Everyone's super, worked out and ready to pay.

For super, no. Under s12(8) of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992, someone paid to perform music is an employee of whoever pays them — for super purposes — even when they invoice as a sole trader. That's been the law since 1992. What payday super changed is the deadline: seven business days from payday, where it used to be quarterly. Which of the people in the chain owes it is a separate question, and we work it through on three real-shaped gigs in who owes the super on a gig.

They still get super — not having a fund is not a way out of paying it. If they don't nominate one, you ask the ATO whether a fund is already attached to them from an earlier job; this is called their stapled fund, and Gigsorted fills that request in for you. If the ATO comes back saying there isn't one, it goes to the fund you've nominated as your default, and that fund opens an account from their name, date of birth and address. A blank member number is normal for somebody's first contribution.

No. A clearing house will take a single person typed in by hand. The file Gigsorted makes covers one person as easily as forty, though, and it carries the details that are easy to get wrong typing by hand — the fund's identifier, the member number, the date of birth the fund matches on. Uploading it is usually less work than filling in the form once.

Two payments, both from your own account. The fees go straight to each person's bank. The super goes to a clearing house, which splits it across everyone's funds. Gigsorted never holds either.

Paying the clearing house is not the same as the fund being paid. The deadline is about when the money reaches the fund, and clearing houses take anywhere from a day to a week to pass it on depending on how you paid them. If yours offers PayID, that's the quick one.

No. Until 30 June 2022, super was only owed to a worker paid $450 or more in a month; that threshold was removed on 1 July 2022. A small fee attracts super the same as a big one — the contribution is just smaller, and Gigsorted does the math either way.

Yes, the same as the players — and the super rule reaches them the same way. The deeming provision doesn't stop at performers: under s12(8)(b) of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992, someone paid to provide services in connection with a performance is an employee of whoever pays them, for super purposes — the ATO's current ruling on who is an employee (TR 2023/4) uses a sound technician at a concert as its own worked example. Add your tech to the gig like anyone else — same invite, same files, same records — and on the pricing above, a sound tech counts exactly like a singer.

Two 2026 events were called off citing the new super rules: the Newcastle Hunter Jazz Festival — 37 years running, 330 musicians — and the Inverloch Jazz Festival. The Newcastle club's president, Murray Scoble, described it as “trying to get all our ducks in a row for 330 musicians” in the week after the festival. That job — collecting every player's bank and super details, working out each contribution, getting the payments out in time — is the job Gigsorted does. Players enter their details once, in their own profiles, and each gig becomes the bank file and the super file, ready to upload.

Keep it. Gigsorted handles your contractor musicians alongside your payroll, not instead of it — your employees stay in your payroll software, your musos get sorted here.

Never. You pay from your own bank account and submit super through your own clearing house. Gigsorted generates the files, does the math, tracks the deadlines and keeps the records. That's deliberate — it keeps your money yours.

Payments to a genuine company, trust or partnership don't attract super — the deeming rule catches a person paid to perform, and none of those is a person. Partnerships are the ones most often missed: a band trading under a partnership ABN sits on this side of the line, not the sole trader side. Gigsorted checks every ABN against the Australian Business Register and shows what it's registered as — a partnership shows up as a partnership. What the register can't show is whether everyone on stage is actually in it: a fill-in hired for the night isn't a partner, and paying them attracts super in the ordinary way. Mark the payee as an entity and the files label it clearly, with no super calculated.

For twenty years this had no current ATO answer — the 1993 determination that covered it was withdrawn in 2006, and nothing replaced its examples until now. On 28 August 2026 the ATO published an answer, and it runs the other way to the old rule: a genuine door deal — the venue collects the ticket money, takes out its costs and its agreed share, and passes the balance to the act — is the two of you running a show together, not the venue paying the act to perform, so no super is owed on that share. A set fee is different: that's a payment to perform, and super is owed on it in the ordinary way. A bandleader who hired the players and pays them out of the takings owes super on those payments the same as for any fee — and if the venue's deal was with the bandleader alone, the venue owes super on the whole lump sum too. The genuinely shared kitty — everyone splits whatever comes in, nobody hired anybody — sits on the no-super side for the same reason as the door deal. A deal that mixes a set fee with a cut of the door is the one shape the new page doesn't decide; if that's yours, ask your accountant or the ATO. The full story, with the ATO's worked examples, is in our explainer.

Any of the majors — the super file Gigsorted generates is the standard SAFF format they all accept. See the options and costs above, including the free ones many super funds provide.