How to Set Up MYOB Pay Super and Xero Auto Super for Payday Super 2026

Last updated: November 2026 · Information verified from ATO, MYOB and Xero official sources · Affiliate disclosure

Since 1 July 2026, every Australian employer has had to pay super with each pay run. Super stopped being a quarterly task, and if your accounting software isn't set up for it, you could be facing ATO penalties before you realise something's gone wrong.

The good news: if you're already on MYOB or Xero with payroll enabled, you're mostly ready. This guide explains what changed, what you need to have in place now, and how each major platform handles the new requirements.

What is Payday Super?

Payday Super is a reform to Australia's Superannuation Guarantee (SG) rules, legislated in November 2025 under the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Act 2025.

Until 30 June 2026, employers paid SG contributions quarterly - four times a year, with payments due 28 days after each quarter ended. From 1 July 2026, that changed entirely.

Under the new rules:

• Super is now due for every pay run, not once a quarter
• Contributions must reach the employee's super fund within 7 business days of payday
• New employees get up to 20 business days for their first contribution
• The ATO's free Small Business Superannuation Clearing House (SBSCH) closed on 1 July 2026

If you pay your staff fortnightly, you used to make 4 super payments a year. Now you make 26. Weekly payroll businesses went from 4 to 52. Without the right software, that's an unsustainable admin load.

The cash flow reality most businesses aren't thinking about

What caught most small business owners off guard: under the quarterly system, you were effectively using super contributions as working capital for up to 90 days. That float disappeared on 1 July.

A practical example: a business with 5 employees on $60,000 average salaries used to hold around $9,000 per quarter in super that hadn't been paid out yet (12% of a $300,000 payroll, split across four quarters). Now that money has to leave your account within 7 business days of every pay run.

For businesses with tight cash flow - tradies, hospitality, retail - it is worth building the weekly or fortnightly super outflow into your cash flow forecast so it never catches you short.

What's changing in the calculation: Qualifying Earnings

Most coverage of Payday Super focuses on the timing change and misses this detail entirely.

From 1 July 2026, super is calculated on Qualifying Earnings (QE) rather than Ordinary Time Earnings (OTE). For most businesses, the dollar amount won't change significantly - QE is broadly similar to OTE. But there are some important differences:

• Director fees now attract super at the time they're paid - not quarterly
• Contractors paid mainly for labour are included under QE
• Salary sacrifice super contributions are included in the QE base

From 1 July 2026, your STP reporting must include both year-to-date QE and super liability for each employee on every payday. STP reports that don't include both figures will be rejected from 1 July 2027 - so getting your pay item classifications right before then matters.

If you have contractors, complex Award rates, or irregular pay structures, it's worth a conversation with your accountant to confirm your payroll setup is correct.

The SBSCH has closed - what to do now

The ATO's Small Business Superannuation Clearing House has been a free tool used by businesses with fewer than 20 employees to batch super payments for multiple employees and funds in one transaction. It closed permanently on 1 July 2026.

If you were using the SBSCH, here's what you need to know:

• It was closed to new users from 1 October 2025
• The 28 April 2026 payment (for the January-March quarter) was the ATO's recommended final SBSCH payment - the April-June quarter payment due 28 July 2026 could not be processed through the system
• The SBSCH closed officially at 11:59pm AEST on 30 June 2026
• Transaction records and employee details had to be downloaded before 30 June - the clearing house no longer gives access to them
• You must have an alternative SuperStream-compliant solution in place for the 28 July payment

The practical replacement is your accounting software's built-in super payment feature - which is exactly what MYOB Pay Super and Xero Auto Super are designed for.

Payday Super since 1 July: what the first four months have shown

Before launch, most of the coverage (ours included) was about getting set up. Four months in, the questions are different: what happens when a payment bounces, who works out the penalty, and which days count towards the 7. The ATO has answered all three in pages published or updated since June, and we read them on 4 November 2026.

The ATO is going easy on employers who are trying, until 30 June 2027

For the first year (1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027) the ATO has published its approach in Practical Compliance Guideline PCG 2026/1. It looks at your behaviour, not just the mistake, and asks two questions: are you trying to pay super for each payday, and are you fixing problems quickly?

If the answer to both is yes, you're treated as low risk and the ATO says it won't spend compliance resources reviewing you. That covers the case the ATO itself describes: you paid on time, but the fund bounced the payment because a member number was wrong, and you corrected it and paid again as soon as you could. The ATO's attention goes to employers who aren't making the switch to paying each payday, aren't fixing errors, or aren't paying at all. Your risk zone can also change during the year, so a bad month doesn't stick to you if the next ones are clean.

Our read: a first-year mistake is cheap if you fix it within days. The businesses most exposed are the ones still running super as a quarterly batch out of habit, because that is exactly the behaviour the ATO says it is looking for.

You no longer lodge an SGC statement. The ATO assesses you

Under the old quarterly system, an employer who paid late had to lodge a super guarantee charge statement. For paydays from 1 July 2026 that's gone. The ATO works out the charge itself, payday by payday, and sends a notice of assessment. The charge has four parts:

• the unpaid super for each employee
• notional earnings on that shortfall, at the general interest charge rate compounded daily from the day after the deadline
• an administrative uplift, which starts at 60% of the first two parts
• an extra amount if you didn't follow the choice of fund rules

The 60% uplift is the part you can shrink, and it's the biggest lever. It drops by 20 percentage points if the ATO hasn't assessed you for the charge in the previous two years, and by up to 40 more if you lodge a voluntary disclosure before the ATO assesses you, so it can fall to nothing. The ATO's own worked example has an employer with $400 of shortfall and notional earnings, no previous assessment and no disclosure, paying $560 in total. So if you miss one, pay the fund the correct amount straight away. Then look at a voluntary disclosure. In that order.

How the 7 business days are actually counted

Day 0 is the day you pay qualifying earnings to the employee, even if you keyed the pay run into your software on a different day. The deadline is when the fund receives the money with enough information to put it in the right member account, not when you press pay. Time spent in a clearing house counts against you, which is why the ATO recommends paying super on payday rather than waiting until day 6.

Weekends don't count, and neither does any public holiday that applies to a whole state or territory, even one that isn't yours. A Melbourne business loses a day to a New South Wales public holiday. A holiday that only covers part of a state, such as Royal Hobart Show Day, still counts as a business day.

Two situations get longer. The first contribution for a new employee, or to a new fund after an employee switches, has 20 business days. Super on an out-of-cycle payment, such as a bonus, commission or back pay, is due within 7 business days of that employee's next regular payday.

Worked example: paying staff on Christmas Eve

This is the first Christmas under Payday Super, and the holidays squeeze the count. If you pay staff on Thursday 24 December 2026, the super has to be in their funds by Thursday 7 January 2027. We counted it day by day:

Date	Business day?	Count
Thu 24 Dec (payday)	Day 0	0
Fri 25 Dec	No, Christmas Day	0
Mon 28 Dec	No, Boxing Day additional day in NSW	0
Tue 29 to Thu 31 Dec	Yes	1 to 3
Fri 1 Jan	No, New Year's Day	3
Mon 4 to Thu 7 Jan	Yes	4 to 7

We treated 31 December as a full business day. If you count it out, the deadline moves to 8 January, so 7 January is the safe date to aim for. For a weekly-paid employee whose regular payday is Thursday, a Christmas bonus paid separately on Friday 18 December is an out-of-cycle payment, so its super is due with the 24 December payday, on the same 7 January date. Clearing house processing time still counts against you, so paying the super on 24 December with the wages is the simplest way to stay out of trouble.

If the last quarterly payment was late

The April to June 2026 quarter still ran under the old rules, and its super was due in funds by 28 July 2026. If you missed that date, that quarter is handled the old way: you lodge an SGC statement yourself, and the late payment offset isn't available for it.

Sources, all read on 4 November 2026: the ATO's payment deadlines for Payday Super, first-year compliance approach, super guarantee charge and changeover pages, and the NSW Government's public holiday list for the 28 December date.

MYOB and Payday Super: how it works

Of all the major platforms, MYOB has the simplest message on Payday Super: if you're already using MYOB Pay Super with each pay run, you're already set. The workflow doesn't change - you just do it every pay run instead of quarterly.

MYOB Pay Super is included with all MYOB subscriptions that include payroll. No extra cost, no third-party tool.

How to activate Pay Super in MYOB Business

If you haven't set up Pay Super yet, here's how to do it in MYOB Business (the browser-based version):

1. Go to the Payroll menu and choose Super payments
2. Follow the prompts to sign up - you'll need your ABN and bank account details
3. Verify your bank account when prompted (MYOB sends a test transaction)
4. Go to Settings → Payroll settings → Superannuation funds and confirm each fund has Pay using Pay Super selected
5. Check each employee's super fund and membership number are correct under Payroll → Employees

Once set up, paying super is a single extra step after each pay run: MYOB calculates it automatically, you authorise the payment, and it goes directly to each employee's fund via SuperStream.

How to activate Pay Super in MYOB AccountRight

For AccountRight Plus and Premier (the desktop version):

1. Go to the Payroll command centre and click Pay Superannuation
2. Follow the setup wizard - you'll need your ABN and bank details
3. Verify your bank account via the test transaction MYOB sends
4. In each employee's card, confirm super fund details are correct and the fund is set to pay via Pay Super

One thing to know: MYOB uses the pay date on the pay run as the official super date - not the date you prepared it. If you process payroll a few days before payday, the 7-day clock starts from the actual pay date, which is correct behaviour.

What changed on 1 July?

If you're already using Pay Super, nothing changes in the software itself. You just start authorising super payments every pay run instead of batching them quarterly. If MYOB shows an in-app prompt about your super setup, work through it.

The one setup task to check: review your pay items for Qualifying Earnings. Go to Payroll → Pay items → Superannuation and check that the Superannuation Guarantee pay item is set up correctly. If MYOB prompts you to review it, follow the prompt.

Xero and Payday Super: how it works

Xero Auto Super is included in all Xero plans at no extra cost. The main difference from MYOB is that getting it ready for Payday Super involves a few more active setup steps - particularly around pay item classification.

How to set up Auto Super in Xero

If you haven't registered for Auto Super yet:

1. Go to Payroll → Payroll settings → Superannuation
2. Click Register for Auto Super
3. Enter your business and bank account details
4. Review and accept the terms, then submit
5. Confirm your nominated payment authoriser and payment method (direct debit or bank transfer)

Once set up, the workflow each pay run is: post the pay run → super is automatically calculated and queued → your nominated authoriser gets an SMS with a security code → they approve in Xero → payment goes out. You can track everything in the Auto Super dashboard.

Xero's Auto Super is built to reach funds within 4 to 7 business days, which gives a small buffer inside the 7-day window.

The Qualifying Earnings setup step

This is the one setup step Xero users need that MYOB users largely don't. If Xero prompts you in Payroll settings to review how your pay items are classified under the new Qualifying Earnings rules, work through it.

If you have Award-based employees, overtime pay, contractor payments, or director fees, it's worth going through this with your accountant. For businesses with standard salaried or hourly employees, the defaults will likely be correct.

How do I activate Payday Super in MYOB Business Pro?

Go to Payroll → Super payments and follow the sign-up flow. You'll need your ABN and bank account details. Once registered, verify your bank account, then confirm each employee's super fund is set to pay via Pay Super under Settings → Payroll settings → Superannuation funds. The feature is included in your MYOB subscription at no extra cost.

I already pay super through MYOB. What changed on 1 July?

The software workflow is the same - the only change is frequency. Instead of authorising a super payment once a quarter, you authorise one after each pay run. If you're already using MYOB Pay Super, there's no new setup required. If MYOB prompts you to review Qualifying Earnings pay item classifications, work through it.

Can MYOB AccountRight Plus pay super weekly?

Yes. MYOB Pay Super processes payments as often as you run payroll - weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. If you pay employees weekly, you authorise a super payment each week after the pay run. There's no restriction on payment frequency. AccountRight Plus and Premier both support Pay Super at no extra cost.

Does Xero need an update to handle Payday Super?

Xero's Auto Super already supported paying super with each pay run before 1 July 2026. Xero's payroll changes for Payday Super cover Qualifying Earnings reporting in STP and the updated SuperStream requirements. If Xero shows a notification asking you to review your payroll setup, act on it.

Xero recommends auditing employee records so super payments aren't rejected. Specifically: confirm every employee has a valid TFN and correct super fund USI (unique superannuation identifier) on file. Incorrect fund details cause rejected payments, and a rejected payment means you've missed the 7-day window. Go to Payroll → Employees and check each record.

What about QuickBooks and Reckon?

QuickBooks has confirmed its platform is being updated for Payday Super compliance. If you're on QuickBooks, check for payroll updates in your account settings and make sure super payments are set up to process with each pay run.

Reckon includes a free clearing house with its payroll subscriptions, positioning it as a direct SBSCH replacement. If you're a Reckon user, this is your built-in solution - activate it if you haven't already.

Payday Super readiness checklist

Check these are in place:

• Confirm your accounting software plan includes payroll and super payments
• Switch on Pay Super (MYOB) or Auto Super (Xero) if not already active
• Run a test super payment now to make sure the setup is working
• Update employee super fund details - incorrect fund details cause rejected payments
• If you used the SBSCH: confirm your April-June 2026 quarter super (due 28 July) went through your own software, because the clearing house could not process it
• Review pay item classifications for Qualifying Earnings - especially if you have contractors, directors, or complex Awards
• Model your cash flow without the quarterly super float - update your forecasts now
• Set up a nominated payment authoriser in your software
• Book 30 minutes with your accountant or bookkeeper to review your payroll setup

Which platform is easiest for Payday Super?

Both MYOB and Xero handle Payday Super. The difference is how much setup is involved.

MYOB's message is the simplest: if you're using MYOB with payroll, Pay Super is already included and the workflow doesn't change - you just do it every pay run instead of quarterly. For businesses that want the least disruption, MYOB wins on simplicity here.

Xero requires a bit more active configuration - particularly the QE pay item review - but its cash flow tools and large ecosystem make it the right fit for businesses already embedded in the Xero platform.

If you're not on software with built-in payroll and super payments, sort that out now. Managing Payday Super manually or through disconnected tools is a compliance risk that isn't worth taking.

Frequently asked questions