Answer
If pays show in purple on the Payday Super screen, those pays are already attached to a super fund deposit, so they are no longer available to be picked up again. This is the normal, expected state once super has been collected from a pay — it is not an error. You only need to act if the Payday Super process was interrupted part-way through, if you need to recreate a file, or if you want to start that pay run's super again from scratch.
How a pay turns purple
When you run Create Deposits, Lightning Payroll gathers the super from each completed pay into super fund deposits. From that moment the pays are part of a deposit and turn purple — whether or not that deposit has yet been sent to the fund or paid. To change anything about those pays, you work with the deposits they are attached to, not the pays themselves.
Step 1 — Find the deposits behind the purple pays
Go to Super Fund Deposits and tick Show Search Filter? to bring up the search options. You can locate the deposits in question two ways:
- Select Deposit Date and enter the date you originally chose when creating the deposits (the Payday Super date), or
- Select Pay Period End Date and enter the end date of the pay period you were processing.
The matching deposits appear in the table. Two columns tell you exactly where you stopped:
- In Message? — whether the deposit has been forwarded to the super fund provider in a SuperStream contribution message. You can view the messages themselves under SuperStream Mailbox.
- Status — whether the deposit has been marked as paid. A deposit is usually marked paid automatically once it is included in a direct entry file, or you can set it manually with the Mark as Paid button.
Step 2 — Work out where you stopped
Read the two columns together to find your situation:
- In Message? = No — the contribution was never sent, so you are still near the start. See Continue sending and paying below.
- In Message? = Yes and Status = Unpaid — the message was sent but the payment / direct entry file was not finished. See Recreate the direct entry file below.
- In Message? = Yes and Status = Paid — the process actually completed, and the purple is correct. There is nothing to fix. If you only need another copy of the payment file, see Recreate the direct entry file; if you genuinely want to undo everything, see Start the pay run's super over.
Continue sending and paying (In Message? = No)
If the deposits were never sent, you can pick up exactly where you left off. From the Super Fund Deposits screen, click SuperStream Contribution, search for your deposits, and continue. This is the standard SuperStream process, so it will look familiar to existing Payday Super and SuperStream users — it sends the contribution message and lets you pay using your usual preconfigured payment method.
Recreate the direct entry file (In Message? = Yes)
If the message has already been sent and you just need to create or recreate the direct entry payment file:
- Note the date the message was sent (the deposit date).
- Go to Super Fund Deposits >> SuperStream Mailbox >> Direct Entry.
- Search for the message by its sent date, select it, and step through to generate a fresh file.
You can do this at any time. The direct entry screen lets you re-include a message even if it was previously added to a file, so recreating a lost file does not undo anything.
Start the pay run's super over
The quickest way is from the Payday Super screen itself. Tick the purple pays and click Restart Super For These Pays (this button appears once deposits exist for the pay run). Lightning Payroll shows you the deposits it will clear, marks any SuperStream message that was already sent as manually failed, and deletes the deposits, so the pays are offered again next time you run Payday Super. If a deposit was already marked as Paid you are asked to confirm a second time, and if a deposit is shared with pays from another pay run it cannot be restarted there, so use the manual steps below instead.
If you want to walk everything back and restart Payday Super for that pay period, the deposits must be deleted — and a deposit cannot be deleted while it is still in a SuperStream message. Work in this order:
- Use the search filter from Step 1 and check the In Message? column for the deposits.
- For any deposit showing In Message? = Yes, go to SuperStream Mailbox, find the message the deposit belongs to using the filters at the top, open it with View, and click Manually Fail. Repeat for each message you want to undo.
- Return to the Super Fund Deposits screen and confirm In Message? now shows No for those deposits.
- Delete the deposits:
- Desktop app: right-click the Mark as Paid button on the deposit row and choose Delete Deposit.
- Online and mobile: tick the checkboxes for the deposits and click Delete Selected (the red delete button).
Once the messages are failed and the deposits deleted, the pays for that pay period will no longer be purple, and you can start Payday Super for that period again from scratch.
