Payday Super Is Coming. Is Your Nanny Payroll Ready?

If you employ a nanny in Australia, there's a date worth marking down: 1 July 2026. That's when Payday Super takes effect, and it's one of the bigger payroll shake-ups families have seen in a while.

For most households it won't change daily life much. But it does change the timing of your super obligations, and timing is where the risk sits. If you're already with Pay The Nanny, you can stop reading here and relax. For everyone else, here's the lay of the land.

So what's actually changing?

Right now, employers can pay super quarterly. You run payroll through the year and settle the super in lump sums every three months.

From July, that's gone. Super will need to be paid at the same time as wages, with contributions landing in your nanny's fund within seven business days of each payday. Pay weekly, you sort super weekly. Pay fortnightly, same deal.

The reasoning behind it is fair enough. Australians lose billions in unpaid super every year, and paying it alongside wages means the money reaches workers sooner and is far harder to let slip through the cracks.

Why the timing matters

The catch is that a shorter cycle leaves much less room to catch a mistake before it costs you.

The ATO already takes unpaid or late super seriously. Miss a deadline and you can be up for the Super Guarantee Charge, interest, admin fees, and the loss of your tax deduction on those contributions, with further penalties possible on top. Under Payday Super, payments and reporting happen with every pay run, so problems surface quickly and there's little time to quietly fix them.

For families already juggling work, kids and a busy household, that's not a deadline you want hanging over you each fortnight.

Does your nanny even need super?

This is where plenty of families come unstuck, and it's worth getting right.

Domestic workers sit under a specific rule. For a nanny, housekeeper or carer working in your home, super is only compulsory once they work more than 30 hours in a week. What you pay them doesn't come into it. Tip over 30 hours and super applies to all their hours, not just the ones above the line. Stay at 30 or under and, under the current exemption, it isn't required.

That trips people up in both directions. Some families assume super never applies because the work happens in their home. Others pay it when they don't strictly have to. The honest answer is that it depends on the hours, and the ATO sets the test purely on the hours worked, not on earnings. Hours have a habit of moving around, especially over school holidays or when a family's needs change. A nanny sitting just under the line one month can tip over it the next without anyone really clocking it.