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The SMSF trustee’s year at a glance

Every self-managed super fund has the same yearly cycle. This free checklist covers the 15 things to tick off, in plain English, plus why each one matters.

Your fund’s own dates may differ. Your accountant or tax agent will confirm your lodgement date, and your trust deed may set its own rules.

The checklist

During the year

  • Review your investment strategy. Consider risk, return, diversification, liquidity, the fund's ability to pay benefits and its other liabilities, and insurance for members. Record the review and the trustees' decision in your minutes.
  • Keep contributions within each member's caps. Concessional and non-concessional contributions each have a yearly cap. Carry-forward and bring-forward rules, and each member's total super balance, can change what applies. Ask your accountant if you're close.
  • Keep binding death benefit nominations current. Some nominations lapse after three years, and your trust deed decides what's allowed. Check each member's nomination and its date.
  • Report transfer balance events. When a member starts a retirement-phase pension, or takes a lump sum out of one (a commutation), the fund may need to lodge a transfer balance account report (TBAR) with the ATO. When it's due depends on your fund, so check with your accountant.
  • Consider insurance for each member. Record that you did, and why.
  • Minute the trustees' decisions as you make them, not at year-end.
  • Keep an eye on in-house assets so they stay within the 5% limit.

Before 30 June

  • Pay at least the minimum pension for every member drawing an account-based pension.
  • Finalise the year's contributions, and keep the evidence.
  • Value the fund's assets at market value as at 30 June.

After 30 June

  • Engage an approved, independent SMSF auditor and sign the engagement letter.
  • Gather the audit pack: the trust deed, investment strategy and review, minutes, financial statements, bank and holding statements, valuations, contribution and pension evidence, and nominations.
  • Get an actuarial certificate if your fund needs one. That can apply when the fund has both pension and accumulation interests during the year, so your accountant will tell you.
  • Lodge the SMSF annual return and pay the supervisory levy by your fund's due date. The audit has to be finished first.
  • If you have a corporate trustee, check its details with ASIC are up to date.

All year: Keep your key documents (trust deed, investment strategy, nominations, minutes) where a co-trustee or your accountant could find them. A document only one person can locate isn't much use if that person is unavailable when it's needed.

Want to know why each one matters?

Join the waitlist and a plain-English explanation for every item opens right here — nothing to download separately.

Which best describes you?

This checklist is general information only. It’s not financial, tax or legal advice, it doesn’t consider your fund’s circumstances, it doesn’t lodge anything with the ATO, and it doesn’t track your investments, prices or cash balances. For advice about your fund, speak to a licensed adviser or your accountant.