Christmas close-down for Australian and NZ service businesses: Payday Super, leave and key dates

Three obligations land at once. Super contributions now run on a per-payday deadline, so every holiday pay run carries its own seven-business-day window. Leave entitlements in Australia depend on the modern award or enterprise agreement that covers your staff, not on a single national rule. And in New Zealand, the Holidays Act lets an employer declare one closedown per 12 months with 14 days’ notice, but employees who have not yet worked 12 months receive 8% of gross earnings instead of annual leave. Sort these three before the last route of the year, and the break runs itself. Leave one until January, and you are paying interest on a super shortfall while your crew is at the beach.

Who is telling you this, and why: Fieldwynn is a field-service app for small service crews, we are building it, and it has not launched. The next step at the foot of this page is an early-access email ask, not a purchase. Read the page as a funnel rather than a disinterested verdict. Every rule below is cited to the government source that publishes it, which is the part that holds whichever software ends up running your route.

Payday Super: the deadline that travels with every pay run

Before 1 July 2026, super contributions were due quarterly, within 28 days of the end of the quarter. That is over. Payday Super took effect on 1 July 2026, and SG contributions must now generally arrive at the employee’s super fund within seven business days after paying the employee. The word to watch there is “business”: seven business days, not seven calendar days.

The practical consequence over Christmas turns on what “business day” means. The ATO defines it as any day other than a Saturday, Sunday or a day that is a public holiday for the whole of any Australian state or territory. Public holidays inside the break pause the count, pushing the calendar deadline later than it would fall in a normal week. The risk is the opposite of what you might expect: the working days between the public holidays are still business days, and if your doors are closed on those days the clock is still ticking. Pay the super before you leave for the break, not after you return. If you pay a Christmas bonus outside the regular pay cycle, the ATO’s payment-deadlines page notes that the super on that bonus is due with the next regular payday’s contribution.

The Superannuation Guarantee rate is 12% of qualifying earnings (ordinary time earnings, all commissions, salary sacrifice). For a new employee or a newly chosen fund, the first contribution is due within 20 business days of payday rather than seven.

The Small Business Super Clearing House (SBSCH), which some employers used to send quarterly contributions to multiple funds, has now closed and is no longer accessible. The ATO says former SBSCH users must transition to an alternative option to pay their employees’ super.

Australia: the award or agreement decides the shutdown

There is no single national rule that says “you must give X days’ notice to close for Christmas.” The Fair Work Act 2009 (sections 86 to 94) sets the National Employment Standards for annual leave, and section 93 provides that modern awards and enterprise agreements may include terms about cashing out and taking paid annual leave. The shutdown clause, including the notice period an employer must give, lives in your applicable modern award or enterprise agreement, not in the NES itself.

That means the first step is not Googling “Fair Work shutdown notice.” It is opening your award and reading its annual leave clause. The Fair Work Ombudsman confirms that an employee can be directed to take annual leave during a shutdown if their award or enterprise agreement allows it. For award-free employees, the FWO says the requirement to take leave must be reasonable. Each award sets its own notice period, so read that clause rather than relying on a general number. Contact the Fair Work Infoline on 13 13 94 (open 8 am to 5:30 pm Monday to Friday, closed on public holidays; call before you close) or check your specific award at fairwork.gov.au.

What happens if an employee does not have enough accrued leave to cover the shutdown depends, again, on the award. The employer and employee can agree to time off in lieu, annual leave in advance or leave without pay to cover the shortfall.

The Australian public holidays inside the Christmas period are not annual leave days. The Fair Work Ombudsman says that employees (except casual employees) who normally work on the day a public holiday falls will be paid their base pay rate for the ordinary hours they would have worked; base pay does not include penalty rates. For hours actually worked on a public holiday, the award sets the applicable rate. The lawn-mowing season calendar for Australia carries the NSW Christmas public holidays and the award public-holiday rate column for hours worked, so this page does not duplicate that table. Refer to it for the rate detail.

New Zealand: the Holidays Act closedown

New Zealand’s closedown rules sit in the Holidays Act 2003, and Employment New Zealand publishes them in plain language (page last modified 7 August 2026). The key provisions for a service business:

One per year, 14 days’ notice. An employer can have only one annual closedown in any 12-month period, and must give employees 14 days’ notice before it starts. Employment New Zealand does not specify whether those 14 days are calendar days or business days. Different parts of a workplace can have different closedown periods, so you could close the field crew and keep the office open, or the other way round.

Employees with annual holiday entitlement. If an employee has annual holidays available at the start of the closedown and has been given the required 14 days’ notice, the employer can require them to take those holidays.

Employees not yet entitled (the 8% rule). If an employee has not yet become entitled to annual holidays (typically because they have not completed 12 months of continuous employment), the employer must pay the employee 8% of their gross earnings as at the annual closedown date. Any amount already paid as 8% pay-as-you-go, or already paid as annual holidays in advance, must be subtracted. The employer must also move the employee’s anniversary date for annual holiday entitlement to the closedown start date, or another nearby date the employer chooses.

Public holidays inside a closedown. Public holidays that fall during the closedown are still public holidays. The employee must be paid for any day they would normally work, even if they are on unpaid leave for the rest of the closedown. Employees can also take alternative holidays, sick leave, bereavement leave, or family violence leave during a closedown.

A second closedown? A closedown that is not the annual one, or that comes on top of one already held in the last 12 months, must be agreed between employer and employee. The employer can require annual holidays only if the employee has an entitlement (not advance holidays), agreement cannot be reached, and 14 days’ notice is given.

The 2026-27 dates in one block

This is the one section that dates. The rest of the guide is evergreen; this block covers the Christmas 2026 to early 2027 period. Update it each year.

The AU BAS lodgement date for the October-to-December quarter is published by the ATO; check the ATO’s activity statement due dates page for the current deadline. State-specific public holidays beyond those listed above vary by jurisdiction; confirm your state government’s public holidays page.

Customer notice and closing the route

The compliance side is half the job. The other half is making sure customers know the crew is off and the route restarts cleanly.

Set the last-service date and tell customers early. A lawn round that usually runs weekly should not surprise a customer by skipping three weeks without notice. A pool route that leaves a pool untreated over the hottest stretch of the southern summer risks a green callback. Decide the last service date, send the notice (email, SMS, a note on the invoice), and set the restart date. Two to three weeks’ lead time is enough for most residential routes; commercial contracts may have their own notice clauses.

Route the final round to cover the gap. If you run a fortnightly pool service and the break is three weeks, schedule the last visit as late as possible so the gap is two weeks, not four. The off-season cash flow guide covers the broader revenue-smoothing mechanics for any seasonal service business, not just the Christmas break.

Reconcile outstanding invoices before you close. Chasing a December invoice in February is harder than chasing it in December. The guide to getting paid faster covers the invoice-to-payment pipeline, including the follow-up cadence and the payment terms that actually get paid. If your crew’s hourly cost is something you have not costed lately, the labour burden rate calculator uses US payroll-tax defaults (FICA, FUTA, SUTA, workers’ compensation, general liability, health and retirement); an AU user zeroes the US-specific tax fields and enters super in the retirement field to see the burdened hourly cost, which is the number that tells you whether the final round before Christmas is worth running at all.

From a break to a booked route

A close-down is a forced pause, and a forced pause is a planning window. The last round of the year finishes, the super is paid, the crew is paid out, and the break starts. The first round of the new year should already be on the schedule before anyone leaves. If it is not, the restart leaks a week of revenue while you rebuild the calendar. Plan it before the doors close, not after they reopen.

When you are ready to run that first round of the new year, Fieldwynn is the field-service app we are building to carry scheduling, recurring billing and the compliance dates for a small crew. It has not launched, so the next step below is an early-access email ask, and the close-down guidance and the calculators stay free either way.