🎯 For admins new to Planday with Payroll Admin access in Xero.

Instructions in this set-up guide are for Xero customers based in Australia only.
Complete Step 1 of Xero integration or see Xero integration FAQ here.

Step 1: Setup	Step 2: Finalise your Setup
◎	◉
⏱ 5 minutes	⏱ 10 minutes

Sync payroll data

This step will guide you through synchronising payroll data between Planday and Xero. This means that you’ll be able to create Earning rates and Overtime earnings in Xero based on your Employee groups and Payroll supplements in Planday. Ideally, you’ll have enabled the relevant award for your business and set up your Employee groups before completing this step, see how to create or edit Employee groups article if you haven’t done so already.

Ensure that the checkmark ☑️ is selected for: When pay items are created or updated in Planday, they should also be created and updated automatically in the connected Xero organisation. Uncheck this if you want to map using Salary codes instead.
Click the edit icon to the right on the line with your organisation's name to configure sync of payroll data.

By clicking Manual sync your Employee groups and Payroll supplements will be synced to Xero and created as pay items. This synchronisation can take a while, especially if you have awards enabled. Once the sync is done, you’ll see an overview of the automatically mapped items.

The next step is to map employees to one of the Earning rates. This connection will update the ordinary earning rate on the employee’s pay template in Xero.

💡 It is recommended that you update the employees' ordinary earning rates at the start of the pay period.

Click on the Earning rate that you want to map an employee to, select the adequate employees and click Add. Repeat the process for the other earning rates until you have successfully mapped all the employees to an earning rate and then click Next in the top right corner.

Sync Leave types

In this step, you will connect the leave accounts in the two systems.

Click Add mapping and select which of your leave types from Xero you would like to match to your Planday Absence accounts, then click Add. In the overview, you will see a list of the selected leave types and you will now match them to Planday Absence accounts by selecting the applicable ones from the dropdown menu and then clicking Save in the top right corner.

💡 Please note that only hour-based Absence accounts can be synced with Xero and we currently support the following leave types: annual, personal & carers, compassionate and unpaid leave.

Export timesheets to Xero

To preview and export approved timesheets from Planday to Xero, go to Payroll > Xero payroll.

Using the filters, you can specify the output and preview the hours that will be synced to Xero. Click the Create report preview button to see an overview of which employees have hours in the chosen period and select individual employees to see their hours.

Xero Organisation – Name of the Xero organisation you are syncing.
Date range - Choose the date range you want to run the payroll for. By default the range will display a period of 3 months back from today’s date (though a period of up to 1 year in the past can be selected if needed).
Pay run – Select the appropriate pay run in the drop-down. You need to have a draft pay run in Xero before you can sync. Read more about processing a pay run at Xero Central.
Department: Select the departments that you want to sync the hours from.
Click Create report preview in the top right of your screen

Then, click on Filters and choose the following:

Employee type: Choose which employee types should be included.
Employee group: Choose which employee groups should be included. Note that you can select and deselect the individual employees by clicking the tiny arrow on the right-hand side of Employee type and Employee group.
Shifts: Select whether approved, non-approved, or all shifts should be included.

Note: all shifts synced will be created as approved timesheets in Xero.

Note: Click on an employee’s name to see a detailed breakdown of the hours.

To sync the hours to Xero, click on Sync payroll in the top right corner. Once the sync is complete, head over to Xero to process your pay run.

If you encounter any errors in the syncing process, check the Resolve payroll export errors - Xero AU for some troubleshooting tips. If you're stuck, you can contact our support team via chat.

See related articles:

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