Managing Superannuation obligations with MYOB Pay Superannuation.

[Cloud_Mind]

Take the stress out of managing your Superannuation obligations with MYOB Pay Superannuation.

There are many good reasons why businesses should be taking advantage of a fully integrated online accounting and payroll system, such as MYOB AccountRight Live, or upgrading their old AccountRight Classic files to AccountRight Live.

One of my favourite features is Pay Superannuation - seamless, easy to use, and SuperStream compliant.   From 30 June 2016 it is mandatory for all employers to be SuperStream compliant. Luckily MYOB have made it easy for you.

The Benefits

The setup is seamless and is a very cost effective solution for your business. MYOB Pay Superannuation comes with no extra costs to you if you have an active MYOB subscription. Better yet, it saves you time in administration. For example, it used to take one of my clients 10 hours to process their superannuation for over 70 staff with 31 providers. With Pay Superannuation, it only takes them 30 minutes max. $350 savings right there, not to mention the relief of the accounts person who used to dread the monthly superannuation deadline!

As a plus, you don’t have to have your AccountRight Live file in the cloud to take advantage of the Pay Superannuation feature. So long as you have an active AccountRight Live subscription, you can use the Pay Superannuation feature in the cloud or; on the desktop.

Lastly, MYOB Pay Superannuation can also take care of your Self-Managed Superannuation Funds (SMSF).

I would encourage you to set up Pay Superannuation now, due to the above benefits. 

Signing up

To sign up for Pay Superannuation, log in to your AccountRight Live file, go to the Payroll command centre and click the Pay Superannuation button. The owner of the MYOB subscription will need to complete the setup using their my.MYOB credentials. You will be prompted to enter your my.MYOB email address and password. If you can’t remember your password, don’t let this discourage you; simply click Forgot Password and you will receive an email from MYOB to reset it.  

Once you have completed the application process, MYOB will deposit 1 cent into your bank account with a reference number. Once you have this reference number, click on the Pay Superannuation button again and enter the reference number for validation, and that’s it – you’re ready to make super payments.

Tips for setting up

Here are some helpful tips on setting up Pay Superannuation:

• Review your funds and employee cards (see the Check super fund and employee details help page)
• You can choose to make the payments monthly or quarterly. Pay Superannuation is so seamless you might choose to make monthly payments to assist with your cash flow.
• When you set up Pay Superannuation, you might want to overstate your monthly or quarterly limits to allow for a little growth.  
• Be careful on who you decide to give authorisation access – it should ideally be the director of the company. You can make staff and contract bookkeepers ‘Creators’, which only gives them the ability to create the superannuation payments for the authoriser to process.
• If you find employees have not provided SPIN numbers on their standard choice form, do not try and guess them as some providers have multiple SPIN numbers. Make sure your employees complete the SPIN number on the form.

• If you have a large number of employees, you may find it easier to request the employees complete the forms again providing all the details - this will streamline the setup process and tighten compliance.

•  You can search for funds by the SPIN numbers

•  You can also rename funds to include the SPIN number.

• If you are setting up Self-Managed Superannuation Funds (SMSF), change the Type to Self-Managed. Also, make sure the correct ESA is set up.

• MYOB requires Pay Superannuation transactions to be authorised at least 4 business days before the monthly or quarterly superannuation deadline. Although 10 business days is recommend. This allows MYOB to disburse the payments to the providers and for the providers to clear the payments.

Changing your Pay Super Details 

If you are a Pay Super Administrator with a verified mobile number, you can make changes to the payment limit and users. Find out more about changing your Pay Super detials in the linked Help article

MYOB Super Portal

If you have a subscription or Cover agreement for MYOB Essentials, AccountEdge or classic AccountRight (v19), you’ll have access to a different SuperStream compliant service, MYOB’s super portal. You can  learn more about the super portal here.

That’s it from me, for now! Keep an eye out for my next blog post on how to process payments using MYOB Pay Superannuation and tips on ensuring the superannuation reconciles.

Of course if you need help, reach out to your local MYOB Certified Consultant.

Regards

Renae 

[Dee-Workman]

Hi @Cloud_Mind

Great blog Renae, very clear and informative

[KSpicer]

Hi @Cloud_Mind

Thanks for the great info in this blog,  Really easy to understand and the screen shots make it so much easier to refer to my own clients.

Keep up the good work.

Looking forward to your next blog!

Cheers

Kaylene

[PGOA]

Hi @Cloud_Mind How long does it take for contributions to reach there intended fund? I posted my first group of contributions on the 23rd of October and whilst mine have gone through my bosses haven't Should I be worried? and if so who do I talk to?

Cheers

[Tallie_M]

Hi there @PGOA,

I've chased up on your issue and can see that all your super payments have reached their respective superfunds.

I have gone ahead and sent you a private message with a screenshot of the payments, including the payment reference number, should you wish to chase up on them.

Cheers,

Tallie

[Geoff_]

Hi Renae

What a magnificent blog - so much information. I too also love your screen shots

Many thanks

Geoff

[Pam_Pitt]

Great article.  Thank you so much for sharing!

[PaintersQLD]

Hi @Cloud_Mind,

We are investigating using the Pay Super function in AccountRight cloud version and I have a question about the companys' default fund. We currently use the clearing house of our default fund, and when a new employee's information is uploaded and they don't have membership information (they choose to use the default fund on the Super Choice form) a membership is automatically created. I gather from reading through your blog that if any super information is missing, it will comes back as an error. Does that mean I would have to manually arrange their membership through the fund as a separate step?

[Cloud_Mind]

Hi @PaintersQLD

If the member number is missing it will flag as an error and you have to fix before you can post the transaction and authorise. 

Therefore you can update the member number manually in the employee card file.     Does your default give you a member number on the spot so you can upload into MYOB if you add an employee to your default fund?    Some funds like HostPlus doesn't give you a member number straight away which causes issues, therefore some of my clients just changed their default fund. 

[PaintersQLD]

Thanks for replying @Cloud_Mind, Yes, after reading more previous threads on this issue, I have found this to be a real short-coming of MYOB not to be able to produce a .csv file to upload to a third party clearing house. And it's a real limitation to be then forced to use MYOB's Pay Super function but it doesn't provide the same auto-processing features - thereby having to revert to manual processes which we are trying to avoid. It is commonly known through the funds we contacted yesterday that MYOB is not compatible. In the end we have now changed our default fund to a super fund who has utilised the programme written by @AccountingPower which enables data to be extracted for contributions and new memberships. Therefore we won't have to use Pay Super. It is another sad indictment on MYOB capping the flexibility and user-friendliness of it's software. And why we continue to search for an alternative that will meet our needs.

[Cloud_Mind]

Hi @PaintersQLD I disagree MYOB Pay Superannuation works perfectly once set up and maintained correctly.   It doesn' take long to add an employee to a default fund and update the employee card in MYOB - you only have to do this once for the employee.     MYOB Pay Superannuation is much faster than working outside of MYOB in another clearinghouse.    MYOB doesn't have to be compatible with the funds?  The Superannuation Funds themselves need to have a USI number and you enter this USI number into MYOB.    Perhaps the funds you are specking with trying to sell you their product?

I have ALL my clients using MYOB Pay Superannuation.   In summary, don't knock it until you have tried it. 

[PaintersQLD]

Thanks for your reply but I respectfully disagree, and since you are an Ultimate Partner of MYOB I can understand you have your viewpoint. But when you have at least 20 new employees in a quarter that manual process is very time consuming. Our current system allows for the automatic creation of new members to the clearing house - requiring no manual entry. Our Payroll Officer has used more sophisticated payroll systems in the past where electronic upload of super contributions was the norm. She found that Accounting Power provided the solution whilst having to use MYOB. We are not paying for any additional product. Thanks for your opinion but to use MYOB Pay Super would be a step backwards.

[Neil_M]

Hi @PaintersQLD

Whilst I understand where your coming from and have passed your feedback onto the relevant team, AccountRight 201X is designed to make use of the inbuilt Pay Super service. As @Cloud_Mind mentions this can be a fast feature in terms of getting the contribution submitted and paid

As a potential work around, if you are using the Pay Super function each employee assigned to a specific fund needs to have a unique and valid membership number. To get around this for employees who do not currently have a membership number, you could enter in a dummy number, like 000001, 0000002 as examples. As long as each membership number was unique it would get around that requirement.

If you were to do use this method, you would need to notify the super fund ahead of time to confirm that if the contribution does come through with the dummy membership number that they will recognise it as a dummy number and be able to process it and issue a new membership number accordingly