Payday Super deadlines explained for bookkeepers

Since 1 July 2026 an employer's super guarantee contribution is due every payday, and it is on time only if the fund has received it within 7 business days. This guide sets out the rule as the ATO states it, how business days are counted, the longer windows, and what a practice should check each cycle.

Published 7 September 2026. ATO pages quoted as last updated 10 August 2026 (QC105846) and 21 June 2026 (QC105848).

The rule in one sentence

Your super guarantee contribution is on time if it is received by your employee's super fund (with all the necessary information to allocate the contribution to the employee's member account) within 7 business days after paying your employee. ATO, Payment deadlines for Payday Super (QC105846)

Three words in that sentence do the work.

• Received. The test is the day the money lands in the fund, not the day payroll is finalised, not the day the clearing house is paid, and not the day the bank debits the account. Anything that sits between "pay" and "fund" — a clearing house, a direct debit, a bank cut-off — eats into the seven days. See clearing-house cut-offs and send-by dates.
• With the information to allocate it. Money that arrives without correct member details is not an on-time contribution. A payment the fund cannot match is, for this purpose, a payment the fund has not received.
• Business days. Not calendar days, and not your state's business days. The ATO's definition is national — next section.

The day you pay the employee is called the QE day (qualifying earnings day) in the ATO's material. The count starts the day after it: a Friday payday has Monday as business day 1.

Which day is the QE day — and why it is often not the payday on the payslip

This one catches people, because the ATO's summary page puts it loosely ("the day that an employer makes a qualifying earnings payment to an employee – in other words, payday") while the ruling is precise. The QE day is the day the money leaves the employer's account, not the day it arrives in the employee's.

An employer makes a payment of qualifying earnings to or for an employee on the day that the payment leaves the account of the employer, or the account of an entity that makes the payment on behalf of the employer (payroll entity), to be transferred to the employee's account or to another entity at the employee's direction. ATO, LCR 2026/3, paragraph 18

If a payment of qualifying earnings leaves the employer's or payroll entity's account on a day that is before the day that they intend for the employee to receive the payment, the day that the payment leaves the employer's or payroll entity's account is the QE day. LCR 2026/3, paragraph 19

The ruling's own Example 1 is exactly the common case. An employer's award payday is Friday 4 August 2028. To make sure the money is in employees' accounts on the Friday, it processes the transactions on Thursday 3 August and the payment leaves its account that day. The ATO's conclusion: "The QE day in relation to the payment of qualifying earnings to Callie and Walter is Thursday, 3 August 2028."

So if you submit an ABA file, or schedule a direct credit, a day ahead of the value date your staff see — which most practices do — your QE day is the earlier day, and your deadline is a business day earlier than you would get from the payslip date. That is the dangerous direction: taking the later date makes a run look on time when it is not. Paragraph 21 adds that it does not matter what day you entered it into payroll, received an invoice, paid other employees, or reported it to the Commissioner — only the day the money left. The one exception is paragraph 20: if the amount leaves the account but is never received by the employee, that day is not a QE day at all.

Practically: use the date on the bank statement, not the date on the payslip. The deadline checker's payday field and SuperDue's pay-run form both ask for the day the pay left the account for this reason.

What a business day is — and why every state counts

A business day is any day other than: a Saturday or Sunday; a day that is a public holiday for the whole of any Australian state or territory. This means if there is a state or territory-wide public holiday, that day is not a business day for the purposes of Payday Super, even if you are not in that state or territory. If a public holiday applies to only part of a state or territory (for example, Royal Hobart Show Day), that day is still a business day for Payday Super purposes. ATO, QC105846, "Definition of 'business day'"

So the deadline for a given payday is the same for every employer in Australia. Northern Territory Picnic Day (Monday 3 August 2026) moved a Perth employer's deadline; NSW Labour Day moves a Hobart employer's. The ATO's own worked example makes the point: a non-NT employer paying on Thursday 30 July 2026 has until Tuesday 11 August, "because the Picnic Day holiday in the Northern Territory is not counted as a business day".

The corollary is that a "7 days from payday" rule in a calendar tool, or a reminder set against your own state's holidays, is wrong for part of the year. The list of holidays that move a 2026–27 deadline is the part that is genuinely per state; the count is not.

Worked dates for 2026–27

Each of these is computed by the same engine behind the free checker and cross-checked against the live database rule before publication.

Two days you might expect in that list are deliberately absent. Melbourne Cup Day and the WA King's Birthday are not counted, because councils in parts of Victoria and Western Australia observe a different day instead, so neither is a public holiday for the whole of its state. Leaving them out can only make a date earlier, never later — the safe direction. The reasoning and sources are in the holidays guide.

Longer windows

New employees — and new funds: 20 business days

The first contribution for a new employee has a longer window of 20 business days after the QE day. The same 20 business days apply to the first contribution to a new fund for an existing employee, once you have stopped contributing to their old one — QC105846 states both cases together, and the fund-change half is the one practices miss. It is easy to get this one wrong in both directions — treating the first pay as a normal 7-day run (early, harmless) or assuming the second pay run also gets 20 days (late, not harmless). The new-employee guide works through the ATO's own example, including the bunching rule that follows it.

Out-of-cycle payments

Qualifying earnings paid out of cycle — a bonus, commission, back pay, an allowance paid on its own — are due 7 business days after the next regular payday, not 7 business days after the payment itself. Until that next regular payday exists the deadline is, strictly, pending. The checker has an out-of-cycle control that asks for the next regular payday and counts from there.

The bunching rule

Sometimes you may have a later due date to make super guarantee contributions for a QE day (payday) but the due date for the next QE day is before the later due date for the first QE day. In this situation, the due date for the second QE day is the same as the later due date for the first QE day. ATO, QC105846, "Bunching rule for overlapping due dates"

In practice this only bites after a 20-day window: a regular run whose own deadline falls inside a still-open 20-day window inherits the later date.

When a run is late

A missed deadline does not remove the obligation: the contribution still has to reach the fund, and late contributions attract the super guarantee charge, which the ATO assesses under its own published rules (QC105848). SuperDue tracks the dates; it does not calculate or estimate any charge.

• Pay the fund first. The ATO's own advice is that "the most important thing under Payday Super is to pay the correct amount to the fund as soon as you realise the error" (QC105848).

For 2026–27 the ATO has said it "will take a supportive approach" and "not review employers who are paying their employees' super for each payday and fixing errors quickly" (QC105848, referring to PCG 2026/1). Anything beyond the date is a matter for the employer, its registered tax or BAS agent and the ATO.

A checklist a practice can run every cycle

1. Log the payday for every client the day payroll is finalised. The deadline is a function of that date and nothing else you control.
2. Compute the fund-receipt date using the national business-day rule — not "+7", not your state's calendar. The checker does this; so does the 2026–27 calendar for regular cycles.
3. Walk back your clearing-house lead time to get a send-by date, and treat that as the working deadline. Three business days is a common allowance; use the one your clearing house actually needs.
4. Flag first pays for new employees (20 business days) and out-of-cycle payments (next regular payday + 7) at the point of logging, not later.
5. Confirm receipt, not remittance. The clearing house's "sent" is not the fund's "received". Reconcile the contribution confirmation against the deadline, not the payment date.
6. If anything is late, pay the fund the same day, and mark the run received once the fund confirms it.

Planning information, not tax, legal or financial advice. The legal test is the date the fund receives the money with the information needed to allocate it. Confirm anything that matters with the ATO or your registered tax or BAS agent. Sources are linked in the text; ATO pages are quoted as at the date shown at the top of this guide.