Answer
A super fund can return (refund) money to your bank account when it cannot match a contribution to a member. Before you resend anything, work out which of these two situations you have — the cause and the fix are different.
Was Only One Employee Refunded, Or The Whole Fund Payment?
- One employee's contribution was refunded. This is almost always a member-identity mismatch — something about that person does not match the fund's records.
- The whole payment to a fund was refunded. Each fund is paid once for all of its members, so a full refund points to a payment-matching problem between the SuperStream message and the money, not to any one employee.
If Only One Employee Was Refunded
Check that employee's details against the fund's records before you restart the contribution. A refund for a single member usually means the USI, the member number, or the employee's date of birth, TFN or name does not match what the fund holds for them.
- Open the employee and check their name, date of birth and TFN are correct.
- Go to Employees >> Super >> Superannuation Fund and confirm the fund's USI and the employee's member number are correct for that fund.
- Fix whatever does not match, then restart the contribution for that employee using Restarting A Contribution below.
If you are not sure which detail is wrong, the fund can usually tell you which field failed to match.
If The Whole Fund Payment Was Refunded
When a fund refunds the entire payment, the SuperStream message and the payment did not line up. This applies to Direct Credit (ABA/XML) payments only — with Ozedi PayTo or PayID, Ozedi moves the money from the same message it holds, so this kind of mismatch cannot happen. Common causes:
- A banking delay. The payment must be made on the same day the SuperStream message was sent (or scheduled to be sent). The fund matches the money to the message using that date, so a payment that reaches the fund on a different day can be returned. Allow for your bank's cut-off times.
- The message was never sent. Go to Super Fund Deposits >> SuperStream Mailbox and set the date filter to the payment date to confirm the message was actually sent and accepted. If it never sent, there is nothing for the payment to match.
- The payment does not match the SuperStream record. The lodgement reference, the amount and the destination bank account in your banking must exactly match what Lightning Payroll generated. A typo, an edited reference, or stale bank details keyed in by hand will break the match. This is why we recommend uploading the ABA file Lightning Payroll creates rather than keying the payment into your bank manually.
Restarting A Contribution
You cannot simply click Payday Super again for the affected pays. Because they already have a contribution attached, they appear in purple (grouped under Total (Deposit Exists)) and are skipped. You first need to remove or release the existing deposits.
Quickest way: go to Pays >> Payday Super, tick the purple pays and click Restart Super For These Pays. Lightning Payroll lists the deposits it will clear (and marks any SuperStream message already sent for them as manually failed) so the pays are offered again next time you run Payday Super. Only continue if you are sure none of that super reached the fund. If a deposit also covers pays from another pay run, it cannot be restarted from here, so use the steps below instead.
1. Find The Deposits
- Go to Super Fund Deposits and tick Show Search Filter? at the bottom of the screen.
- Under Show Deposits By Date, leave Deposit Date selected and set the Start Date and End Date to the original contribution date (this is the date recorded as the deposit date, that is, when the payment was made to the fund).
- Check the In Message? column for those deposits.
2a. If In Message? Shows No
The deposits are not attached to a message, so you can remove them directly. Tick the deposits and click Delete Selected Deposits, then go to Pays >> Payday Super and create the contribution again as normal.
2b. If In Message? Shows Yes
The deposits are still attached to a SuperStream message and cannot be deleted until that message is released.
- Go to Super Fund Deposits >> SuperStream Mailbox and use the date filter to find the original message.
- Click View beside the message, then click Manually Fail and confirm at the Confirm marking message as failed? prompt.
- Lightning Payroll then asks Delete deposits and start over? Choose Yes to remove the deposits from the message at the same time — this saves deleting them separately and frees the super to be offered again the next time you create SuperStream deposits.
- If the contribution was already paid you will also see This contribution was already paid. Only continue if you are sure the money did not reach the fund, since deleting removes that payment record.
3. Send It Again
With the deposits removed, go to Pays >> Payday Super, select the pays, then create, send and pay the contribution as normal. If you corrected an employee's fund or details first, the corrected information is picked up automatically when you create the new deposits.
The online (web/mobile) app works the same way — Super Fund Deposits, Show search filter?, the In Message? column, the SuperStream Mailbox and Manually Fail are all in the same place.
For help resending deposits that are already correct, see How Do I Send Existing Super Fund Deposits? To understand the send-status board and why an accepted message is not the same as a paid one, see What Do The SuperStream Send Status Messages Mean And When Can I Create A Direct Entry File?
