What the ATO letter means
The ATO has sent you (and each trustee/director) a letter titled “Your self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) registration is confirmed”.
Receiving this letter does NOT mean your SMSF is fully approved yet.
This letter simply confirms that the ATO has received your fund’s registration election and has issued an ABN and TFN. It is not the final approval that allows your SMSF to receive contributions or rollovers from other super funds.
When is my SMSF actually approved?
Your SMSF becomes fully operational (able to accept employer contributions and rollovers) once its status on Super Fund Lookup changes to “Registered” (and shortly afterwards “Complying”).
You can check the current status yourself at any time here: Super Fund Lookup (Search using your fund’s ABN or name)
The ATO can take 2–56 days (sometimes longer) to complete their checks and update the status.
Based on Grow's statistics, the ATO will approve 82% of new SMSF registration is 3 business days or less, and 90% are approved within 2 weeks.
What Grow does for you
You don’t need to keep checking Super Fund Lookup every day — we do it for you.
Grow automatically checks the status of all new SMSFs every morning.
As soon as the ATO updates your fund to “Registered” (or “Complying”), we will send you an automatic notification via email.
Once approved, we will immediately begin the application process to open your SMSF’s cash account (based on the instructions you provided during setup).
Other important services Grow provides
Electronic Service Address (ESA) — We supply and maintain your fund’s ESA as part of our ongoing services. This is required for SuperStream (electronic rollovers and employer contributions). → Full details: SMSF Dataflow for SMSF Trustees
Tax agent appointment — Grow is already appointed as your SMSF’s tax agent. By default, you have engaged us to prepare your fund’s annual accounts, tax return, and audit.
Rollovers and contributions — Once your fund shows as “Registered” and your cash account is open, we will send you clear step-by-step instructions on:
How to rollover money from your existing super accounts into the new SMSF, and
What details to give your employer so they can pay future super contributions directly into your SMSF.
What should you do right now?
Relax — you’ve done the hard part by setting up the fund.
Wait for our notification — we’ll contact you the moment the ATO approves the fund.
Do not send contributions or rollovers yet — they will be rejected until the fund appears as “Registered” on Super Fund Lookup.
If you have any questions or haven’t received our approval notification within a few weeks, just reply to this article or contact Fin support and we’ll chase it up with the ATO on your behalf.