The Two Schemes Victorian Construction Employers Get Caught By
If you employ workers on construction sites in Victoria, there are obligations that do not exist for businesses in most other industries. LeavePlus and Incolink are the two that come up most, they are frequently confused with each other, and they are not the same thing at all.
They Do Different Jobs
The quickest way to keep them straight is this. LeavePlus is about long service leave. Incolink is about redundancy. One is a statutory scheme that applies based on the work performed, and the other applies because your industrial instrument says it does.
- LeavePlus is long service leave. Statutory, portable across employers, quarterly returns within 14 days of quarter end.
- Incolink is redundancy. Applies through your industrial instrument, contributions monthly.
- Nil returns still count. A quarter with no covered work still needs a return lodged.
LeavePlus: Portable Long Service Leave
LeavePlus administers portable long service leave for the construction industry in Victoria. The scheme exists under the Construction Industry Long Service Leave Act 1997. The word that matters is portable. In most industries, long service leave accrues with one employer, and changing jobs resets it. Construction does not work that way, because workers move between employers as projects start and finish. Portable long service leave follows the worker through the industry rather than through a single employer, so service accrued across different employers adds up.
Who has to register.
Employers need to register if they carry out construction or maintenance work in Victoria and engage workers for more than five days in any calendar month. That includes casual workers, part time workers, short term project workers and apprentices. The five day test is per calendar month, not per project, which is what catches out businesses who think occasional site work does not count.
What you have to lodge.
Employers complete quarterly returns recording the service of workers who performed covered work in Victoria. Each return reports the workers and apprentices, the number of days they worked, and their ordinary pay as the scheme rules define it. Returns are due within fourteen days of the end of each quarter. April to June service, for example, is due by 14 July. One point is easy to miss: a return is required every quarter even if no covered work was performed in that quarter. A nil return is still a return, and skipping it is a compliance failure rather than a non event.
Incolink: Redundancy and Severance
Incolink is a redundancy fund for the construction industry. Where LeavePlus applies because of the work performed, Incolink generally applies because an industrial instrument requires it. That instrument might be an enterprise bargaining agreement, an enterprise agreement, or an award with provisions for an industry specific redundancy scheme. Incolink operates separate funds for different parts of the industry. Broadly, one covers companies working in commercial building and construction in Victoria, or companies with an agreement with the CFMEU or CEPU. Another covers metal, labour hire and engineering trades, or companies with an agreement with the AMWU or AWU. Which fund applies to you depends on the work and the agreement, not on preference. Contributions are made monthly on behalf of eligible workers, based on the weeks worked on a commercial construction site during that month.
ACIRT and Other Schemes
Incolink is not the only redundancy trust operating in construction. ACIRT is another that some Victorian employers contribute to. Which scheme applies again comes back to the industrial instrument covering your workers. If you are unsure which one binds you, the agreement itself is the place to look before assuming.
Why This Goes Wrong in the Books
Three failures account for most of the problems we are called in to fix. The first is treating these contributions as ordinary payroll costs and coding them into a general wages account. They then cannot be reconciled against what the scheme says you owe, and discrepancies build up quietly. The second is missing the quarterly return because nobody owns it. Payroll gets run, super gets paid, and the LeavePlus return sits outside the normal rhythm until a reminder arrives. The third is failing to record days worked in a way the return can actually use. The return needs days of covered work and ordinary pay per worker. If the payroll file only holds total hours, someone has to reconstruct it every quarter. Fixed properly, these become part of the monthly and quarterly cycle rather than a recurring scramble.
How Navigata365 Handles These Schemes
Both schemes are run as part of the payroll cycle rather than as separate administration.
- We lodge the quarterly returns. As part of the payroll cycle, so they stop being a separate scramble.
- We reconcile the contributions. Coded properly so what you paid can be checked against what you owed.
Common Questions
Does LeavePlus replace ordinary long service leave?
For workers covered by the scheme, portable long service leave operates under the construction scheme rather than accruing in the ordinary way with a single employer. Because coverage depends on the work performed, confirm which of your workers are covered rather than assuming it applies to everyone on the payroll.
Do you have to register if you only occasionally do site work?
The test is whether you engage workers for more than five days of covered work in a calendar month. Occasional does not automatically mean exempt, and the threshold is lower than most employers expect.
Do apprentices count?
Apprentices are included in the scheme, and the quarterly return reports apprentices as well as workers.
What are the current contribution rates?
We deliberately do not publish rates here. They are set by the schemes and change, and a rate quoted in a blog post is exactly the kind of thing that gets relied on after it stops being true. Confirm current rates directly with LeavePlus or Incolink, or ask us and we will check for your situation.
Can Navigata365 handle these schemes?
Yes. We register employers, maintain the worker records the returns depend on, and lodge the quarterly returns as part of the payroll cycle for our construction clients.
Where to Confirm the Detail
The descriptions here come from LeavePlus and Incolink’s own published material and were checked in August 2026. Both schemes set their own rules and rates, and both change them. Treat this as an explanation of how the obligations work, not as a substitute for the current rules.
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