Australia’s payroll landscape has had its biggest shake-up in decades. Since 1 July 2026, employers can no longer bundle superannuation into quarterly payments. You have to pay your employees’ Superannuation Guarantee (SG) contributions at the same time you process their salary and wages, and the ATO requires those contributions to clear and land in the employee’s nominated fund within 7 business days of payday.
The cash flow problem
With the quarterly buffer gone, staying on top of cash flow matters more than ever. Businesses used to be able to hold super as short-term working capital, covering a seasonal slump or a late client invoice before making a lump-sum payment every 3 months. Aligning super with every weekly, fortnightly or monthly pay cycle turns that into a steady, frequent outflow. If you don’t forecast it accurately, it catches you out fast, and there’s no room left for operational errors.
The compliance risk
The ATO has paired Payday Super with Single Touch Payroll (STP) data matching, so regulators have close to instant visibility over late or missed contributions. Miss the 7-day cutoff by a single day and the business faces interest charges and penalties under the revised Superannuation Guarantee Charge (SGC). Those penalties aren’t deductible, and the admin overhead grows with every pay run.
Where Trak helps
Trak’s finance summaries give you visibility over incoming revenue and outgoing costs, so you can forecast the cash flow these more frequent payments require. Trak’s timesheets track labour hours down to the minute, so salary costs calculate automatically instead of being worked out by hand every pay run.
How well is your payroll workflow holding up now that Payday Super is in force?