Stop waiting for the annual statement to find out whether your super was paid. Since 1 July 2026 it has to reach your fund within days of every payday, so every payday is when you check.

That’s my position, and the rest is detail: which day to look, what to match, what looks late but isn’t, and what to do when the money really is missing.

One thing first. This is general information, not financial advice. Your award, your fund and your circumstances can change the detail, so talk to your fund or the ATO about your own situation.

The annual statement is the wrong place to look now

For years the sensible habit was simple. Open the fund’s yearly statement, glance at the balance, file it. Under the old quarterly system that was roughly good enough, because super only had to arrive a few times a year, and a missing payment could sit unnoticed for months without anyone thinking it strange.

That world is gone. Payday Super shrinks the gap between your wages and your super to a week and a bit. A problem you could only have found next winter can now be found in a fortnight, while it’s one pay and not six and the people who can fix it still remember what happened.

Most of what you’ll find online about Payday Super is written for employers and payroll teams. That’s useful if you run the pays. It’s less useful if you’re the one being paid and you want one answer: when should my super be there?

Business day 10, and the sum behind it is short.

What changed on 1 July 2026

The ATO’s own wording is the clearest version of the new rule: “Super guarantee contributions must be received by your employees’ super funds within 7 business days after paying your employees.”

The word that matters is received. An employer who pressed send on day 6 and whose payment lands on day 9 has missed it.

A few other things changed at the same time, and each one matters to you.

Super is now paid for each payday. The employer works out super guarantee for every pay run instead of once a quarter. The rate is 12% of what the ATO now calls qualifying earnings, which takes in your ordinary time earnings plus all commissions and salary sacrificed amounts.

Payday is day 0. The ATO says it plainly: “The day you pay qualifying earnings is day 0.” The seven business days start the next business day.

Funds have to move faster too. Once your fund receives a contribution, it has 3 business days to allocate it to your account or send it back. That used to be 20. The count does not include the day the money arrives.

The government’s free clearing house has closed. The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House stopped taking new users on 1 October 2025 and closed to existing users after 30 June 2026. The ATO now describes it as no longer accessible.

A ruling on the advice you’ll still find

Plenty of guides still say super is due quarterly. They aren’t lying. They’re describing the old system, and the ATO confirms exactly where the line sits: “For employee earnings paid up to 30 June 2026, the quarterly super guarantee rules apply.”

So a guide that talks about quarters is describing pays from before July. For anything you’ve been paid since, quarterly is the wrong rule. Even the ATO’s own page for employees chasing unpaid super still points to an “Estimate my quarterly super calculator” at the time of writing. That’s a page catching up, not a sign the old rule survives. Go by payday.

The day-10 check

This is the bit the employer guides leave out, because it isn’t their problem. It’s a simple sum.

The employer has 7 business days to get the money into your fund. The fund then has 3 business days to put it in your account. Seven plus three is ten. By the end of business day 10 after payday, the contribution should be sitting in your account.

Day 10 is the outer edge, not the target. A lot of employers will pay sooner, and the money may show up on day 2 or day 4. If it’s there early, good. If it isn’t there by day 10, that’s the point where it’s fair to start asking.

A worked example (hypothetical)

Take a hypothetical worker on fortnightly pay, paid on Thursday 12 November 2026.

Count it yourself and it works. Friday the 13th is day 1, the weekend doesn’t count, and Monday the 23rd is day 7. Then three more business days takes you to Thursday the 26th.

What a business day means here

Under the ATO’s definition, a business day is any day that isn’t a Saturday, a Sunday, or a public holiday for the whole of any state or territory.

Read that last part twice. It’s any state or territory, not just yours. A state-wide public holiday anywhere in Australia pushes the count back a day, even if you’re working normally in a different state. That’s why paydays around Christmas and New Year run later than you’d expect. Count carefully over the holidays, or simply allow a few extra days.

What to match

You’re checking two things against each other. On one side is the super line on your payslip for that pay. On the other side is the transaction in your fund.

Pull up the payslip. It’s the same document you’d read to check your leave loading, and the super figure should be on it. Then open your fund’s app or online account and find the matching contribution.

Match three things:

1. The amount. Does the fund show the same figure as the payslip?
2. The date. Did it arrive inside the day-10 window?
3. The employer name. Is it your employer, and not a stray contribution from somewhere else?

For a rough sense check, multiply the qualifying earnings on that pay by 12%. Say a hypothetical pay has $2,000 of qualifying earnings. Twelve per cent of that is $240, so you’d expect a super line in that neighbourhood. If the payslip says $240 and the fund shows $240 from your employer by day 10, you’re done until next payday.

Treat that as a check, not the legal calculation. Your award, your hours and what counts toward qualifying earnings can all move the number. If you salary sacrifice, that amount sits inside qualifying earnings, so don’t be thrown when the 12% is worked out on a figure that includes it. What you’re looking for is a figure that’s in the right neighbourhood and turns up on time, not a match to the cent.

Late that isn’t late

The employer guides rarely spell this out for the person being paid. Some contributions are allowed to take longer, and if yours is one of them, chasing on day 11 just costs everyone a phone call.

Four of the situations in the ATO’s examples matter most to employees:

1. You’re a new employee. The first contribution for a new starter has 20 business days, not 7.
2. You’ve switched funds. The first contribution to a new fund after you change also gets 20 business days.
3. The money was paid out of cycle. A bonus, commission or back pay paid outside the normal pay run isn’t due 7 days later. It’s due with the deadline for the next regular payday.
4. The ATO has declared exceptional circumstances. Natural disasters and widespread IT outages are the examples. Where the ATO makes a determination, the deadline extends to at least 20 business days after payday.

If one of those fits, wait before you chase. If none does and day 10 has gone, keep going.

When the money is missing

The steps below follow the ATO’s page about unpaid super from your employer. Work through them in order. Each step is quicker than the one after it, and a problem can often be cleared at the second or third.

1. Confirm you’re entitled. Most employees are, but check the ATO’s rules if you’re unsure about your work arrangement.
2. Check your fund properly. Look at statements, call them or use the app. Also check your super through ATO online services in myGov, the same login you’d use to track a tax refund. Sometimes the money is there and labelled oddly.
3. Ask your employer. Three questions: when did you pay it, to which fund, and how much? Keep it factual. A missed payment is often an admin slip, and a direct question usually clears it.
4. Check your choice form. Make sure the fund your employer has on file is the one you actually use. A contribution sent to an old fund isn’t missing. It’s just somewhere else.
5. Report it. If none of that resolves it, use the ATO’s report unpaid super tool.

Go into step 5 with your eyes open. The ATO says “not every referral results in the collection of unpaid super”. That’s a fair warning, not a reason to skip it. Reporting puts the problem on the record with the body that has the power to act.

One more fork. If your award says you’re owed super above the guarantee, that extra part goes to the Fair Work Ombudsman, not the ATO.

What other workers say

Online, employees split roughly three ways on this. The most common advice is to report to the ATO straight away. A second group says the ATO is slow, and that you can’t get blood out of a stone if a business has no money. A third says unpaid super is a sign of trouble and the answer is to leave.

Each has a point. Our view sits in the middle. Check each payday, ask payroll, then report. A one-off delay that’s fixed quickly isn’t a crisis. Repeated misses are.

Why one late payment isn’t a fire

The ATO has said how it will treat employers in the first year, under a practical compliance guideline, PCG 2026/1, which runs from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027. Employers who are trying to pay each payday and fix errors quickly are treated as low risk. Its focus is on employers who aren’t making the adjustment, or aren’t paying super at all.

That’s a useful frame for you too. A business that’s new to paying super every fortnight may trip once. If they fix it quickly when you raise it, the system is working.

You might hear one line in particular: “the ATO has it.” Before July that sometimes meant the money was sitting in the government clearing house. That clearing house has closed. So if you hear it now, don’t argue. Just ask the same three questions: which fund, what date, how much. A real answer will check out against your account.

Repeated misses are different. If super is late pay after pay, report it, and keep your own records: payslips, screenshots of the fund showing nothing, the dates you asked and what you were told. The ATO itself says recovery is not guaranteed, which is the fair point the “leave now” crowd is making. A run of missed payments is a good reason to start looking at your options while you’re still employed and still being paid.

Super is one workplace right worth knowing well. The right to disconnect is another.

Day ten, not June

The old habit was to look once a year. The new rule gives your employer seven business days and your fund three, so the right time to look is day 10 after every payday.

Set a reminder in your phone for day 10 after each payday. Open the fund, find the contribution, match it to the payslip. It takes two minutes. On most paydays it’ll be there and you’ll close the app. On the payday it isn’t, you’ll know within a fortnight, not next June, and a fortnight-old problem is a much easier one to fix.

Sources: About Payday Super, Australian Taxation Office (https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/super-for-employers/about-payday-super); Payment deadlines for Payday Super, Australian Taxation Office (https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/super-for-employers/paying-super-on-payday/payment-deadlines-for-payday-super); Unpaid super from your employer, Australian Taxation Office (https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals-and-families/super-for-individuals-and-families/super/growing-and-keeping-track-of-your-super/unpaid-super-from-your-employer); Getting it right: compliance in the first year of Payday Super, Australian Taxation Office (https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/super-for-employers/missed-or-late-payday-super-payments/getting-it-right-compliance-in-the-first-year-of-payday-super)

Leave loading is not a universal right. Annual leave is.

Mix those two up and you’ll either chase money you were never owed or miss money you were. The 17.5 per cent extra that most people picture when they hear “leave loading” doesn’t come from national law. It comes from a clause in your award or your enterprise agreement, and if that clause isn’t there, neither is the loading.

There’s a popular short video that puts it simply: leave loading is when you get paid 17.5 per cent more when you take annual leave. Thousands watched it. Plenty of them now think everyone gets it. They don’t. And a lot of people who do get it are paid correctly without ever seeing a line on the payslip called “loading”.

So pick your side of the line first. Owed, or never owed. Everything below is about working out which one you’re on.

Annual leave is the right. Loading is a clause

Start with what you’re guaranteed, because it’s the floor everything else sits on.

The National Employment Standards (NES) give paid annual leave to every employee except casuals. The Fair Work Ombudsman is clear on the numbers. Full-time and part-time employees get 4 weeks of paid annual leave a year, based on their ordinary hours of work. Some shiftworkers get more. Leave builds up from your first day, and whatever you don’t use rolls over from year to year.

That part is national. It applies whatever your job, your award or the size of your employer.

Leave loading isn’t in that list.

Where loading comes from

The Fair Work Ombudsman describes leave loading as an additional amount paid to some employees when they take annual leave. Note the word “some”. The Ombudsman says it doesn’t apply to all employees and depends on what their award or enterprise agreement says.

So the question “do I get leave loading?” has no general answer. It has your answer, and it’s written in one document.

Find your award or agreement. Find the annual leave clause. Read what it says about loading. That clause decides whether you get an extra amount, what rate it’s paid at and how it’s worked out. Fair Work’s own guidance on calculating annual leave loading says it plainly: loading clauses vary from award to award.

Most people never read their award. Fair enough, it’s not a gripping document. But it’s where your conditions live, alongside the NES protections that sit underneath every award. If you’ve already read up on your right to disconnect after hours, you’ve seen how that works: the national rule sets a floor, and your award or agreement fills in the detail. Leave loading is pure detail. It lives entirely in the second layer.

When a clause does provide loading, 17.5 per cent is the rate you’ll see most commonly. Commonly, not always. That’s why this article won’t tell you “you get 17.5 per cent”. It will tell you to check.

The higher-of rule

This is where most of the “have I been paid wrong?” posts come from. Someone looks at a holiday payslip, can’t find the 17.5 per cent and assumes payroll has stuffed up.

Often it hasn’t.

Many awards don’t simply add loading on top. They make it a comparison. You get whichever is higher: the leave loading, or the penalty rates you would normally have earned if you’d been at work.

The Fair Work Ombudsman’s example from the Food and Beverage Manufacturing Award shows exactly how this plays out. Under that award, dayworkers get the higher of 17.5 per cent loading on their annual leave pay, or the weekend penalty rates they would normally get.

The Ombudsman’s worked case is James. James works part-time, Fridays and Saturdays. His Saturday shifts attract a penalty rate of 150 per cent. When he takes annual leave, he isn’t paid his base rate plus 17.5 per cent for the Saturday. He’s paid the Saturday rate, because it’s higher than the loading would be.

James is paid correctly. His payslip may not show anything called “loading”. He’s still ahead.

Shiftworkers under that award get the same kind of comparison: the higher of 17.5 per cent, or their normal shift rates including weekend penalties.

That’s one award. Others are worded differently, and some don’t use a higher-of comparison at all. The principle is what you take away. If you normally earn penalty rates, your leave pay may already be higher than base plus loading, and the loading drops out because the bigger number wins.

Think about who this catches. The hospitality worker on weekends. The retail casual who went permanent part-time and kept the Saturday shifts. The warehouse hand on a rotating roster. These are exactly the people most likely to earn penalty rates, and so exactly the people most likely to open a holiday payslip, see no loading and decide they’ve been robbed. Under a higher-of clause, the penalty rate is doing the job the loading would otherwise do. You get one or the other, whichever is worth more, not both stacked together.

So before you raise a complaint, ask the right question. Not “where’s my 17.5 per cent?” Ask “was I paid the higher of the two amounts my clause compares?”

Above-award pay changes the maths

Plenty of people are paid more than the award minimum. That raises an obvious question. Is loading worked out on what you’re actually paid, or on the award rate?

The answer is the same as for everything else here. It depends on the clause.

Fair Work’s guidance on calculating annual leave loading says whether loading is calculated on your above-award rate or on the award minimum depends on how the clause is worded. Some clauses tie the loading to the minimum rate for your classification. Others tie it to your actual rate of pay.

If you’re on a generous above-award rate, this can matter a lot. Same 17.5 per cent, two very different bases, and the gap grows with every dollar you’re paid above the minimum. Read the wording. If your contract says your above-award pay “absorbs” or “offsets” award entitlements, read that too, and ask payroll which base they use. Don’t guess from the payslip alone.

Casuals: no leave, no leave loading

Casuals are the easy case, and they’re the group most often confused by the video version of the rule.

Casual employees don’t get paid annual leave under the NES. No paid annual leave means no annual leave loading. There’s nothing for the loading to attach to.

What casuals get instead is a casual loading. It’s a separate payment for a different reason: it compensates for the entitlements casuals don’t get, paid annual leave among them. The two loadings share a word and nothing else. If you’re casual and someone tells you you’re missing out on your 17.5 per cent, you’re not. The casual loading is the payment meant to cover that gap.

Your award sets out how the casual loading works for your job. Check it there.

When the money looks missing

Say you’ve checked, and you still think something’s wrong. Do it in this order.

Read the payslip for the leave period. Not last month’s. The one that covers the days you were on leave. Look at the rate you were paid for those days, and any separate line for loading.

Find the clause. Your award or enterprise agreement. The annual leave section. Work out whether it provides loading at all, what rate, whether it’s a higher-of comparison and what base the loading is calculated on.

Run the comparison. If your clause compares loading with penalty rates, work out what you’d have earned in penalties over those days if you’d worked. Then check you got the higher of the two.

Raise it with payroll. Assume a mistake before you assume a scheme. Show them the clause and the payslip, and ask them to walk you through the calculation. A written answer is better than a hallway one.

Then go to the Fair Work Ombudsman. If payroll can’t explain it, the Ombudsman’s Fair Work Infoline is the next step.

Keep copies of everything while you do this. Payslips, rosters, the clause, the emails with payroll. If you’re sorting out your pay records anyway, it’s worth getting your tax paperwork into the same shape, and the guide to why your tax refund might be taking longer is a good place to start on that side.

One more thing. If you’re leaving a job, unused annual leave is dealt with in your final pay, and final pay has its own rules. Don’t assume they match what you got on holiday. Check the Fair Work Ombudsman’s page on final pay for your situation before you sign off on the last payslip.

This is general information, not legal advice. Your award, agreement and circumstances decide the answer.

Find the clause, then check the payslip

Annual leave is a national right for everyone except casuals. Leave loading is an extra that only exists if your award or agreement says so. And when it does exist, it’s often a comparison with your penalty rates, so a payslip without a “loading” line can still be right.

Stop asking whether you’re owed 17.5 per cent. Find your clause, read what it actually promises, and hold the payslip up against that, because the clause is the only document that can tell you what you were owed in the first place.

Sources: Payment for annual leave, Fair Work Ombudsman (https://www.fairwork.gov.au/leave/annual-leave/payment-for-annual-leave); Annual leave loading in awards and agreements [K600323], Fair Work Ombudsman (https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/library/K600323_Calculating-annual-leave-loading); Annual leave pay in the Food and Beverage Manufacturing Award [K600258], Fair Work Ombudsman (https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/library/K600258_Annual-leave-pay-in-the-Food-Beverage-Manufacturing-Award)

Your boss messages at 9pm. Most of the time, you can leave it until morning, and the law backs you when you do.

That is the short answer. The longer one turns on a single word, and the word is “unreasonable”. The right to disconnect lets you ignore contact outside working hours unless ignoring it would be unreasonable, so everything that follows is about where that line falls for you, in your job and on your pay.

One thing first. This is general information, not legal advice. Your award, your agreement and your circumstances can all shift the answer, so call the Fair Work Infoline on 13 13 94 for your situation.

What the right actually is

The right is narrower than the name makes it sound, and firmer than it first looks.

According to the Fair Work Ombudsman, you can refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, outside your working hours, unless the refusal is unreasonable. The right sits in the Fair Work Act 2009, section 333M.

Three details matter.

It covers more than your boss. Contact from your employer counts. So does contact from third parties, which means clients, customers and suppliers. The client who rings your mobile on a Sunday afternoon is inside the rule as well.

Think about what that means in practice. A tradie whose customers text about quotes at night, a receptionist whose clients email on weekends, a junior whose supplier calls from another time zone. All of them have the same right, and the same test.

The channel does not matter either. Calls, emails, texts, social media and messaging apps are all covered, so if it reaches you, it counts.

And the contact itself stays lawful. This is the part people get wrong. Your boss can still send the 9pm message, and nobody breaks the law by sending it. What changes is your obligation to read it. The Ombudsman’s media release was blunt on this, quoting Anna Booth: “It’s important to remember the right to disconnect does not prohibit employers from contacting their employees, nor does it prevent employees from contacting one another, including across time zones.”

So the message will still arrive. You just do not have to open it.

Hold onto that distinction. The right does not stop anyone typing. It protects your choice not to answer, and it puts a test on that choice, the reasonableness test, which binds you and your employer alike.

Who it covers, and since when

The right arrived in two stages. The Fair Work Ombudsman gives the start dates as 26 August 2024 for employees of larger employers, and 26 August 2025 for employees of small business employers.

Small business means an employer with fewer than 15 employees at a particular time. Two counting rules sit under that. Casuals count only if they are employed on a regular and systematic basis. Employees of associated entities count too.

Between those two dates, small business staff sat outside the rule while their friends at larger employers sat inside it. That gap has closed. If you work in a small team and assumed the right was for people in big offices, check again. It reached you on 26 August 2025.

It is also national. People search for the NSW rule, the Victorian rule, the Queensland rule. There is one rule, it sits in federal law, and the state you work in does not change it.

The five things that decide “unreasonable”

There is no list of messages you are allowed to ignore. The law gives you factors instead, and the Fair Work Ombudsman sets them out:

1. Why the contact was made. An urgent problem and a note that could have waited are different things.
2. How it was made, and how disruptive it was. One email you can read at breakfast weighs differently from repeated calls through dinner.
3. Whether you are compensated. Pay for being available, or for working extra hours, goes into the balance.
4. Your role and level of responsibility. The more senior the job, the more may reasonably be expected.
5. Your personal circumstances. That includes family and caring responsibilities.

Read that list again and notice who it protects. Factor five is there for the parent doing bedtime and the person caring for a sick relative. Factor three is there so that people who are paid to be reachable stay reachable. The test works for both sides of the phone.

One rule overrides all five. If the contact is required by law, refusing it is unreasonable. That one is not up for debate.

The Ombudsman gives two worked examples. They are worth retelling, because they show the factors pulling in opposite directions.

In the first, an employee with caring responsibilities works flexible hours. Contact comes outside those hours. Refusing to respond is reasonable.

In the second, an employee is acting as a manager and is paid extra for it. Contact comes outside hours. Here, refusing could be unreasonable.

Look at what decided each one: the reason for the contact, the pay, the role and the person’s life outside work, which is why two people on the same team can get opposite answers to the same 9pm message and both be right.

So treat the right as a test applied case by case, and run it on yourself before you lean on it.

Where the right runs out

Some jobs come with the phone switched on. If you are on call, or working overtime, you can be required to respond. The Fair Work Ombudsman says so plainly in its myth-busters. The new right does not cancel a roster. Being on call is the arrangement, and answering is part of the deal.

Then there are jobs where contact outside hours comes with the territory, in senior roles or roles responsible for things that cannot wait. The role factor covers those, and it is why a blanket “I never answer after hours” may not hold up.

Your award or agreement can add detail as well. All modern awards now include a right to disconnect clause. Read yours. It may say more about how after-hours contact works in your industry than the general rule does.

The best time to learn any of this is before you take the job. If a role expects you to answer at night, find out at the interview, not after you start. It is a fair question, and it belongs in the same preparation as everything in our guide to job interview prep. Ask who contacts staff outside hours, how often on call comes around and whether that time is paid. If the answer to that last one is vague, pay attention to the vagueness.

When it goes wrong

Say you leave the message until morning and your employer objects. Or the calls keep coming and you are sure your refusal is reasonable. What then?

Start at work. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s advice is to try to sort it out in the workplace first. If you are a union member, the union can represent you in that conversation.

A dispute does not have to begin as a complaint. If the problem is expectations nobody wrote down, a calm conversation may fix it, and that conversation is the subject of the last section.

If talking fails, the Fair Work Commission can step in. It can make orders, including a stop order. That cuts both ways. The Commission can order an employee to stop unreasonably refusing contact, or order an employer to stop taking a particular action. The same factors decide which.

Then there is protection against payback. Your employer cannot take adverse action against you for exercising the right. That covers dismissal, demotion and being quietly passed over because you left a message unanswered when you were entitled to.

Keep a record while it is happening. The date, the channel, what was asked and what you did about it. A dispute over reasonableness is a dispute over facts, and notes written at the time beat a memory pieced together months later.

Where the line sits

The right to disconnect works best when nobody has to invoke it. That sounds backwards until you compare the two situations. Arguing for a right at 9pm is a fight. An expectation agreed in daylight turns into a habit, and the habit protects you without anyone having to say the word “unreasonable” out loud.

So set it now, in writing, before the next late message lands.

For managers, this is a team conversation, and it gets harder when the team holds very different ideas about phones and hours. Our piece on how to manage a multigenerational workforce covers that ground. For employees, it is a short talk with your manager, and it fits in three lines:

“After hours, I’ll be keeping work messages for the morning.”

“If something is genuinely urgent, call me and I’ll pick up.”

“Anything else, I’ll deal with first thing the next working day.”

Say it, then send it as an email so it exists in writing. Keep the reply.

That script will not fit every job. If you are on call, paid to be available or acting up into a senior role, you need a different version, and the five factors tell you how to write it. For most people on most nights, though, the default is clear.

The message can wait until morning. And if the after-hours culture where you work has you wondering whether to stay at all, start with the document that gets you out the door. Our guide to resume format in Australia is the place to begin.

Sources: Fair Work Ombudsman, Right to disconnect (https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/right-to-disconnect); Fair Work Ombudsman, Small business employees now have the right to disconnect, media release, 26 August 2025 (https://www.fairwork.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/2025-media-releases/august-2025/20250826-right-to-disconnect-starts-for-small-business-employees-media-release); Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), section 333M