Long service leave is an entitlement an employee may receive after an extended period of service with an employer. Each state and territory will hold varied standards around how long an employee must be employed for before becoming eligible for long service leave. Your state or territory will also dictate how much long service leave you will receive.
Employer Obligations
To check employees’ entitlements depending on the state or territory, you will need to contact the closest long service leave agency:
- ACT – Access Canberra
- NSW – NSW Industrial Relation
- NT – NT Government
- QLD – Queensland Industrial Relation
- SA – SafeWork S
- TAS – WorkSafe Tasmania
- VIC – Business Victoria
- WA – Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety
As an employer is it important to know what you need to do if you have an employee that is entitled to long service leave. To request leave, your employee should provide their notice in writing 4 weeks in advance. Ensure you include the dates that the employee intends to take off and keep everything in writing to show a trail of all arrangements that have been made. As an employer you will then accept or deny the leave by providing a written confirmation. Once confirmed, you need to take the necessary steps to ensure everything is reported correctly within your business. The whole process that needs to be carried out as we have just discussed is not only important for the employer but also from an employee. This comes back to the importance of good record keeping. Document discussions, have a seamless communication trail and keep coherent records.
Payroll Data Reporting
With the implementation of Single Touch Payroll Phase 2, an employer must now report Long Service Leave through their chosen software provider. It is now a requirement to have this set up within the software your business uses. Whether you use Xero Payroll, MYOB, Reckon or QuickBooks Online, it is important to know how to correctly set up an employee’s long service leave. There can and will be serious implications for those who do not carry out this obligation as an employer.
For client using Xero we have instructions to set up long service leave for employees that have been with you for a certain amount of time: https://central.xero.com/s/article/Set-up-long-service-leave
It is recommended that all leave is accrued for all staff members including Directors. If you have not previously completed this, you will need to enter the opening balances in the “Leave” section of the employee details. See this link with steps to add employees leave: https://central.xero.com/s/article/Set-up-an-employee-s-leave
For calculating the long service leave accrual to date, here is a calculator to use: https://long-service-leave-calculator.cciq.com.au/. If you do not have an opening balance, you can set up leave without one and it will start accruing from the date you set the leave up.
If you have questions or require assistance with leave entitlements and how to account for these in your accounting software, please reach out to our team for further guidance.
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