arrived on 1 July 2026. Contributions must now be received by each employee's fund within 7 business days of payday, and the practical difference between meeting and missing that deadline is how fast your SuperStream channel moves. A clearing house that batches weekly, or a manual upload someone does when they remember, can consume most of the window before the money even leaves your account. Payroll software that fires the SuperStream message at the same time as the pay run is now the safe default.
A related change caught many micro-employers: the ATO's free Small Business Superannuation Clearing House (SBSCH), long the default for businesses with under 20 employees, was decommissioned as part of the payday super transition (closed to new users from October 2025 and shut down from 1 July 2026). Employers who relied on it need SuperStream-capable payroll software or a commercial clearing house. When choosing, ask two questions: how quickly do contributions actually reach funds, and does the provider give you a timestamped record of when each fund received the money, since received-by-fund is the test the Super Guarantee Charge hangs off.
SuperStream fails quietly when employee data is wrong: a contribution with a bad USI or mismatched TFN bounces back, and the days it takes to bounce now eat into a 7-business-day statutory deadline. For each new starter, collect the fund's name, ABN and USI (or the SMSF's ABN, bank account and electronic service address), the employee's TFN and member number if they have one. If a new employee does not choose a fund, you must first ask the ATO whether they have a stapled fund (an existing account that follows them between jobs) before defaulting them into your nominated fund; paying a default fund without the stapled-fund check breaches the choice-of-fund rules.
Good hygiene is simple: validate fund details when onboarding rather than at first pay run, reconcile clearing-house confirmations against payroll each cycle, and treat a bounced contribution as urgent, not as a task for next quarter. Under payday super the contribution history the ATO sees is assembled from Single Touch Payroll data and fund reporting, so discrepancies surface automatically. The combination of clean SuperStream data and same-day submission after each pay run is what keeps a small employer permanently out of Super Guarantee Charge territory.
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No. The SBSCH was retired as part of the move to payday super: it stopped accepting new employers from October 2025 and closed from 1 July 2026. Small employers now meet SuperStream through payroll software with built-in super payments or a commercial clearing house. Check what your payroll product includes before paying separately for a clearing house.
Yes, when you are paying an unrelated employee's SMSF: they must give you the fund's ABN, bank account and an electronic service address so contributions travel through SuperStream like any other fund. The exemption is narrow: related-party employers contributing to their own SMSF (for example, a company paying the director's SMSF) can pay outside the standard.
The 7-business-day clock runs from payday to when the fund receives the contribution, and SuperStream is the channel it travels through. Whatever processing time your software or clearing house takes sits inside your 7 days. Send contributions with each pay run rather than batching, and keep the fund-receipt confirmations as your evidence of on-time payment.
Last reviewed and updated: by Bishal Shrestha