Payday Super is coming: preparing QuickBooks for qualifying earnings
Australian employers face new qualifying earnings and annual contribution cap rules from July 2026. Here is what QuickBooks users should audit now.
For Australian employers running payroll in QuickBooks Online, one fixed date now drives most of the planning. From 1 July 2026, the Australian Taxation Office brings in Payday Super, and the earnings base behind super guarantee calculations changes with it. Intuit has published preliminary guidance on how the software will handle the transition. The features described there are still being developed, so nothing in the product looks different today. The preparation work does not wait.
The 2026 deadline and the rules behind it
Intuit frames Payday Super as the most significant change to super processing since single touch payroll reporting moved into its second phase. Two mechanics matter most for day to day payroll.
The first is the earnings base. Ordinary time earnings, the measure employers have used for years, gives way to qualifying earnings. The new base sets the super guarantee obligation and is what gets reported to the ATO.
The second is the contribution cap. The maximum contribution base has been applied quarterly. Under the new framework it becomes an annual figure, which changes how a single pay run is measured against the cap.
The date paid decides which logic applies
Intuit’s guidance names the actual date paid in a pay run as the deciding factor. If that date falls on or after 1 July 2026, the new qualifying earnings and annual contribution base logic applies automatically. An earlier date keeps the current rules.
That detail matters for the pay run that straddles the end of the 2025-26 financial year. A run processed in late June but paid in July will be treated as a new framework run. Pay runs may also need to split across financial years if required, and the guidance indicates the software will support that.
Qualifying earnings classification is mostly automatic
For most pay categories, Intuit says the system will determine qualifying earnings status without help. Any pay category carrying a super rate above zero is treated as qualifying earnings. Any category sitting at a zero rate is left out.
Industrial super is the exception. Where an award or enterprise agreement requires super to be paid on overtime, the ATO does not treat those earnings as qualifying earnings. Intuit plans a checkbox on pay categories so those amounts can be excluded. Super is still calculated on that money, but it is not reported as qualifying earnings.
The checkbox is not live yet. The work available now is the audit: list which pay categories carry super on overtime, so the flag can be applied the day it appears.
Contribution base overrides need a clean sweep
Employees can carry custom or non-default quarterly maximum contribution base settings, often left over from an arrangement nobody remembers. Those settings do not map cleanly onto an annual cap.
Intuit advises exporting employee data now and reviewing every override before the effective date. The preliminary guidance stops short of spelling out each annual cap mechanic, so treat that export as the opening step rather than the whole job. Further detail is expected ahead of the deadline.
Under-18 employees on non-weekly cycles
Employees under 18 who are paid on a cycle other than weekly will need manual verification of qualifying earnings in the new system. Identify them in advance. Adjusting a pay cycle or flagging those records early is far easier than discovering the gap in the first July pay run.
What should employers do first?
The order that holds up: export employee data and clear the contribution base overrides; audit pay categories for industrial super; list any employee under 18 who is not on a weekly cycle. None of that depends on new features shipping.
The software changes themselves are Intuit’s to deliver. The data audit is the part employers control, and it is the part that decides whether the first pay run after 1 July 2026 behaves as expected.
Waiting is not a strategy here. The features will arrive before the deadline, but the messy records they depend on will not tidy themselves.