Under Payday Super, super guarantee contributions must be received by the employee's super fund within 7 business days of payday, with all the information the fund needs to allocate them to the member. If the fund doesn't receive them in time — even by a day — the Payday Super Guarantee Charge (SGC) applies. The SGC can be significant: it includes the outstanding contribution, notional earnings to compensate the employee, and an administrative uplift of up to 60%. Specific components and calculations are set out on the ATO's website.

A few things worth noting:

• The deadline is when the fund receives and can allocate the contribution — not when you initiate the payment or when it leaves your bank.
• The clock runs from the Qualifying Earnings (QE) day — the day you pay wages — regardless of whether wages were paid on time.
• Clearing house processing time, bank approval time, and any back-and-forth on rejections all count against your 7-business-day window.

That last point is the one that reshapes the clearing house decision. Under the old quarterly super regime, a few days of clearing house lag or a rejected contribution didn't matter much — you had weeks to fix it. Under Payday Super, that same delay is most of your buffer.

Employers retain the legal obligation to ensure contributions are received on time, regardless of which clearing option they use. The right tool makes that obligation easier to meet consistently — it does not remove it.

Employment Hero supports three clearing paths for super. They sit on a spectrum from fully manual to fully embedded.

Manual / third-party (SAFF export)

Disconnected systems. High effort per cycle.

You export a SAFF (SuperStream Alternative File Format) file from payroll, upload it to a third-party clearing house, and separately authorise the payment through your bank. Reconciliation, returns, and fund errors are managed outside Employment Hero.

• Works with any ATO-accredited clearing house
• You remain responsible for meeting the 7-business-day rule across multiple systems
• No EH platform visibility on fund-side status or errors

Integrated clearing

Semi-integrated. Fewer steps than manual, but still multi-system.

Payroll data flows through an integration to Beam for clearing. You still approve the payment in your bank, and fund-side status and confirmations sit outside Employment Hero.

• Data flows one way from EH Payroll into Beam
• Payment authorisation sits outside the payroll workflow
• Error resolution and return handling are not managed inside Employment Hero

Beam is Payday Super–ready, employers can continue submitting their superannuation batches via Beam as usual.

Please ensure you are following the ATO’s guidelines to make Superannuation Guarantee (SG) contributions on payday. This is referred to as the ‘QE day’, being the day you pay qualifying earnings (QE) to your employees.

Based on Beam’s processing timeframes, if contributions are submitted on the QE day, the funds will receive them within the required 7 business days.

HeroClear

Fully embedded. Automated. Full visibility of money movement.

HeroClear runs inside Employment Hero Payroll. There's no separate portal, no file upload, no file transfer to the bank. Validation happens upfront, payments are initiated automatically, and every stage of the batch — debit, SuperStream submission, fund receipt, and allocation — is tracked and displayed back in your payroll dashboard.

• Designed around the 7-business-day window from the ground up
• Upfront validation (fund and USI checks, plus MVR as funds and gateways adopt it) to reduce rejections before money moves
• Full end to end status visibility and fast in-platform error resolution

The meaningful differences between these options aren't about features — they're about who does the work and where the risk sits when something doesn't go to plan.

A note on compliance: None of these options removes your legal obligation as the employer. All three can support compliant processing. The differences above affect how much manual coordination is required to meet the 7-business-day window reliably, and how quickly you'll know about a problem if something does go wrong.

The visible cost

The headline comparison is straightforward: HeroClear is $0.20 per employee per batch, Beam integration is $0.30 per employee per batch (both ex GST). That makes HeroClear 33% cheaper than the Beam integration at the same employee volume and pay frequency.

Over a year, for an organisation with 20 employees that looks like:

Manual / SAFF paths avoid the EH per-batch charge but may add third-party clearing house fees — rates vary by provider.

The cost you don't see on the invoice

The per-batch fee is the visible cost. The bigger cost — and the one most employers don't see until they're in it — is the hours your team spends resolving issues when something goes wrong. Under Payday Super, those issues have to be resolved against a 7-business-day clock, not the old quarterly buffer.

HeroClear is designed to minimise that cost in two ways:

• Preventing issues before they occur — upfront fund and USI checks, MVR validation as funds adopt it, and proactive fund merger notifications help reduce how often rejections happen in the first place.
• Streamlining resolution when they do — when something does need fixing, it's flagged in your payroll dashboard with a guided workflow, in the same system you're already in. No cross-system coordination, no chasing.

For employers running regular pay cycles, the difference in people-hours per cycle is often far larger than the per-batch price difference on the invoice.

Do I have to move to HeroClear? No. Your existing clearing arrangement remains supported. HeroClear is the recommended default because of its fit with Payday Super obligations and fully embedded end to end experience, but the choice is yours.

Is HeroClear SuperStream compliant? Yes. Employment Hero is listed on the ATO's SuperStream Certified Product Register. HeroClear uses an accredited SuperStream messaging provider and a licensed payments partner for clearing and settlement.

Does HeroClear remove my obligations as an employer? No. The employer remains legally responsible for ensuring super contributions are received by the fund within 7 business days of payday. HeroClear is designed to make that easier to achieve consistently, but the obligation sits with you regardless of the clearing path.

What happens if a contribution is rejected by the fund? Rejections are surfaced in your EH Payroll dashboard, with a guided workflow to update details and resubmit. Acting quickly matters — the 7-business-day clock continues to run.

Can I still use the ATO's Small Business Super Clearing House (SBSCH)? The SBSCH closes permanently at 11:59 pm AEST on 30 June 2026 and is no longer accepting new registrants. If you're an existing user, download your records before it closes and switch to an alternative clearing method as soon as possible. SBSCH, download your historical payment records for your own record-keeping and choose a replacement clearing path before the closure date.

When should I switch to HeroClear? Whenever you're ready. There's no lock-in! HeroClear can be enabled, paused, or turned off per entity at any time. Start with one entity, run a few batches, and roll out to others when you're confident in the process.