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Lavinia9's avatar
Lavinia9
Member
3 days ago

Unable to pay Super due to new employee selecting default fund

I onboarded a new employee about 3 weeks ago and on their Super Choice form, they nominated to use our Default super fund, which in our case we've chosen Vanguard Super.

 

 

 

This is the first time one of our employees has opted to choose the Default fund, so I simply selected it under the employee and hit save.

 

 

 

From some research I've done online, if the employee doesn't have an account with the Super fund, one should be created automatically when I pay Super for the first time.

 

 

 

However, MYOB is not letting me pay Super for this employee, because the member number field is blank.

 

 

I rang Vanguard Super and they couldn't help me. They first suggested that I ask my employee to create an account with Vanguard then provide me their member number, but that goes against what I've seen from the other major Super funds.


See below:

 

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The employee should not normally have to open the account themselves unless that particular fund requires it as part of its onboarding process.

 

For many large funds (AustralianSuper, Hostplus, REST, HESTA, etc.), when the employer submits the first SuperStream contribution, the fund creates the member account automatically if one doesn't already exist.

 

The ATO's guidance reflects this common model. They don't say "the employee must register first".

 

The wrinkle is that the ATO doesn't actually force every super fund to create an account automatically. The ATO tells employers which fund to pay, but each fund still has its own membership process.

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Because it's tax time right now, MYOB support's wait times have completely blown out and it takes almost 2 hours to get someone on Live chat, and if you aren't staring at the screen the moment they respond, the chat gets closed and you have to start the whole process all over again.

 

Does anyone know what I should do in this instance? I don't want to have to ask my employees to create their own super fund accounts, if need be, I will change away from Vanguard to another fund that does automatically create the account when the first lot of Super is paid.

2 Replies

  • Lavinia9's avatar
    Lavinia9
    Member
    2 days ago

    Hi Doreen,


    Thanks for getting back to me. After several conversations with Vanguard and them promising to find out the correct process and email me within 1 hour (3 hrs later, nothing) - I found another major Australian super fund who has an employer portal. I was able to register for that within seconds and then register my employees information. They then issued a membership number instantly for the employee and I have now successfully done my super run.

     

    In amongst all that, I even managed to get the employee to fill out a new Super Choice form as required by law, so it was far less painless than what the whole process was going to be if I'd stuck with Vanguard.

     

    I also changed our default super fund in MYOB settings so going forward we can just do the same thing.

  • Doreen_P's avatar
    Doreen_P
    MYOB Moderator
    2 days ago

    Hi Lavinia9,

     

    Thanks for laying it all out. While some super funds create a member account automatically when the first contribution is made, not every fund follows the same process. If MYOB is asking for a member number and the fund hasn’t created one automatically, the employee may need to be registered with that fund first, or the fund may need to confirm the correct process for employer default-fund setup. It’d also be a really good idea to check this with your accountant or financial advisor, just to make sure the next step is the right one for your setup and stays compliant.

     

    Cheers,

    Doreen

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