Stapled Superannuation Funds

A stapled super fund is an existing super account linked, or 'stapled', to an individual employee so it follows them as they change jobs.

This aims to reduce account fees and avoids new super accounts being opened every time an employee starts a new job.

If you don't meet your choice of super fund obligations, additional penalties may apply.

Please refer to the ATO web page for additional information, video and Stapled Super Funds Reference Guide For Employers PDF file.

The following steps explain what to do when you don't have the details of the new employee's stapled fund or chosen fund prior to paying them, and how to pay the super contributions into their real fund later.

Create a "holding" fund

If a new employee has not provided you with a choice of super fund or details of their "stapled" fund, prior to commencing their first payrun you should apply a holding fund to them called "Pending stapled fund request" to hold their contributions.

Create this fund once and apply it to all new employees that have not provided a super fund choice before their first pay.

Create it as shown below and be sure NOT to tick the Include In Super Payment File checkbox at the bottom (it is not a real fund, it is a holding fund where contributions are kept until details of the actual fund choice are available).

Add the fund to the employee on the Entitlements tab in Employee Maintenance before commencing their first payrun.

Marlin HR will calculate the appropriate superannuation on each payrun and include the amount on the pay advice as "Pending stapled fund request" making it clear to the employee that there is super owing to them but their fund details are not yet known.

The super contributions will not be be applied to the wrong fund and accidentally included in a superstream payment file (thereby causing a processing error as the employee and membership number is not known to that fund).

The STP file submitted to the ATO by the payrun will verify to the ATO (within 24 hours) that there is a relationship between the employer and employee. This will enable the employer (or a Registered Tax or BAS Agent) to request details of the employee's stapled fund by logging into the ATO online services for business (see the ATO link above for instructions).

Once details of the stapled fund are known, or the employee provides details of an alternative fund, you can transfer the previous contributions from the "Pending stapled fund request" fund to the new fund using an Adjustment Pay and they can then be paid.

Transferring the Contributions between Funds

Once you have received details of the employee's stapled fund or other chosen fund, ensure that the new fund is setup in Marlin HR (System > Superannuation Funds) but do NOT select it in Employee Maintenance yet.

Determine the amount of super contributions that need to be transferred to the new fund (run a Super Report).

With the "Pending stapled fund request" fund still selected in Employee Maintenance, initialise an Adjustment Payrun for the employee.

On the initialised Adjustment Payrun, click on the Superannuation cell in the "This" column and then double-click on "Employer Super Adjustment" (NOT "Employer Additional Super Adjustment") to enter the Amount.

Enter the amount of super to and click on Reduce Super (this will take the amount out of the employee's super fund which is currently set to "Pending stapled fund request" fund).

Click on OK and finalise the payrun.

Go back into Employee Maintenance and change the employee's super fund to their chosen fund and enter their membership number, then Save.

Initialise another Adjustment Payrun for the employee.

On the initialised Adjustment Payrun, click on the Superannuation cell in the "This" column and then double-click on "Employer Super Adjustment" (NOT "Employer Additional Super Adjustment") to enter the Amount like you did before.

Enter the same amount of super but this time click on Add Super (this will add the amount into the employee's super fund which is now set to their chosen fund).

Click on OK and finalise the payrun.

Paying Contributions to the Clearing House

Before creating the superstream payment file to pay super contributions to a clearing house, ensure that the super funds are setup correctly.

Select System > Superannuation Funds.

Open each "real" fund and ensure that the payment details are entered and that the "Include In Super Payment File" checkbox at the bottom is ticked.

The benefit of using an Adjustment Payrun to transfer the super into the employee's chosen fund is that you can control which superstream payment file this contribution goes into without having to include other super contributions from the same payrun.

For example, if you are creating a superstream payment file for January to March and the new employee's contributions for March were transferred from the holding fund to their chosen fund in April, you can still include this employee's March contributions in the payment file without having to include any April contributions.

When selecting the payruns to include in the superstream payment file, you would simply tick the payruns for January to March and tick this Adjustment Pay but skip any payruns that may have been done between the end of March and the Adjustment Pay.