News
by Beam
|18/10/2024
Ready or not, change is coming. On 1 July 2026, payday super is planned to come into effect, meaning employers will have to pay super at the same time as they pay salary or wages, benefiting an estimated 8.9 million Australians. And while September brought new details around the policy design and the expectations for employers, many software providers are still wondering what their role is in helping businesses meet the increased pressures from payday super.
Australian businesses currently send 200 million super contributions through super stream each year – this is expected to increase to approximately 500 million a year.
As shown in our whitepaper Payday Super and the benefits of payroll integration, managing the new obligations, compliance and cashflow challenges is likely to be a considerable strain for any employers who don’t have payroll software that can handle these demands. And that’s a real possibility; accounting software providers have warned that because they haven’t received enough information from the government, their systems may not be ready to meet the payday super deadline.
“We don’t have specifications,” Matthew Prouse, the president of Digital Service Providers Australia New Zealand (DSPANZ), the peak body for accounting and payroll software developers and superannuation gateways, told Accountants Daily. “We have no legislation, we have no regulation. We have no idea what the specifications will need to be. We don’t know which systems will need to change yet, we don’t know how this is going to work as a business process.” While DSPANZ welcomed the recent announcement on the payday super policy design, they feel “there’s more work required to better understand the detailed rules and technical requirements needed to support Payday Super”.
But Beam is different. A complete super payments platform ready to take on ever-changing super legislation, Beam is a simple, user-friendly and secure supertech solution designed to make super payments effortless for employers. And it’s ready for payday super right now.
While the federal government still hasn’t worked through the legislative and administrative design of payday super, it has released some new information. A Treasury fact sheet published in September 2024 provided new details about the program, including the introduction of a seven-day super guarantee (SG) contribution due date following the payment of wages, and an SG charge if funds aren’t received by the super fund within that time frame.
The announcement also revealed that the ATO’s Small Business Superannuation Clearing House would be retired at the same time as the introduction of payday super.
With financial penalties for not paying super at the same time as wages, and the closure of the clearing house, employers more than ever need a payroll software that’s ready to help them meet their payday super obligations.
That’s where Beam comes in. From its outset, Beam was designed to make super simple and overcome the inefficiencies employers face when paying super. Beam integrates super payments into payroll software, so employers can manage super payments directly from their payroll, quickly and efficiently.
This makes it an ideal tool to handle the more frequent transactions required by payday super and has made it an increasingly valuable proposition as the deadline approaches.
“Superannuation was complex before Beam,” says Mathew Gilroy, Founder at Beam and Head of Employer, Platforms and Partnerships at Australian Retirement Trust (ART).
“Beam was designed thinking of the most effective and efficient way for an employer to process superannuation.
“The outcome of this investment, now that we’ve been in the market for six years, is employers can pay super daily if they choose to.
“That’s why we’re seeing significant demand. Because it’s pretty obvious when you look at more frequent contributions you need a solution like Beam.”
Beam saw a long time ago that change was needed in the super industry to address inefficiencies and make paying super easier. “It was extraordinarily difficult for employers just to process basic contributions, and there was a discrepancy between taking data out of a payroll, going to a super fund website, and then finding the data doesn’t match,” Gilroy says.
By solving these inefficiencies through integration with payroll and more accurate data transfer, and by combining reporting, onboarding and payment in one complete supertech, Beam has helped create time and money savings for employers. This has opened up opportunities for software providers to offer their clients a seamless and compliant solution, and a less frustrating super payment experience for employers, lightening their workload and saving time on endless amounts of manual paperwork.
But Beam wasn’t just thinking of the present. It also saw that super was evolving, through an ongoing series of legislative changes aimed at improving efficiency and outcomes for the more than 17 million Australians with a super account.
Beam saw that the future was likely to bring a requirement for more frequent super payments, and a greater dependence on better data to reduce errors, speed up the payments process and facilitate compliance. By solving inefficiencies in the super system Beam effectively planned for that future.
“That’s what sets us apart,” Gilroy says. “We’ve done a lot of the work to get ready for payday super just through the problems we’ve been trying to solve.”
Beam is an integrated super payment tech designed to supercharge a payroll’s software. By incorporating reporting and super payments tech into a complete end-to-end solution – all within a payroll software – Beam creates a brilliant super payment experience for employers. By automating previously manual processes, Beam can save employers time, reduce their admin burden, and remove the need to move off payroll to complete their super obligations. And with upfront validation, employers can fix any mistakes in their payment before they submit.
There’s no limit to how many employees, super funds or transactions it can handle. And if it spots a mistake, Beam will just hold up that one payment for investigation, while continuing to process the rest of the batch.
With the move to payday super expected to have a significant impact on the workflow processes of many Australian employers, payday super presents an opportunity for software providers to offer an integrated and streamlined super payments experience. By partnering with Beam, payroll providers can increase employers’ confidence in their software’s ability to handle the changes ahead.
Some software providers are waiting for the release of standards before they update their products. But Gilroy warns against inaction.
“By all means, keep an eye on the standards, but you’ve probably got to start future-proofing this aspect of your software solution now,” he says.
Software providers can have Beam integrated into their products and rolled out to employers well ahead of the payday super deadline, Gilroy says.
“Look at your solution and decide whether you’re set up for employers to pay superannuation more frequently. If you don’t have an integrated superannuation solution, it’s probably likely that it’s not set up to do that effectively.
“Our job is to ensure that employers can be compliant with superannuation. Payday super will be a new compliance demand. It’s our job to ensure it’s solved before the dates hit.”
Software providers who fear that time is running out may find that the solution is already here.
The opinions and comments shared by people in this article are theirs alone, and they’re not necessarily shared by Precision. We don’t take responsibility for how accurate any of this information is and we suggest getting advice tailored to your individual circumstances.
This is general information. It’s not based on the specific objectives, financial situation or needs of your business. So think about those things and read the Product Disclosure Statement before you make any decision about our products. Contact us or your payroll provider for a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS). Beam is issued by Precision Administration Services Pty Ltd (Precision) (ABN 47 098 977 667, AFSL 246 604). Precision is wholly owned by Australian Retirement Trust Pty Ltd (ABN 88 010 720 840, AFSL 228 975), trustee of Australian Retirement Trust (ABN 60 905 115 063).
Back to Knowledge Hub