How to prepare your Victorian PLSA quarterly return from Xero

For employers and bookkeepers in contract cleaning, security and community services. Based on the Portable Long Service Authority's reporting rules that apply from the April–June 2025 quarter. Last checked October 2026.

Each quarter, the Portable Long Service Authority (PLSA) needs two figures for every covered worker: the hours they worked and the ordinary pay they received. Xero holds all of this, but it has no PLSL report, so the work is in pulling the right pay items out of Xero's payroll reports and leaving the wrong ones out. This guide walks through it.

When the return is due

Quarter	Due
July – September	31 October
October – December	31 January
January – March	30 April
April – June	31 July

Every covered worker goes on the return, including casuals who only worked a few hours. New workers are added to the return and workers who left are marked as ceased.

What counts: hours and ordinary pay

The rules are the same for hours across the three industries. For pay, community services differs from cleaning and security in two places: penalty rates and allowances.

Payment in Xero	Hours	Pay – cleaning and security	Pay – community services
Ordinary hours, salary, casual loading	Yes	Yes	Yes
Overtime	No	No	No
Weekend, shift and other penalty rates	Yes	Yes, the full amount paid	Base rate only – leave the penalty part out
Public holidays	Yes	Yes, the full amount paid	Base rate only
Paid leave (annual, personal, workers' compensation, government parental leave)	Yes, leave hours	Yes	Yes
Unpaid leave (under 52 weeks)	Yes, leave hours	– (nothing paid)	– (nothing paid)
Allowances	–	Yes, except travel, meal and protective clothing allowances	No
Super, leave loading, cashed-out leave, bonuses, commissions, termination payments	No	No	No

A worked example

A worker on $40 an hour works 30 ordinary hours, 4 hours on a Sunday with a $10 an hour penalty, and 3 hours of overtime at $60. They also receive a $15 travel allowance.

Hours for every industry: 30 + 4 = 34 (overtime is left out).
Cleaning or security pay: 30 × $40 + 4 × $50 = $1,400 (the penalty is included; overtime and the travel allowance are not).
Community services pay: 30 × $40 + 4 × $40 = $1,360 (Sunday hours at the base rate only).

Step by step

1. Export the payroll detail from Xero

In Xero, open Reports and find Payroll Activity Details in the payroll section.
Set the date range to the quarter and run it for all employees.
Export it to Excel. You get one row per employee, per pay run, per pay item, with units (usually hours) and amount.

Xero reports pay runs by their payment date. A pay run paid on 2 October for the last week of September falls into October–December. Decide which way you treat pay runs that straddle the quarter end and do it the same way every quarter.

Two other Xero reports help: Employee Remuneration shows employee groups (useful for leaving out directors and admin staff who are not covered) and termination dates, and Leave Requests (all leave types) is the only place Xero shows unpaid leave.

2. Export the return from the PLSA portal

Log in to the PLSA portal and open the return for the quarter.
Use Export / Import and export to Excel. The spreadsheet arrives with your registered workers already listed.
On the contributions sheet, fill in the hours and ordinary pay columns for each worker (columns L and M in the current layout), and the end date and reason for anyone who left. New workers go on the new workers sheet.

3. Decide how each Xero pay item is treated

List the distinct pay items in your Payroll Activity Details export and mark each one against the table above. Typical names:

Typical Xero pay item	Treat as
Ordinary Hours, Casual Ordinary Hours	Ordinary
Saturday Penalty, Sunday Penalty, Night Shift	Penalty
Public Holiday (worked), Public Holiday Not Worked	Public holiday
Overtime Hours, Time and a Half, Double Time	Overtime – leave out
Annual Leave, Personal/Carer's Leave	Paid leave
Annual Leave Loading	Leave out
Travel Allowance, Meal Allowance, Uniform/Protective Clothing	Leave out
Leading Hand, First Aid, Laundry allowances	Allowance (cleaning and security only)

Pay item names are set up by each business, so check any you don't recognise against the payslips.

4. Total each worker

For each worker, add up the hours of the items that count for hours, and the amounts of the items that count for pay. A pivot table or SUMIFS on the employee and pay item columns does it. For community services, work out penalty and public holiday pay as hours × the worker's ordinary hourly rate instead of the amount paid.

5. Match the names and upload

Xero's report only has employee names, so you match them to the portal list by name. Watch for nicknames, double spaces and changed surnames. Paste the totals in, upload the spreadsheet in the portal, fix any rows it flags, and submit. The levy invoice follows.

Mistakes that cost time

Counting overtime hours. Overtime is out for hours as well as pay.
Including leave loading or termination payouts in ordinary pay.
Community services: reporting the full penalty amount, or including allowances.
Forgetting unpaid leave hours, which are reported even though no pay goes with them.
Running a report per employee. Payroll Activity Details covers all employees and pay items in one export, which is far quicker than going employee by employee.
Leaving out low-hour casuals. Every covered worker is reported.

Do steps 3 to 5 in a few minutes
PLSL Return Helper reads the Xero exports, suggests how each pay item is treated, applies the rules above for your industry, matches names to the portal spreadsheet and fills it in. It runs in your browser and your payroll data never leaves your computer.
Open the helper