The ATO super clearing house is gone: what small venues use now
The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House shut at 11:59pm on 30 June 2026. It was free, and it counted your super as paid the moment it accepted your money. Here's what replaces it, and the timing trap that catches venues first.
The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House closed at 11:59pm AEST on 30 June 2026, and it isn't coming back. If you run one venue and used it because super wasn't built into anything else you owned, you didn't just lose a free tool. You lost the only approved clearing house in the country, the one that counted your super as paid the moment it accepted your money.
That second part costs more than the price tag ever did. Every replacement, free or paid, leaves you on the hook until the money actually lands in your employee's fund.
The short version: the SBSCH shut at 11:59pm AEST on 30 June 2026 and took its records with it. You now need another SuperStream way to pay: your default fund's clearing house (often free), payroll software with super built in, or a commercial clearing house. Under payday super the test is when the fund receives the contribution, not when you send it.
What you actually lost when it closed
The ATO's own line on the SBSCH was blunt: as soon as your payment and instructions were accepted, your super guarantee obligations were met. Submit at 4pm on the 28th, and you were done. Whatever happened downstream, the funds being slow, a member number needing a nudge, was no longer your problem.
Nothing you can sign up for now carries that. A commercial clearing house acts as your agent, not as a legal endpoint. If it holds your money for four days and the fund then bounces the contribution back over a wrong member number, the super guarantee charge lands on you, not on them.
"As soon as your payment and instructions are accepted by the SBSCH your super guarantee obligations are met." That sentence, and the protection sitting behind it, retired on 30 June 2026.
What small venues are using instead
There are four realistic paths, and for most single-venue operators the cheapest one is already sitting in a drawer somewhere with your default fund's paperwork.
| Option | What it costs | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Your default fund's clearing house | Usually nothing. Hostplus offers QuickSuper at no cost to registered Hostplus employers, Australian Retirement Trust's is free where they're your default fund, and AustralianSuper's employer portal is free to registered employers | Ties you to that fund as your default, and super lives outside your payroll: another login, another manual step, every single payday |
| Payroll software with super built in | A monthly subscription, priced by plan and headcount | Worth it if you're moving your whole payroll across. Paying for a payroll product purely to post super is an expensive way to send 26 payments a year |
| A commercial clearing house | Per transaction or per month, depending on the provider | You're now paying for what used to be free, and you inherit their processing times without any say over them |
| Paying each fund direct through SuperStream | Free | Fine with three staff across two funds. With 15 casuals spread across 11 funds after stapling, it's a fortnightly data-entry shift you didn't roster |
Hospitality has an easy win here that most generic advice misses. If Hostplus is your default fund, QuickSuper is already available to you at no charge, and like any clearing house it pays out to any fund your staff are in, so stapling doesn't break it. The honest trade-off is that a fund clearing house keeps super as a separate job rather than something that happens when you run pay.
The seven business days are not what you think
From 1 July 2026, a contribution is on time only if the employee's fund receives it within seven business days of payday. That window covers everything: you authorising the payment, the clearing house batching it, the banks moving it, and the fund taking it in. Your provider's processing time is not extra time. It's spending yours.
Take a fortnightly venue paying on Thursday 6 August 2026. Here's where the days actually go.
| What happens | When | Business days used |
|---|---|---|
| You pay staff for the fortnight | Thursday 6 August | Day zero |
| You submit the super batch | Friday 7 August | 1 |
| Clearing house batches it, banks move the money | Monday 10 to Wednesday 12 August | 2 to 4 |
| Fund allocates it, or returns it (it gets 3 business days) | Thursday 13 to Monday 17 August | 5 to 7 |
| Last day the fund can receive it on time | Monday 17 August | 7 |
Read the fourth row again. The fund has three business days to allocate or return a contribution, which means a rejection surfaces at roughly day seven. Submit on payday itself with a provider that takes the full window, and you find out you've bounced on the deadline, with no working days left to fix it.
So submit within one business day of payday, not on the deadline. Landing the money by day four leaves days five, six and seven to catch a bounce, correct the member number and re-send. That buffer is the whole job now. Treat it as a fixed step in your pay run rather than something you'll get to.
Your list for this week
- Don't pay the old SBSCH details. Anything the ATO receives at those details from 1 July 2026 is returned to you within seven business days, and a returned payment is a late payment. If your June quarter super is still unsent, that money is due Tuesday 28 July and the late payment offset isn't available for it.
- Rebuild the records you didn't download. The SBSCH held your employee fund details and payment history, and both went dark on 1 July. If you never exported them, reconstruct from bank statements, payslips and super choice forms now, while you still remember the gaps, rather than during an audit.
- Clean the fund data before you load it anywhere. For each person you need the fund's ABN, the fund's USI and their member number. A wrong digit in any of those is the single most common reason a contribution bounces, and a bounce costs you days you no longer have.
- Run a test batch with one employee. The ATO's transition advice was to do a test pay run before switching, partly so you learn your provider's real timing on a payment that doesn't matter. If you skipped it in June, do it on your next pay run.
- Diarise the real dates. Fortnightly means 26 paydays a year, each with its own seven-business-day clock. The quarterly rhythm your venue's admin was built around is gone, and nothing about the new one is forgiving of a busy week.
Where this lands back on the roster
Losing the clearing house is an admin problem you can solve in an afternoon. Losing the 28 day reconciliation window is a data problem, and it's the one that'll actually cost you. Quarterly super quietly gave you a month to chase unapproved shifts and missing break entries before the number mattered. Now the wage figure has to be right on the day you run pay, every time.
That's a rostering and timesheet job before it's a super job. Shiftly is free workforce management for venues: rostering, award-aware timesheets that help you estimate what a shift really costs including casual loading and penalties, and an on-demand staffing network built in so the roster fills itself instead of filling with last-minute overtime you only discover at pay time. We're a facilitator and a calculation tool, not a payroll provider and not a clearing house, but every super figure starts with the hours. Get started with Shiftly.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still get my SBSCH records?
No. From 11:59pm AEST on 30 June 2026 employers could no longer log in, submit payment instructions or view records, and the service closed permanently on 1 July 2026. If you didn't download your employee details and payment history before then, rebuild them from your own bank statements, payslips and employee super choice records, because you'll want them if the ATO or a former employee asks.
What's the cheapest replacement for a small venue?
Usually your default fund's own clearing house. Hostplus provides QuickSuper at no cost to registered Hostplus employers, Australian Retirement Trust's clearing house is free where it's your default fund, and AustralianSuper's employer portal is free to registered employers. All of them pay out to any fund, so employees with stapled accounts elsewhere aren't a problem. The cost is workflow, not dollars: super stays a separate step from your pay run.
Does using a clearing house protect me if it's late?
Not any more. The SBSCH was an approved clearing house, so your obligation was met the moment it accepted your payment. No replacement carries that status. Under payday super the contribution has to be received by the employee's fund within seven business days of payday, and a commercial clearing house acts as your agent, so its delay is your super guarantee charge to pay.
What happens if I pay the SBSCH bank details by mistake?
The money comes back. The ATO returns payments received at SBSCH details from 1 July 2026 within seven business days. While it's in transit the contribution is unpaid and the clock keeps running, so a habit-driven payment to an old saved payee is one of the easier ways to end up late without ever realising you were at risk.
Co-founder of Shiftly. Milan works with hospitality businesses across Australia to make rostering, timesheets and award-based pay radically simpler.
