Published on the 01/06/2016 | Written by Beverley Head

Almost a third of Australia’s SMEs have left themselves less than a month to comply with the SuperStream electronic transaction rules which come into force from July…

MYOB’s latest Business Monitor which polled more than 1,000 Australian SMEs found that one quarter were unaware of the deadline, 17 percent of operators had not yet complied and 13 percent were unsure.

In May the Australian Tax Office said that more than 65 per cent of SMEs were compliant – but that there were plenty yet to make the transition to the new regime.

Whatever the reason, they’ve all left it very late, especially since SuperStream was launched in 2014, with large companies having to complete the systems streamlining required to ensure superannuation contributions could be sent and received electronically by last October.

Under the new regime all superannuation contributions must be made electronically with data sent to the super fund, and the payment made electronically, through the banking online network, with the two elements linked by a payment reference number to facilitate reconciliation.

Companies which use a superannuation clearing house that already handles superannuation and super payments electronically may only have to provide additional data in the payroll file sent to the clearing house such as the funds’ unique superannuation identifier, bank account details, electronic service address or employee tax file number.

Employers with 19 or fewer employers can use the ATO’s Small Business Super Clearing House which is free for small business with 19 or fewer employees, as well as businesses with an annual aggregated turnover of $2 million or less.

Organisations which don’t operate electronically can opt to have their accountant or book keeper manage the SuperStream requirements – but the deadline to get everything in place remains 1 July.

James Scollay, MYOB General Manager of SME Solutions, said that there was still time for organisations to achieve SuperStream compliance despite the tight deadline. MYOB, like most of the mainstream accounting and payroll platforms such as Xero, Reckon One, and Saasu, offer SuperStream compliance.

Scollay said that in MYOB staff details needed to be input once, and after that superannuation processing could be reduced from hours to minutes.

While the ATO has taken an education and encouragement approach to getting companies on board with SuperStream in the past, it does have some additional firepower in the form of mandating companies to change their systems, and if they fail to do so within the specified period to impose penalty units of up to $1,800 – with prosecution a final resort.