🎯 This article is for admins with an existing Xero integration with Planday.

Set up Xero Payroll if you have not done so already.

Before synchronising your Planday payroll data with Xero, please consider reviewing the following points to ensure that the correct information is sent for your employees to be paid accurately.

Create a report preview

To create a report preview, navigate to the Xero payroll overview page by going to Payroll > Xero Payroll.

What is included in the report?

Please enter all the necessary parameters at the top of the screen, and press the Create report preview button.

Remember: If you can’t select your desired Pay Run, make sure to create a Draft Pay Run in Xero first. Read more about this at Xero Central.

You will see a list of all the employees that match the criteria, set by filtering for Departments, shift status, Employee types and Employee groups.

The list will show employees by their first name and last name.

Check that you are looking at the correct Pay period and that all your employees are included in the preview.

View a summary of an employee's worked hours

You can click on one of the employees to get a complete detail of their worked hours.

Employee summary

Here you can see an overview of how many hours this particular employee has worked and the breakdown of these hours.

Pay item

Under Pay item, you will be able to see the name of the pay items these hours correspond to, for instance, Penalty 7pm-12am, Regular hours, Annual leave (paid), etc. and how many units (hours) each were scheduled for.

Type

Under Type, you’ll be able to see the types of hours these pay items correspond to, for example, Supplement, Absence, etc.

Note: If you have created your own shift types, please ensure you map these to the appropriate earning rates in Xero if you need those hours synced. Learn more in our Xero integration FAQs.

View a detailed breakdown of all units

Under Shift details, you'll get an even more detailed overview of the above subcategories.

Here you can see the specific date, time of day, position or job role, and the number of hours worked on any given shift.

1. Handling of penalties

On shifts where penalties are applied, for example, on Sundays or Public holidays, the overview will show ‘0’ hours under Quantity for that particular shift and instead allocate all of the hours to the penalty. This method of allocating the hours gives a more transparent overview while also matching the setup of the payroll reporting functionality in Xero.

2. Handling of breaks

Both Unpaid and Paid breaks are included in this detailed overview. However, Paid breaks are included as part of the Regular hours units, while unpaid breaks are excluded from the calculations. While both Unpaid and Paid breaks show as ‘0.5’, the Unpaid break will not be sent to Xero, but the Paid break will be included in the total units of Regular hours or overtime/penalty rates if Paid breaks are applied during this period.

3. Handling of Leave types

Leave type is where the leave requests made by employees and approved by admins will be shown. Any leave that requires an account will show as an instance of leave both as a Shift type and a Leave type. Planday will handle the request and schedule of leave, whereas Xero will take care of the payment and balance of leave.

Please note that the Xero integration only supports leave requests counted in hours, not days.

Tip: This overview is explicitly made for Xero admins. In Planday, you can create a more generic payroll report under Payroll > Payroll export. However, the generic and Xero payroll reports should not be used to compare each other as the breakdown of hours into subcategories differs between the two reports. The total amount of hours will be identical, but the breakdown is different, so it is not recommended to compare the two in terms of the breakdown of the hours.

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