Before you start, have these ready
- The legal and trading names of every employer that may owe you money
- Rough employment dates for each job
- Payslips, income statements, rosters or bank records showing wages
- Photo ID and evidence of any name change
What the register covers
Unpaid wages and penalty rates, untaken annual leave, long service leave, allowances and other entitlements recovered during a Fair Work investigation or court action.
Amounts range from a few dollars to tens of thousands. Hospitality, retail, cleaning, security and horticulture workers are heavily represented.
How to search
Search your own name first, then search by employer. Many records are listed under the trading name of a business rather than its registered company name, so try both - the pub, the café, the franchise store.
Think back through every casual or short-term job, including ones that ended badly or where the business later closed. Those are exactly the situations that generate trust money.
Claiming
Complete the claim form on the Fair Work site with your identity documents and any evidence of the employment - payslips, a roster, a contract, a bank statement showing wages paid.
Fair Work does not charge a fee to claim money it already holds, and it does not publish a cut-off date for collecting it. Check the current Fair Work page before you lodge, because published processes can change.
If you are owed wages that were never recovered in the first place, that is a separate process: lodge an enquiry with Fair Work about the underpayment itself.
Step by step
- 1
Open the Fair Work Ombudsman's search for unpaid wages and search your surname.
- 2
Search again using each employer's trading name and legal name. Many records are listed under the business rather than the worker.
- 3
If you find a match, follow the claim instructions on the Fair Work page and lodge your ID and evidence of the employment.
- 4
If the employer went into liquidation or bankruptcy, check the Fair Entitlements Guarantee for unpaid wages, leave and redundancy, and AFSA for unclaimed dividends.
- 5
If you were underpaid but nobody has recovered the money yet, lodge an underpayment enquiry with Fair Work instead; that is a different process from searching held funds.
- 6
Check your super separately through myGov, because unpaid super is pursued by the ATO, not Fair Work.
Common mistakes
- Searching only your own name when the record is filed under the shop or cafe name.
- Treating the register as a way to make a new underpayment claim. It only lists money already recovered.
- Missing the time limits on the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. Fair Work publishes no deadline for collecting money it already holds, but FEG claims do have time limits.
- Forgetting super. Employers who skip wages often skip super, and that is claimed through the ATO.
I found a possible match, what now?
A listing is a record the authority holds, not proof the money is yours. Note the reference shown against it, check the details you recognise, then open the claim page on the official site and read what evidence it asks for before you start. You lodge the claim directly with that authority, never through this site.
What documents you may needI found nothing, what now?
A nil result usually means you searched the wrong register, the wrong spelling of a name, or too few variations of it. Try surname only, earlier surnames and each state you have lived in, then work through the troubleshooting steps before you give up.
Searched and found nothingTip: Fair Work does not publish a deadline for collecting money it already holds in trust, so older amounts are still worth searching for.
Common questions
Official sources checked
- Researched and reviewed by
- Find Lost Money Australia
- Information last verified
- 1 August 2026
Find Lost Money Australia is an independent information service, not a government agency. Our review checks the responsible agency's current page, search location and claim instructions. Agencies can change their rules, so confirm details on the official site before you act.
Keep looking
Continue your lost-money search
Money goes missing in more than one place. These are the next things worth checking.
- Unpaid wagesThe Fair Work Ombudsman holds wages it recovered for workers it could not contact.
- How super gets lostWhy balances end up with the ATO and how to check under every past employer.
- Bankruptcy and wind-up moneyAFSA holds dividends from personal insolvency administrations that were never collected.
- Your state or territory registerEach state holds unclaimed refunds, deposits and trust money from businesses in that state.
Searching is free. Every register we link to lets you search at no cost, and you can lodge a claim yourself. Be cautious of any business that asks for an upfront fee simply to search a public register on your behalf. Find Lost Money Australia is an independent information service. We are not a government agency and we do not hold or search unclaimed money databases.