The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House has closed: what to use instead

The ATO's free Small Business Superannuation Clearing House (SBSCH) closed permanently on 1 July 2026, so if you used it you now need another way to pay super, and the cheapest replacement for most small employers is something you may already be paying for. This page sets out what happened, compares the realistic replacements side by side with their published costs, and explains what changed about the deadline at the same time.

Last reviewed: 14 August 2026. Every cost below is what the provider published on its own site, read on that date. Where a provider does not publish a price, this page says "not published" rather than guessing.

The short version

The SBSCH is gone and is not coming back. The ATO's own page states it "closed permanently from 1 July 2026 as part of the Payday Super reform" and that it "can no longer be used to make payments or download records" (ATO, last updated 16 July 2026). Three replacement routes exist, and they are worth checking in this order:

1. The payroll or accounting software you already pay for. Most of it now pays super directly, at no extra charge beyond the subscription. Check this first, because it is often free at the margin.
2. Your super fund's own clearing house. Several large funds provide one free to their registered or default employers. This is the option vendor comparisons tend to leave out.
3. A standalone commercial clearing house. Sensible if you have no payroll software and no fund relationship you want to build on. Only one of these publishes its prices openly.

What actually happened, and when

The closure was staged over about ten months, and the dates matter if you are trying to work out whether you missed something:

Two consequences are easy to miss. First, the record-download window has already closed. A lot of guidance still tells employers to log in and download their payment history before access ends; that advice expired on 30 June 2026. Second, the closure is not a standalone tidy-up. It happened on the same day the rules about when super is due changed, which is covered further down.

Comparing the replacements

A note on what this comparison is and is not. The ATO publishes a Super Product Register of products that process contributions in line with SuperStream and Payday Super. It is the closest thing to a neutral list that exists, and the structure of this comparison follows it. But the ATO is explicit that the register is voluntary and incomplete: it "only includes products where details have been provided to the ATO, it does not list all commercially available products", and the ATO does "not recommend or endorse any of the products listed". Some well-known products are absent from it. Read what follows as a starting point for your own check, not a shortlist.

Reading the register as at 14 August 2026, it held 97 products, and the split is the most useful single fact on this page:

• 87 are payroll providers, software that calculates and, in most cases, pays the super.
• Only 9 can act as a clearing house (5 clearing houses, plus 4 products that are both payroll and clearing house).
• 61 of the 97 are "partnered" with a clearing house behind the scenes, which is how payroll software pays super without you choosing a clearing house at all.
• 26 support NPP fast payment, which matters more than it used to now that a deadline is counted in business days.

The practical reading: for most small employers this is not really a clearing house shopping decision. It is a "does my payroll already do this" question, and four times out of five the answer is yes.

Option 1: the payroll or accounting software you already have

Where the super function is built in, it is bundled into the subscription and there is no separate per-payment clearing house fee published. Two worked examples, both prices read from the providers' own pricing pages on 14 August 2026 and both quoted at the ongoing rate rather than the introductory offer:

These two are examples chosen because they publish their prices plainly, not recommendations, and not the only options: 87 payroll products sit on the register. Plans and inclusions change, and not every plan from a given vendor includes payroll, so confirm against the current pricing page and check that your specific plan covers super payments before relying on it.

Option 2: your super fund's own clearing house

This is the part most vendor pages skip, for the obvious reason. Several large funds run a clearing house and provide it free to employers registered with them, and it will pay your employees into any fund, not only that one. If you already have a default fund, this may cost you nothing at all.

One structural thing worth knowing, because it is not obvious from the branding: Hostplus, HESTA, CareSuper and Cbus all run their employer clearing house on QuickSuper, the product from Qvalent. Cbus names it directly, calling the service "the CBUS Clearing House (QuickSuper)". So choosing between several fund-branded clearing houses is often choosing between the same underlying system with a different front door and a different support desk. That is not a criticism of any of them; it just means the differences between these options are relationship, support and payment-method differences rather than technology ones.

Option 3: a standalone commercial clearing house

These are the nine clearing-house-capable products on the ATO register. One point in their favour that is easy to miss: the ATO states that "clearing house providers listed on this register must hold an Australian Financial Services License to be listed", which is a real filter.

Wrkr is the outlier here, and the only one in this group whose full price list is on its website. Published tiers, per ABN, read 14 August 2026:

Wrkr also publishes event fees that are worth reading before you sign: a direct debit dishonour or a returned payment is $2.75 each, and a stop payment or a payment trace is $38.50 each. Those are the kind of charges that only appear when something has already gone wrong, which under a business-day deadline is exactly when you can least afford a delay.

The honest summary of this group: if a provider will not publish a price, you cannot compare it, and you should ask for the full fee schedule in writing including the exception fees before you commit. Four of the seven entries above publish nothing at all.

How to move across

If you have not moved yet, you are already past the deadline and the priority is getting a compliant payment path working now rather than choosing perfectly.

1. Check your existing payroll or accounting software first. Look for a super or contributions function. If it is there, this is usually the fastest and cheapest route, and it keeps your payroll and your super in one system, which matters for the new deadline.
2. If not, ask your default super fund whether it provides a clearing house and what it costs. Several provide one free, as above. The fund's clearing house pays into all your employees' funds, not just its own.
3. Check the provider against the ATO's Super Product Register, remembering that absence from a voluntary register is not proof of a problem. Confirm SuperStream compliance and Payday Super readiness directly with the provider.
4. Register and run a test payment well before your next payday, not on the day. New clearing house accounts often need bank and identity verification before the first payment clears, and that setup time is not counted in your favour.
5. Check how the provider handles a rejected contribution. This is the question people forget. If a contribution bounces back because an employee's details are wrong, the clock does not stop, so how fast you find out and how fast you can resubmit is a real difference between providers.

About your old SBSCH records

If you downloaded your payment history before 30 June 2026, keep it with your business records: it is your evidence of past contributions for audit purposes. If you did not, the SBSCH itself can no longer be used to download records, and the ATO does not publish a post-closure retrieval process. That leaves your own bank and accounting records, your payroll records, and the receiving super funds as the practical sources for reconstructing a payment history. If you need the records for an audit or a dispute, talk to your registered tax or BAS agent, or contact the ATO directly, rather than relying on anything you read on a website, including this one.

The bit that changed at the same time: Payday Super

The SBSCH did not close on its own. It closed because the payment model it was built for stopped existing. From 1 July 2026, super moved from quarterly to payday timing, and the contribution must be received by the fund within 7 business days of payday, or 20 business days for a first contribution to a new employee or a new fund (ATO, About Payday Super).

That single word, "received", is what makes the clearing house choice matter more than it used to. Under quarterly rules, a couple of days of processing lag inside a clearing house was invisible against a three-month window. Against seven business days, it is a meaningful slice of your buffer. It is why NPP or Osko payment support has gone from a nice feature to a practical one: Cbus, for instance, publishes that its clearing house takes 1 to 2 days by EFT and 3 to 4 days by direct debit, while Osko PayID is instant. Same clearing house, and most of your deadline consumed or almost none of it, depending only on how you pay.

The deadline is counted in business days under a national rule that catches people out, because a public holiday in any one state pushes the date out for employers everywhere. If you want the exact date for a given payday rather than a rule of thumb, we built a Payday Super calculator that counts the business days out for you and shows its working, including which holidays it applied and why.

What we could not verify

Stating this plainly is the difference between a comparison and an advertisement:

• Cbus does not publish a clearing house price on its employer pages. We checked five and found none. It may well be free to participating employers, but we are not going to write that down without a source.
• Australian Retirement Trust is a large fund whose employer pages did not return readable content to us on 14 August 2026, so it is absent above rather than excluded. Ask them directly.
• Four of the seven standalone clearing house entries publish no pricing at all. We have not estimated them.
• Payroll software prices move, and promotional pricing is common. Every figure above is the ongoing price, not the introductory one, but check the current page before you decide.
• The ATO register showed "TBA" for voluntary disclosure support on all 97 products, because that ATO service is still being built and is aimed at 1 July 2027. Nobody has it yet, so it cannot be a differentiator today whatever a sales page says.

Where this comes from

Primary sources, so you can check any of this rather than take our word for it. All read on 14 August 2026:

• ATO, Small Business Superannuation Clearing House (last updated 16 July 2026), the closure statement itself.
• ATO, How to transition from the SBSCH (published 16 July 2026), the official transition checklist.
• ATO, Start looking now for alternative providers (last updated 3 November 2025), the source of the closure key dates.
• ATO, Super Product Register, the product counts, provider types, NPP support and the AFSL requirement.
• ATO, About Payday Super (last updated 10 August 2026), the 7 and 20 business day rules.
• Provider pricing and cost statements: Wrkr, Xero, MYOB, AustralianSuper, Hostplus, HESTA, Rest, Cbus.

General information only, not financial, tax or legal advice. Biz in a Box is not a financial adviser, a registered tax agent or a super fund, and nothing here recommends a product or takes account of your circumstances. We have no commercial relationship with any provider named on this page and receive nothing if you choose one. Costs and product features change; every figure is what the provider published on 14 August 2026 and should be confirmed with them. For your obligations, go to the ATO; for advice about your business, talk to your accountant or registered tax or BAS agent; for questions about a specific fund or clearing house, ask that provider.

Need a hand getting the admin side working again?

We set up the everyday business systems that sit around this: the software, the logins, the email and the paperwork trail, so the tools you rely on actually work and you know who controls them. We do not give super or tax advice and we will point you to your accountant for that. If the SBSCH closing has left your admin in a mess, tell us what you are using now and we will help you get the surrounding setup sorted. It is the same principle as owning the business logins that matter: know what you are on, and be able to get into it.