Payday super changed Australian payroll from a monthly job to a per-payday one
This is the one that catches established businesses, not just new ones. It is a change to the payroll calendar and to the consequences of being late, so a build that treats super as an end-of-quarter task is now wrong.
Payday super
What actually changed on 1 July 2026
The deadline
Employers must pay superannuation guarantee contributions on each payday, and the money must be received by the fund within seven business days of that payday. Received, not sent. The legislation received royal assent on 6 November 2025.
The rate
The superannuation guarantee rate is 12% of ordinary time earnings for FY2026.
The base changed too
Payday super replaces ordinary time earnings with "qualifying earnings" as the single base for both the SG amount and the SG charge. All commissions are now qualifying earnings. If your payroll rules were written against OTE, they need revisiting.
Being late costs more
Under the new SG charge, paying late no longer clears the liability: notional earnings and an administrative uplift remain payable. The uplift starts at 60% of the shortfall, with reductions available for voluntary disclosure.
Single Touch Payroll
Reporting happens every pay run, not at year end
Tax and super information is reported to the ATO from STP-enabled software every time employees are paid. STP Phase 2 extended what has to be reported, so a payroll build carries more disaggregated data than it used to.
An end-of-year finalisation declaration is due by 14 July.
The practical consequence for Odoo: payroll cannot be a spreadsheet that posts a journal once a month. Whatever runs payroll has to emit a compliant STP report on every cycle, and the super payment has to clear inside the seven-day window from the same cycle.
Being straight with you
What Odoo does not ship for Australia
Odoo does not ship an Australian payroll localisation that covers STP Phase 2 and payday super out of the box. Anyone telling you it is a configuration exercise has not done one.
There are three honest routes: a certified third-party payroll product integrated with Odoo, a built localisation maintained against ATO changes, or keeping payroll where it is and integrating it. Which one is right depends on headcount, how many states you employ across, and how much change you want to own.
We will tell you which of the three we think fits before quoting any of them.