SuperStream

SuperStream is a government initiative introduced in 2015 that aims to improve the productivity of the superannuation system.

It implements a mandatory data and payment standard that will provide a uniform approach for how super funds and employers communicate with each other.

Employees will benefit from quicker, more efficient and secure processing of contributions payments to their superannuation funds.

Employers will benefit from quicker and easier submission of contributions data and payments to the employees' superannuation funds.

This is achieved by employers periodically entering the super information and amounts for all employees to the ATO Small Business Superannuation Clearing House, or a super clearing house of their own choosing, and making a single payment.

The super clearing house system automatically forwards the relevant information and payments to each employee's superannuation fund on behalf of the employer.

With SuperStream employers no longer have to login to each of their employee's superannuation funds and make a payment.

They simply login to the clearing house, enter the super info for all employees and make a single payment. The clearing house then does the rest.

Employers can enjoy further time savings and reduced keystroke errors by creating a SuperStream payment file in Marlin HR containing all of the super information for the selected payruns and uploading it to the super clearing house (in much the same way as logging into your online banking and uploading the bankfile from Marlin HR to pay the wages).

This eliminates the need to manually enter the super information and amounts for each employee. You simply upload the file and make the total payment. This can be a significant time saving for employers with more than a handful of employees.

The following diagrams show how SuperStream simplifies the process of superannuation payments for employers.

Before SuperStream employers had to login to every superannuation fund used by their employees and manually enter the relevant information and make separate payments.

With Superstream the employer logs in to the super clearing house only, enters the information (manually or simply by uploading a SuperStream payment file created in Marlin HR) and makes a single payment.

Compliance Requirements

All employers must comply with the SuperStream requirements:

• Provide super contribution data electronically in the prescribed format to super funds.
• Make payments to funds electronically using supported methods (e.g. EFT) and linking data and money with a unique payment reference number.
• Ensure data and payments are sent on the same day.
• Respond to fund requests for complete information within 10 business days.

These requirements are satisfied by registering with a super clearing house and lodging the super information and payments through them.

Auto email SuperStream payment files

When you make SuperStream payments you will login to your chosen super clearing house, click on the upload button and select the payment file to be uploaded (The super payment files you create in Marlin HR are stored in a SuperFile folder inside the MarlinHR folder).

However, if your Marlin HR system is hosted on a Megabus server (i.e. you remotely connect to Marlin HR) you will not have access to this folder and will need to tick the option in Marlin HR to have the SuperStream Payment files emailed to you as you create them.

From the email you can save them to your PC (eg. to the My Documents folder , the Desktop or a USB thumb drive) and upload them from there to the super clearing house.

To have SuperStream payment files automatically emailed to you when you create them

From the MarlinHR menu toolbar, select System > Options and then click on the Company Details tab.

Confirm that you have entered the correct email address for your payroll contact as this is where the SuperStream payment files will be sent.

Click on the Banking Details tab and tick the checkbox labelled Prompt to Email Super File.

Now, each time you create a SuperStream Payments file, Marlin HR will pop up a prompt that displays the email address you entered and asks whether you would like the SuperStream payment file to be sent.

Just click on Yes and it will be sent immediately.

Enter the unique identification and payment details for each fund

Standard super funds are regulated by APRA and each has their own Unique Superannuation Identifier (USI) code which must be included in SuperStream payment files so that super clearing houses can properly identify the fund and apply the correct payment details when forwarding super payments.

Self Managed Super Funds (SMSF) do not have a USI, so the SuperStream payment files must include the necessary payment details for the super clearing houses to use:

• The USI identifies the specific superannuation product for contributions. Most super funds have one USI for all of their products but some have more than one USI.
• The USI may be in SPIN number format (e.g. AMP1248AU) or be a 14 digit number (ABN + 3 digits).
• The USI has replaced the Superannuation Product Identification Number (SPIN) which was previously used by some funds as a product identifier.
• The USI will appear at the top of your employee's superannuation statement from the fund. Otherwise, ask the Fund what USI you should use for electronic payments.
• There is a Super Fund Lookup website that lists details for super funds but contact the fund if unsure.

The best way to obtain information about a fund (e.g. ABN, USI or Electronic Service Address) is to contact the fund directly and ask them for the details required to make electronic payments to them.

However, there is a website that may be useful (See Super Fund Lookup).

Enter the required details in Marlin HR

From the Marlin HR menu toolbar, select System > Superannuation Funds.

For each fund that is to be included in the SuperStream Payment files, enter the relevant identification and payment information as shown below.

Be sure to enter correct information or your default Super Fund or Clearing House will reject the file.

If unsure, contact the relevant fund for the correct information.

APRA regulated funds (i.e. Not Self Managed Super Funds)

All fields in the SMSF Details section must be left blank for regular funds.

Fund Generated Employer ID: If the super fund has assigned you an ID to be used in communications with them, enter it in this field. Otherwise, leave blank.

Super Fund USI: Enter the Super Fund's USI (Unique Superannuation Identifier) in this field.

Include in Super Payment file: Tick this checkbox if you want to include contributions to this fund in the SuperStream payment files you create.

SMSF funds (Self Managed Super Funds):

The Super Fund USI field must be left blank for an SMSF.

Super Fund ABN: Enter the SMSF's ABN.

Electronic Service Address: Enter the SMSF's ESA (the alias used by your employee's SMSF that represents the provider to which SuperStream data should be sent – it is not a number, website address, or IP address).
This enables funds and clearing houses to send electronic contributions to the SMSF.

Enter the SMSF's account details.

Include in Super Payment file: Tick this checkbox if you want to include contributions to this fund in the SuperStream payment files you create.

Confirm employee Membership Numbers

It is important that you enter each employee's Membership Number for their super fund so that it is included in the SuperStream payment files you create for payment through the super clearing house.

In Employee Maintenance, open each employee in turn and check their Member Number in the Entitlements tab and in the Deductions section of the Pay Details tab for any Employee Super Contributions (for both Salary Sacrifice and After Tax deductions).

If the employee's Member Number is unknown, leave it blank.

Check employee addresses

It is important that there are no commas in the employees' street addresses or the SuperStream payment files you create will be rejected by the super clearing house.

Open each employee in Employee Maintenance, go to the Personal tab and ensure there are no commas in Address line 1 or Address Line 2.

Instead, please use a forward slash or split the address details across the 2 Address lines as shown below.

Register with a Super Clearing House

Employers with less than 20 employees may use the ATO's free Small Business Superannuation Clearing House (SBSCH) to transfer the contributions.

However, this service does not provide a file upload service so you must manually enter the contributions data each time.

Most of the larger super funds offer a "clearing house" service and you can register to use it via their website.

Once registered, log in, enter the payment info (either manually or by uploading a SuperStream payment file created in Marlin HR) and make the payment.

Create a SuperStream payment file

You are required to make the superannuation payments within 28 days of the end of each financial quarter.

You will do this by creating a SuperStream payment file and then uploading it to your super clearing house and making payment.

After you have run and checked your normal Superannuation Report, you are ready to generate the SuperStream payment file for uploading to your super clearing house.

From the Marlin HR menu toolbar, click on the Super Report button on the Favourites bar (or select Reports > Superannuation Report from the menu toolbar).

Select the Payment File tab.

Enter the date range of pay runs to display for selection, based on the "Pay To" date of the pay run).

By default, only pay runs with "Pay To" dates within that date range that have not previously been included in a SuperStream payment file will be displayed.

If you need to include pay runs that were included in a previous SuperStream payment file, tick the "Show pay runs already included on a Super Payment File" checkbox (the number of the payment file they were included in will be displayed in red in the Super File column).

This feature enables you to make corrections and re-create a payment file if the previous file was rejected by your default fund or clearing house.

By default, all listed pay runs will be ticked for inclusion in the payment file.

Use the check boxes and the All/None/Invert buttons to adjust which pay runs are to be included in the new payment file.

Click on the Generate button to preview the report before the file is created.

Upon clicking on the Generate button, a preview of the data to be included in the Super Payment File is displayed for you to verify before actually creating the file.

Check immediately under the Total line for error messages.

Missing Fund Information:

If one of the funds to be included in the Super Payment File is missing some required information (eg. ABN or USI or SMSF payment details etc), this will be highlighted on the report preview and the Create Payment File button will not be accessible.

You will need to close the report, add the required information to the Superannuation Fund (as explained above), then start this process again.

Negative values

SuperStream does not allow negative values to be included in the payment file.

If an employee has a negative value in one of the columns, the preview report will highlight this fact immediately below the Total line.

Your options are to close the report without generating the payment file, or to click on the Create Payment File button to generate the file with that employee omitted completely (this enables you to use the file to pay everyone else's contributions for those pay runs but you will need to manually enter any required payments for the omitted employee).

This would be a very unusual circumstance and likely to happen only if you performed a pay run with the wrong Super Fund applied to an employee, then later ran an Adjustment Pay Run to reverse the contribution from the incorrect fund.

If both pay runs were included in the same Super Payment file, the two amounts would cancel out to zero and not be a problem.

However, if the Adjustment Pay Run was included in a later Super Payment File, there would be no positive amount to offset the negative amount.

The values in Marlin HR would be correct but you would need to deal directly with the original fund re the amount incorrectly paid to it.

To avoid the situation above, if you have a new employee that you need to set aside Super for but don't yet have their fund details, we strongly recommend that you initially set them up with a generic fund (e.g. Funded/Unfunded Super) that does NOT have the Include in Super Payment file checkbox ticked.

This will apply their super to your GL, but not include it in the Super Payment File. Once you have their correct fund details, you can perform an Adjustment Pay to move the earlier super amount from the generic fund to the correct fund.

This Adjustment Pay will then be included in a Super Payment file and the accrued amount will be paid into the correct fund.

If you are happy with the preview, click on the Create Payment File button and then on Yes on the confirmation prompt.

A popup message will then advise you of the Super Payment File filename (e.g. 'sf0002') and the folder it lives in ('SuperFile') within the MarlinHR folder.

If you have elected to have the Super Payment files emailed to you (see SuperStream Setup), it will also ask whether you want the file emailed to you.

Upload the SuperStream payment file to the super clearing house

Before uploading the first SuperStream payment file to the super clearing house that you have registered with, you will need to tell the super clearing house system two things about the payment files that you will upload:

• File Format - It is SuperStream Alternative File Format (SAFF)
• Date Format - It is dd/mm/yyyy

In the super payments area of the super clearing house website there is likely to be a 'Settings' or 'File Settings' option that you can click on to select the File Format and Date Format.

However, as all super clearing house websites are different you may need to refer to the instructions they sent you or call their support line for assistance.

Upload and Pay the SuperStream payment file

Login to the super clearing house that you have registered with.

Upload the SuperStream payment file that you created in Marlin HR for the period to be paid.

Make the total payment as prompted.

Handling Upload Errors

When uploading a superstream payment file to your chosen clearing house it will automatically validate the file contents to ensure there are no missing or incorrect details before it will allow you to continue.

If there are no errors it will accept the file upload and prompt you to make the payment.

If there are any errors, it will typically provide a link or button labelled "Download Error Report" (or similar) that you can click on and then select Open (to view the errors on screen) or Save (to download the error report to your PC).

If the errors reported are due to typing errors you have made in Marlin HR, you can correct them in Marlin HR and then create a new SuperStream file (containing the same pay runs) to upload.

If the error is due to something else or you cannot find any details of the error, you will need to contact the super clearing house to explain the errors or how to download the error report (so that you can forward it to Megabus for assistance).

:::(Info) (Note) If the error report includes reference to unknown employees or SMSF funds, you may need to add them on the clearing house website before it allows you to upload the payment file.

How to tell which Pay Runs were included in a SuperStream Payment File

A new Super File column has been added to the By Pay Run and By Date tabs on the Superannuation Report screen.

This column displays which Super Payment File each pay run was included in ('1' = sf0001, '2' = 'sf0002' etc).

A '0' in this column indicates that this pay run has not yet been included in a Super Payment file.

How to view contents of a SuperStream Payment File

When you are creating a SuperStream payment file (see above) the contents to be included in the file are displayed on the screen before you click on the Create File button.

When you click on the Create File button to go ahead and create the file, the contents are automatically saved to the Report Keeper so that you can go back and review them later if necessary.

From the Marlin HR menu toolbar, select Reports > Report Keeper.

The Date column indicates the date on which the Super Payment File was created and the Comment column indicates which pay run numbers were included in the file.

The '0' in the Fin Year column indicates current year.

Double-click on a report to display the full report for that Super Payment File (i.e. exactly as it appeared on screen when you clicked on the Create Payment File button).

Keeping Track of any Excluded Employees

A new Excluded Employees tab on the Superannuation Report screen provides a record of any employees omitted from Super Payment Files created between two dates.

This list will normally be empty as employees are only omitted from a Super Payment File in the rare situation that they had a negative contribution amount on one or more of the pay runs included in a Super Payment File (see the explanation above under "Negative Values").

If an employee is included in this list, it means they were completely dropped from all pay runs in the Super Payment File so that you could still generate the file and upload it to process everyone else's contributions.

For these pay runs, you will need to login to your super clearing house and manually make any required contributions for this employee.

How to re-email or copy a SuperStream Payment File

If you need to re-email a SuperStream Payment File to yourself, or copy it to a USB flash drive, select Periodic > Copy or Email Super Payment File from the Marlin HR menu toolbar

Click on the relevant file to select it and then click on the Copy File To button or Email File button as appropriate.

Further Information

For further advice on how to become SuperStream compliant, please contact your Tax Accountant, your default Superannuation provider, or the ATO.

Further information is available from the ATO at Employer Checklist: a step-by-step guide to preparing for SuperStream.