Xero has certainly made things easier for bookkeepers, accountants and business owners who are financially savvy and can take care of their day-to-day bookkeeping themselves.
Apart from the usual bookkeeping functionality, Xero’s payroll function gets your payroll processed in 6 clicks. But, bonus! … employees can manage their payroll information from their smart phone!
“Give me six hours to cut down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe” – Abraham Lincoln
It’s super important to get the payroll set up correctly BEFORE any payroll is processed to make sure you stay compliant with employment and taxation laws and to get reporting that is accurate and reliable.
Xero payroll offers the following benefits:
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spend less time inputting employee hours worked to calculate their pay with smart employee setup
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employees can apply for leave and receive payslips directly via the employee portal (Xero Me) from any smart device
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lodge your super obligations directly from Xero with Xero’s superstream functionality
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always know who has leave days available with quick reporting
Smart Employee setup
Setting up employees in Xero is easy as 1-2-3.
Set up employees with an annual salary to calculate recurring pay runs.
Employees that are paid by the hour, is set up as such and employees log their time through the timesheet in Xero. There are also various add-on apps that work very well with Xero for employees that are required to log time against jobs, projects or clients.
Pay is calculated according to the employees fixed rate or the hourly rate when processing the pay run.
With flexible pay periods, you can pay employees monthly, fortnightly or weekly.
Leave management
Employees can apply for leave through the employee portal (Xero Me).
Their line manager or supervisor gets a notification of the request and can approve or decline the requests.
When leave is declined, managers/supervisors have the option to provide a reason for the decline.
When leave is approved, it is logged in Xero. As payrolls are processed, leave days are automatically updated to include new entitlements less any leave days taken.
With a few clicks, reporting is available to show leave days available per employee as well as the dollar value of the leave liability to the employer.
Sick leave is logged in the same way and reporting is also available on days available per employee.
Employee portal
The Employee Portal is downloadable to employees’ smart phones from where they can view payslips, apply for leave and log time sheets directly from their mobile phones!
No more leave forms to fill out, no more payslips to email!
Watch this short video that says it all!
Super Stream
With Gold certification from the ATO for their super stream compliance, Xero has once again made it super easy to pay employees’ super contributions to their super funds!
Initial online registration is required – all done directly from your Xero “file”. Once registered, it’s a matter of selecting the super to be paid (from pay runs already processed) and submitting it for approval. Once approved, the payment is made to each employees’ individual super funds by Xero’s third-party superannuation clearing house.
For more, here is a short video
Final word
Agility Bookkeeping is a certified Xero advisor and can help you set up your Xero file and provide training on the use and functionality of Xero.
Xero offers a 30 day free, no obligation trial – give it a whirl and you’ll be hooked!
