Employers still not SuperStream ready

Most employers are not SuperStream ready and have little to no understanding of it, a survey has shown. 

Conducted by business software company AttachÈ Software, the survey of 2800 companies showed many software vendors are leaving their clients vulnerable. 

General manager of AttachÈ business software Matt Paff attributed the lack of understanding to compliance fatigue and an overload of policy changes, combined with an innate defiance towards change.    

“Businesses have been worn down under the ebb and flow of policy changes and, like Pavlov’s dog, are skittish about the next, inevitable change,” he said. 

SuperStream is due to start on 1 July and is poised to boost employees’ super funds by $45,000 each over the life of the fund. 

The super industry has seen a raft of changes in the last decade including SuperChoice in 2005, WorkChoices in 2006, special ordinary time earnings for superannuation in 2008, Fair Work replacing WorkChoices in 2009 and Modern Awards in 2010.  

Under this, 4200 state awards had to merge into 122 federal awards. 

“Obviously employers have been dealt a cruel hand through this period but so, too, have the software vendors,” Paff said. 

Paff lamented the technology lag in super funds regarding the introduction of SuperChoice, particularly with rollovers and lodgements. 

Staff have to manually key in entries; cheques are handwritten, posted and banked; and mandatory hard-copy reports posted to the super funds. 

“SuperChoice heralded a raft of inevitable compliance variations to superannuation reporting so we introduced software to save our clients on average two weeks a year in manual reporting,” Paff said.  

“The Government could have (and should have) introduced this 10 years ago.”