Making payments and accessing your payment history
You will only need to make one secure electronic payment to the Small Business Superannuation Clearing House (the Clearing House). You will also be able to obtain a record of your contribution history whenever you need it.
To make a payment:
- key in the ‘from’ and ‘to’ dates that your payment will cover and the system populates all employees for that period
- key in the dollar amount to be paid per employee (if it is a standard amount, this field can also be pre-populated)
- you then make a single Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) or BPAY payment to the Clearing House
- the Clearing House will then distribute payments to the relevant superannuation funds once a match is made with your deposit and the contribution instruction.
Your superannuation guarantee obligations are met as soon as your payment and instructions for your employees are accepted by the Clearing House. This has to be by the quarterly superannuation guarantee payment cut off dates.
Contribution options
You can make payments through the Clearing House as often as you like and you can choose from the following payment options:
- Superannuation guarantee—this is the nine per cent* superannuation payment you are legally required to make for most of your employees. These contributions are in addition to your employees' salaries and wages.
- Additional employer contributions—this is any other employer contribution amount. It can include salary sacrifice(s) and any superannuation contributions above the superannuation guarantee amount.
- Employee voluntary contributions—this is the employee's (post-tax) contribution amount. It is an amount an employee asks you to take out of their pay and deposit into their superannuation fund. It does not include salary sacrifice amounts.
*Note: from 1 July 2013 this rate will gradually increase until it reaches 12 per cent by July 2019.
Making payments
For payment to be made to superannuation funds a successful match between a payment instruction and a deposited payment must occur.
Deposits can be made through Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) or BPAY.
For more details about making a payment to the Clearing House or for further information about what happens if you deposit the wrong amount see the reference guide for small businesses.
A payment is considered not accepted by the Clearing House if it is returned to the employer. This may occur if:
- a superannuation fund has rejected the payment on the basis of insufficient or incorrect information provided by the employer
- the actual amount paid by the employer does not match the payment instruction provided by the employer.
Payment history
The Clearing House payment history screen displays a number of different statuses.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Waiting for payment | Payment instruction submitted. Waiting for payment. |
| Returned by fund | Payment is rejected by superannuation fund. |
| Payment processing | Payment instruction and payment matched but not yet sent to superannuation fund. |
| Cancelled | You have overwritten an existing payment instruction before a matching payment was made. |
| Payment made | Payment has been sent to superannuation funds as per your payment instruction. |
| Payment rejected | Payment has been rejected because invalid bank account details are recorded. |
| Payment partially successful | One or more of your employee payments have not been successfully processed. |
How to obtain statements
For employers, once you have made payments you will be able to view these through the instructions history tab on the employer's main page within the Clearing House website.
You can download an annual statement for your employees showing a history of successful payments made to the employee's nominated superannuation fund(s) within a specific financial year.