MYOB Pay Superannuation: Take The Stress Out of Super Obligations
This post was first published via the MYOB website titled ‘Managing Superannuation Obligations ‘ and written by our own Renae Peterson.
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. SuperStream will be mandatory from the 31st of October, for employers with 20 or more staff. If you have not started preparing to be compliant with SuperStream, you better get your skates on… 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).
Even if you have 19 or fewer employees, I would still encourage you to set up Pay Superannuation now, due to the above benefits. You will need to be compliant with SuperStream by 30 June 2016.
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 5 business days before the monthly or quarterly superannuation deadline. This allows MYOB to disburse the payments to the providers and for the providers to clear the payments.
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. Take the first step towards being compliant and learn more about the super portal today.
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.