Get paid

Five details a venue needs before it can pay your super

Since 1 July, a payer has seven business days to get super into your fund. They cannot start until they have five things from you, and a booker with forty acts to chase is not going to email you twice. Get this ready once and it stops being your problem.

Why it stalls

Super does not move by bank transfer. It moves through SuperStream, which is a messaging standard, and the message has required fields. A payer who has your BSB and account number still has nothing useful, because the money has to be addressed to a specific product inside a specific fund and matched to a specific member. Miss one field and the payment bounces or sits unallocated.

That is the whole reason bookers have started asking for paperwork they never wanted before. It is also why "I'll sort it out later" now costs somebody money: the seven business day clock runs whether or not you have replied.

The five things

1. Your legal name, date of birth and residential address

Not your stage name and not your band name. The fund matches incoming contributions on identity, so if your fund has you as Michael and you write Mick, the payment can end up unmatched. Use the name exactly as your fund holds it. If you have changed your name and never told your fund, this is the week to fix it.

2. Your tax file number

Give it for super purposes. Without your TFN, your fund can be taxed at a much higher rate on employer contributions, and it cannot accept personal after-tax contributions from you at all. This is one of the few situations where handing over your TFN is entirely normal.

3. Your fund's name and ABN

The legal name of the fund, which is often longer than the brand on the app, plus its ABN. Both are on your annual statement and in the fund's app, usually under an "account details" or "fund details" screen.

4. The USI

The unique superannuation identifier. Most funds run several products, and the USI is what tells SuperStream which one you are in. It looks like an ABN with a few extra characters on the end. This is the field people most often leave out, and it is the field that most often stops the payment.

5. Your member number

The account the money actually lands in. It is on your statement and on the front screen of most fund apps.

Where to find all of it in about ten minutes

• Your fund's app or website. Fastest. Look for account details, fund details, or a page headed something like "your super at a glance". The USI and member number are usually on the same screen.
• Your most recent annual statement. Everything is on it, including the fund ABN, and it is worth saving the PDF somewhere you can find it.
• myGov. Sign in, go to the ATO service, then Super. It lists every fund that has ever held money for you, including ones you forgot about. That last part is the real value of the exercise.

The block to keep in your notes app

Write this once, keep it in a note, and paste it whenever a booker asks. It is the single highest-return five minutes of admin available to a working musician right now.

The form they might send you

Some payers will ask you to fill in a Superannuation standard choice form, which is the ATO's form NAT 13080. It is one page, it collects exactly the fields above, and the payer keeps it rather than sending it anywhere. Filling it in is not a sign that anything unusual is happening. It is the normal way this is done, and returning it the same day makes you the easiest act on their list.

If you give a payer nothing, they are not necessarily stuck. They can ask the ATO for your "stapled" fund, which is the account already linked to you. But that is another step, another delay, and a booker running a hundred payments a month will notice which performers cost them extra work.

While you are in there, look at how many funds you have

Musicians accumulate super accounts the way they accumulate leads. A hospo job at 19, a teaching contract, a stint on a cruise, and now potentially a fresh trickle from every venue that pays you. Each account charges administration fees and most carry insurance premiums, and small balances get eaten alive by both.

myGov will show you the lot and will consolidate them for you in a few taps. One thing to check before you press the button: if you have insurance inside an old fund that you would struggle to get again, closing it cancels the cover. Worth five minutes of reading, not worth avoiding forever.

Checking it actually arrived

Contributions take a few days to appear and some funds are slower than others, so do not go looking the morning after the gig. A reasonable rhythm is to check your fund once a month against your own invoice records.

If a payment from July still has not shown up by October, ask the payer once in writing for the date paid and the fund it went to. If that produces nothing, you can lodge an unpaid super enquiry with the ATO. You will need the payer's ABN, your invoices and the dates you were paid, which is exactly what an invoicing habit gives you for free.

Keep the records that make this easy

GigFee raises the invoice, tracks what you are owed and what has been paid, and keeps superannuation on the invoice as its own line so there is never a question about whether it was included. If you ever need to prove what you were paid and when, it is already there.