The EOFY playbook for mid-sized Australian businesses: A CFO’s checklist for 2026

With big changes on the horizon, we’ve created a handy checklist that covers the eight key financial, payroll, compliance, and system-readiness actions every mid-market CFO should complete before 30 June.

We also highlight the difference a connected cloud ERP, such as MYOB Acumatica, could make to your business. Not just in terms of ongoing ease and automated efficiencies, but also to ensure seamless compliance.

Understanding important upcoming changes

This financial year-end arrives with a fundamental shift in Australia's regulatory environment. Navigating this period requires more than the standard month-end adjustments. Instead, it might be the ideal time to evaluate your operational framework against the following structural changes:

• Payday Super introduces strict timelines: Starting 1 July 2026, superannuation contributions must land in an employee's chosen fund within 7 business days of their payday (there are some very limited exceptions to this).

• STP finalisation deadlines remain rigid: The Single Touch Payroll (STP) finalisation declaration is due by 14 July 2026 for standard employees, leaving an incredibly tight window for reconciliation.

• Asset depreciation incentives are shifting: The current $20,000 instant asset write-off window closes on 30 June 2026 for eligible businesses (less than $10m turnover) using simplified depreciation rules. While the 2026–27 Budget announced a proposed permanent extension from 1 July 2026, the ATO notes this measure is not yet law. As well as this, mid-sized entities must verify their eligibility based on turnover and specific asset use guidelines rather than assuming blanket inclusion.
  It’s important to note that with the $20,000 instant asset write-off now permanent, it is strictly limited to businesses with an annual turnover under $10 million. As a mid-sized company, you can’t instantly write off new equipment or vehicles. Instead, your finance team must navigate complex, standard general depreciation schedules to track the declining value of your assets over their effective life. Treating these rules as a blanket policy across your entities introduces significant compliance risks, making an integrated, automated fixed-asset register essential to avoid ATO over-claiming penalties.

The key question is if your current platform is a strategic asset, or if it is holding you back operationally. When you consider the checklist below, you should note they’re not administrative tasks, but risk management decisions. What you need to consider then, are the risks you might be running if you’re operating disconnected systems or outdated software.

What could EOFY look like on a different system?

The EOFY 2026 Checklist

1. Have your books been fully reconciled before 30 June?

To establish a clean baseline, the finance team must complete comprehensive bank account reconciliations, review GST coding, and evaluate outstanding debtors and creditors. CFOs must ensure that any uncollectible balances are formally written off as bad debts prior to 30 June if the business intends to claim a tax deduction in the 2025-26 income year.

Businesses running multiple disconnected systems frequently discover reconciliation gaps at EOFY that a connected ERP surfaces in real time throughout the year. Ultimately, rigorous account reconciliation ensures your financial statements reflect true business performance before year-end books close.

2. Is your Single Touch Payroll ready to finalise?

CFOs must lodge the STP finalisation declaration by 14 July 2026 for standard employees, which requires verifying that all financial year pay runs are processed and completely reconciled. Finance leaders must meticulously check that employee details are current, superannuation guarantee amounts align with actual payments, and that bonuses, commissions, or back payments are allocated to the correct pay run.

STP finalisation is straightforward when payroll and the general ledger are connected. When they are separate systems, the reconciliation step before finalisation can take days. Because MYOB Acumatica Payroll integrates directly with the general ledger, the data required for finalisation is natively validated throughout the year. Comprehensive data validation prior to submission removes the risk of non-compliance and mid-July processing bottlenecks.

3. Is your payroll system ready for Payday Super from 1 July 2026?

As the highest-urgency operational item this year, businesses must adapt to Payday Super rules starting 1 July 2026, where contributions must be received by the employee’s fund within 7 business days of payday. Additionally, the Superannuation Guarantee (SG) calculation base officially moves from ordinary-time earnings to qualifying earnings (QE).

Businesses using disconnected payroll and accounting systems, or software not yet updated for QE calculations, face significant operational risk from day one. MYOB Acumatica Payroll is Payday Super-ready, with qualifying earnings calculation, STP reporting, and super processing integrated into every pay run. Transitioning workflows early ensures compliance with the strict new 7-day payment window from the very first pay cycle of the new financial year.

4. Are your capital investments legally ‘installed and ready for use’ for Year 1 depreciation?

For mid-market businesses navigating standard general depreciation schedules, timing is everything. Any capital asset intended to reduce your taxable income for this financial year must be first used or installed ready for use by 30 June. Merely signing a procurement contract, paying a deposit, or taking delivery of equipment at a loading dock is insufficient under ATO scrutiny; the asset must be fully operational within your premises to kick off its depreciation lifecycle.

Managing a multi-million-dollar asset register across disconnected spreadsheets or separate project management tools makes this verification a higher risk. A connected ERP will bridge the gap by linking procurement, delivery milestones and general ledger automatically. Verifying the physical installation status of large-tier assets before EOFY ensures your Year 1 depreciation claims are mathematically accurate and fully audit-defensible

5. Will your Q4 super contributions reach the fund before 30 June?

While the official Q4 Superannuation Guarantee Charge (SGC) deadline under quarterly rules is 28 July 2026, contributions must physically clear into employee funds before 30 June to claim a tax deduction in the 2025-26 income year. Processing delays through third-party clearing houses mean that last-minute payments often fail to clear in time, deferring the tax benefit by a full year.

Executing Q4 superannuation payments by mid-June guarantees sufficient clearing house processing time to capture the corporate tax deduction in the current period.

6. Is your inventory count accurate as at 30 June 2026?

Under general trading stock rules, mid-market businesses must perform an end-of-year stocktake to value trading stock at cost, market selling value, or replacement value. While simplified rules exempt certain entities if stock value movement is under $5,000, mid-sized operations must actively identify and write down obsolete, damaged, or slow-moving stock before year-end, while construction entities must carefully recalculate work-in-progress (WIP) and percentage-of-completion metrics.

Businesses running inventory on spreadsheets or in a separate system from their accounting platform consistently report that EOFY stocktake reconciliation takes days. MYOB Acumatica's inventory management maintains real-time stock levels, cost valuations, and location data — turning a multi-day exercise into a swift review rather than a manual reconstruction. Executing a precise physical count ensures balance sheet integrity and optimizes tax positions on written-down stock.

7. Do your job cost reviews reveal where margin has been won or lost this year?

For manufacturing, wholesale distribution, and construction businesses, EOFY serves as a critical window to compare quoted project values against actual expenditures. Manufacturers must systematically assess production costs against standard benchmarks, identify waste or yield variances, and verify that material price fluctuations have been accurately mirrored in market pricing.

When job costing sits in a separate system from the general ledger, margin review at EOFY is a manual, time-consuming exercise. In MYOB Acumatica, job costs, purchase orders, subcontractor invoices, and labour costs are connected in real time, so the EOFY review is a confirmation of what you already know and not a discovery process. Evaluating variances across completed projects prevents margin erosion from impacting your pipeline in the upcoming financial year.

8. Is your current financial system an EOFY asset or a liability?

EOFY acts as a truth serum for corporate infrastructure. If your finance team spent the past month wrangling spreadsheets, resolving disconnected payroll data, or struggling to finalise multi-entity consolidations, your system architecture is introducing business risk. Rather than viewing this period as an annual administrative hurdle, forward-thinking CFOs use EOFY as a strategic reset point. So it’s more a definitive ‘line in the sand’ to phase out legacy constraints before they compromise the new financial year.

Operational indicators to consider:

• Did your month-end close take more than five business days?

• Were manual workarounds required to reconcile payroll, inventory, and the general ledger?

• Did project margin leakage only become visible at year-end?

• Is your current software certified and fully configured for Payday Super compliance on 1 July?

According to the Cherry Bekaert Middle Market CFO Survey 2025, 49% of CFOs state that poor data quality blocks critical financial decisions, prompting 77% to prioritise the integration or optimisation of existing finance technology before committing to new investments. For businesses where EOFY consistently surfaces data quality issues, the system is the problem.

As well, PwC Australia's 2026 CFO agenda report identifies unifying finance, planning, supply chain, and operations within a single AI-enabled ERP ecosystem as a key capability for finance leaders who need to ‘anticipate change, respond at pace, and protect trust while enabling growth’. 

Further strengthening the argument that treating EOFY 2026 as a system reset point can mitigate compliance vulnerabilities and transform the finance function from a reactive reporter into a proactive strategic asset.

Key EOFY 2026 dates at a glance

Mitigate your compliance risk

Ensure your mid-market business is fully prepared for the strict regulatory demands of Payday Super and streamlined reporting. Read our comprehensive guide on ‘Identifying the Right Time to Move to Cloud ERP’ to discover how a unified platform eliminates EOFY friction, resets your technology baseline, and protects your business from data vulnerabilities.

Information provided in this article is of a general nature and does not consider your personal situation. It does not constitute legal, financial, or other professional advice and should not be relied upon as a statement of law, policy or advice. You should consider whether this information is appropriate to your needs and, if necessary, seek independent advice. This information is only accurate at the time of publication. Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of the information contained on this webpage, MYOB disclaims, to the extent permitted by law, all liability for the information contained on this webpage or any loss or damage suffered by any person directly or indirectly through relying on this information.

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