Match the money to the holder
Old bank accounts, credit union and building society balances, share dividends, share sale proceeds and matured life insurance policies are held by ASIC and searchable on MoneySmart.
Superannuation, including lost member accounts and unclaimed super money, is held by the ATO and searched through myGov.
Unpaid wages, entitlements and money recovered on employees' behalf are held by the Fair Work Ombudsman.
Money from bankrupt estates and wound up companies is held by AFSA.
Rental bonds are held by the bond authority in the state where you rented, which is a separate body again.
Everything else - unpresented cheques, refunds, overpayments, trust money, deposits and proceeds of sale - is held by the revenue office of the relevant state or territory.
Which state, not just which register
State registers are held by jurisdiction, not by where you live now. Search every state and territory you have lived, worked, rented or run a business in.
The state that matters is the one where the organisation holding the money was located, which is often not the state you were in at the time.
Also check the public trustee in each of those states, because trust and estate money is frequently held there rather than at the revenue office.
A sensible order to search in
Start with MoneySmart, because it is national and covers the largest categories in a single search.
Then log in to myGov and run the ATO super search, which takes a minute and is where most people find something.
Then work through the state registers for every state you have a connection to, followed by Fair Work and AFSA if either could apply.
Repeat the whole exercise once a year. New records are added to the registers continuously.
Tip: No register searches the others - finding nothing on one tells you nothing about the rest.
Common questions
Official sources
This guide is based on the official Australian registers and the bodies that administer them. Always search and claim through these sites directly - they are free.