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Having more than one person able to create and approve automatic super is now going to be critical. In some cases our clients are moving from 4 payments per year, to 52 payments per year. The chances of the authorised person being away unexpectedly for one of those payments is much higher (dare I say likely) and therefore contingency plans, ie a backup preparer and authoriser needs to be in place to ensure the employer can meet their legal obligations and not face penalties due to limitations of their payroll/super software provider.

As I work in a small company and am responsible for payroll, I see having a second person to authorise as critical. As an employee, not the business owner, I do not want, nor should I need to log in and work when I am overseas. I currently forward date wage runs for when I'm on leave and need the same for Super.

It’s important to add a second authoriser for superannuation approvals in Xero to avoid any delays in meeting payday super deadlines, especially if the primary authoriser is unavailable.

As an accountant who helps a number of clients and not-for-profit organizations, if the subscriber is sick or unexpectantly unavailable on payday, it's crucial to have a second authoriser so that they don't break these new laws coming in.

This is critical. Please add a second person incase the first authoriser is on holidays or is unwell.

Very disappointing this functionality is not already available or scheduled for release. This is a critical requirement and Pay Day Super is highlighting the even greater need for it to be prioritised and implemented as soon as possible. Many wasted hours discussing work arounds that just shouldn't happen. It’s difficult to justify when other software offers this feature and yet it does not appear to be treated as a priority within Xero.

Automatic Superannuation only allowing for a single user to be assigned seems like a huge mistake. We have a situation when multiple users are sharing the payroll duties. This is a problem when the nominated approver is unavailable. We have also found that changing the nominated approver can only be made by the person who is currently subscribed, so if we do have a problem then only the nominated approver is able to fix this, this is creating a single person bottleneck.

With Payday Super coming in July 2026, the single super authoriser model creates a real compliance risk. If the nominated approver is unavailable on payday, employers risk missing ATO deadlines despite having payroll ready. This is a clear single point of failure that doesn’t align with good governance or segregation of duties. Xero urgently needs multi-approver support or an alternative approval method before Payday Super commences.

Our firm has a neutral email address and office mobile that we use as the authorisation to "get around" the one authorisation contact. It seems to work.

Hi all

We thought we could work around an Authorised User on leave by logging in and changing the AU temporarily if they are on leave.

Several of our client files have the Authorised User (AU) as the same person as the Subscriber. That would not work in that scenario as there is only one person with that access - what if that person is not just on leave but unable to carry out the action (health reasons etc)?

Also, there is a lot of focus on the AU being away on leave but what if they have been terminated? You may not have a new employee on board within the 7 day deadline and I know many Subscribers who would not have the Xero skills knowledge to transfer that Authority to a contingency processor or log in themselves.

Does anyone have any work around thoughts while we wait for a Second AU function to be added?

"Likely to be picked up later this year" is just not good enough. This issue has been flagged for 2 years and is going to cause massive business disruption. Xero is ignoring the essentials and fluffing around with the dashboard whilst frustrated users are scrambling to find workarounds for many issues. What part of THIS IS A CRITICAL PROBLEM is that difficult to understand? I find it amazing that multiple users can lodge a BAS but superannuation payment is stuck with only one authoriser - this is dark ages stuff.
And what exactly does "we can't provide any commitments as yet" mean?

This is really not good enough. Payday super starts 1 July this year and was announced in 2024. Businesses have been crying out for this for years. Xero has had more than enough time to address this but it appears that redesigning the dashboard was more important.

As people before me have mentioned - this is critical
and "likely to be picked up later this year" is not an acceptable response.

As per ATO Website " A contribution is on time if it is received by your employee's super fund (with all the necessary information to allocate the contribution to the employee's member account) within 7 business days after paying your employee."

If the Super Authoriser is unavailable, due to illness or holiday ... what then?

since Xero isn't providing updates, I will.

I raised this as a support case on 15Jan26.
Responses were swift and extensive, but fell short of generating any solid action. After almost 2 months I'm weary of the daily emails every time someone adds their voice here, so I posted this on my support case today:

"I have more feedback.

Just letting you know it's tedious getting emails about this via the 'ideas' forum as more people foresee this as critical, I think it's now 7th highest votes and about 3rd highest in comment count.

https://productideas.xero.com/forums/967118-payroll-expenses/suggestions/46199650-au-payroll-set-up-second-auto-super-authoriser

As far as everyone there is concerned they're being totally ignored by Xero, since the latest reply from Xero is "there are no immediate plans for developing this" and that dates back to July 2025. Which seems to solidly refute the claim of multiple CS agents that the ideas forum is "regularly monitored by the product team". Unless by 'regular' they mean "once every 6 months", and even then Xero is now overdue to provide an update to the masses."

I got a phone call from Xero support within 5 minutes. They verbally assured me things are moving, and asked permission for my case to be passed on to yet another department to ask more questions.

It is very disappointing to see Xero don't seem to understand the urgency of this given Pay Day Super comes into effect on 1 July 2026.

Let's hope they ensure their systems can meet the strict 7 business day timeframe for funds to arrive in the member's super fund account (not merely be received by the super fund) as required under the new legislation.

A recent webinar indicated this can currently take up to 11 days.

I am the current authoriser and am going on leave OS in August and September. Not sure how the government will like this when you wont allow an additional approver. If I do get a bill I will be forwarding it to Xero for payment.

As it is obvious at this point that Xero has no intention of adjusting any of their features for the new Super system to be put in place -

We have added the authoriser of the super as a neutral email address and the phone number as the office phone. Even if you need to purchase a cheap phone that only accepts SMS - it will work and allow Super payments to be authorised by any who have access to this neutral email and phone.

Yes, needs to be actioned asap, it will be a nightmare if it isn't actioned and soon, please. Our clients are already querying how this will work, moving from quarterly to fortnightly/weekly payments. Authorisers go on leave!

This is going to be critical before July.

If we have any issues during the busiest time of year it's going to be costly with our time and money.
Accountants and bookkeepers are going to spend a lot fo time and money getting things updated/fixed etc in out peak time of year.

This needs to be updated well before so we can have everything sorted well before July's tax time hits us

We are only a few months away for Payday super, this is very important when the primary person is going on leave.