Fantastic news! This will be well received and certainly represents a tipping point in my opinion, especially in Australia.

The competitors are stalling but you continue to deliver. Well done Xero!

Our workshop staff & designing staff handle more then one Job per day. Can you tell me whether you software has the facility to identify wgaes cost for each job end of the pay period ?

Great news will you be doing the associated IRD DED payment returns at sometime, like you do gst etc

Great news. Even for a small team this looks like a worthwhile edition. Move over Excel.
Where does that leave Payroll only vendors I wonder?

Great to see continued development happening. I just tried the new payroll functionality but was disappointed to see that it doesn’t do the PAYG and Super calculations for you.. you have to calculate them manually and enter them in. Maybe I won’t switch to Xero for my payroll just yet.

Does this integrate with Freshbooks time tracking? In other words will it import the time worked for each employee as tracked in Freshbooks and then let me run payroll against it?

Hi,

Just a couple of quick questions,

1. Are the ATO tax tables loaded and such does it auto calcuate PAYG?
2. Are PAYG Payment summaries included in the reporting

thanks

Any reason why partner edition cant have payroll as well? Very annoying

ps. if your in australian and want a tax calculator to input right ammounts into xero check this out – http://goo.gl/irT4e

So no tax tables or means to enter them in? you have to manually calculate the data each week? I think we might still need excel

yes i agree, but $31 a month for a payroll feature that doesnt even calc the tax automatically.. they most well give their money to paycycle

A “global” payroll just isn’t going to work. If this is a pay entry procedure to get amounts paid and liabilities to revenue into the accounts then call it that, but a payroll it isn’t !!

Payroll software ties in with local payroll legislation and rates and this doesn’t.

As to cost, I can get up to three companies payrolls calculated, returns calculated, correctly formatted and uploaded to Revenue for € 100 and if I want a bureau version for unlimited companies it is only € 300 all in !!

If this is to work it needs to be “real” payroll functionality and competitive as well.

I have tried the new payroll system. I notice that the net pays are accumulated in a liability account called Wages Payable. But when the actual payment is made to employees it is Accounts Payable account that is debited. Thus Accounts Payable in the balance sheet is understated while the Wages Payable account still show the net pays balance even though it has been paid. This is not satisfactory. Can it be fixed please?

Great if you do your pays manually but I use AcePayroll. It works out everything automatically. They send updates of any tax legislation changes which automatically updates everything and keeps me tax compliant. I just enter the hours and click a few buttons, check it and print it and it’s done. It produces my monthly employer deduction report in a format that IRD accepts. And there are no ongoing costs except tax updates which occasionally come through. If I have a problem, I call the 0900 line and pay $2.25 p/minute for help. Fantastic service. Can’t beat it , sorry.

Good to see additional development but am a bit dissapointed that simple PAYG caluclations have not been included. A lot of small business have casual staff whos hours change from week to week. Having to work out PAYG manually seems a bit cumbersome. I would have thought it would have been quite simple to add a reference to a tax table into the payroll section.
Well done for making improvements though.

Eagerly waiting to use your product, but no advantages for me if the payroll does not do PAYG or superannuation calcs, or holiday pay tracking. Job tracking is also a necessity for me. Why would I use an additional package and pay additional costs over an above what I am paying now – not good sense! I will keep waiting for the next version.

We have been waiting for the Xero payroll module hoping to finally abolish spreadsheets when we start using it, however in its current form Payroll unfortunately does not fulfil our requirements.
We are perfectly ok with entering numbers and tax calculations manually, however what deterred us is that there is no convenient way to track leave, and payslips do not show current leave balances for employees (we think it is important for people to know what their current leave figures are). We would still have to use spreadsheets for that.
Further, numbers from Payroll do not seem to flow through to the BAS statements, which is a shame – you still have to enter all the PAYG withheld manually, even though Xero would have that data if Pay Run was used.
Finally – and we were hoping this would be our biggest time-saver in comparison to spreadsheets – there seems to be no way to quickly prepare end-of-year PAYG Payment Summaries for employees and the ATO. There are Payroll summary reports but you can’t import your previous data for the year, making them useless that late into the Financial Year.
All this, combined with the fact that it is “unaware” of local tax legislation (things like payroll tax in NSW), hardly makes it more appealing than entering the same data manually into spreadsheets.

@Konstantin – If you are looking for time-saving automated super/tax calculations, leave management, opening balances and payment summaries, may I suggest you check out Paycycle (www.paycycle.com.au), we are one of Xero’s Australian payroll partners.
If you have any queries, feel free to drop us an email!

I agree with the other comments above. It’s hard to see what market Xero has identified here. I’m running a small business with 3 staff and I can’t see any use for this “solution”. I need to track leave and don’t want to manually calculate tax, KiwiSaver etc.

I’m currently using Flexitime, which is integrated with Xero and works fairly well, but it would be so much better to be able to do it all inside Xero without going out to a different interface, and without paying extra fees to another company.

I can’t help thinking Xero has shied away from making a full-featured system to avoid stepping on the toes of their partners who are currently filling this hole by providing integrated payroll solutions. Which shows admirable loyalty, but is not really in the best interests of customers.

Adding my name to the long list of clients and potential clients disappointed at the lack of Tax and Leave calcs. We’re a small operation with some commission-based staff so taxes and pays vary each week. Not a chance we’re paying $29/month more for a Partner’s solution when this is a standard feature in most other cloud-based accounting packages.

With transition from MYOB planned for end of this FY, we’d need at least a commitment from Xero that this functionality was on it’s way. Otherwise Xero is a non-starter for us.

Sad and annoying.

I agree with Simon & Hayden, not providing integrated payroll solutions is not really in the best interests of customers. Almost all business has a few employees at least, but doesn’t want to pay extra to manage payroll/PAYG payment summaries.
Hopefully Xero will start considering to develop at least automatic tax calc/PAYG payment summaries print outs.

I just wanted to add my name to the list of another who is waiting for Xero to introduce a proper payroll system before making the switch from MYOB. I already need to purchase 2 Xero licesnes, one for our AUS company and 1 for our UK company. To then have to pay a payroll company (paycycle) a further $99 per month for our 40 AUS staff, and a further $39 per month for our 12 UK staff is way too hard to justify. I really do hope Xero release a v.2 payroll soon to include tax, super, annual leave etc. I can justify 2 Xero licesnes but not 2 Xero licenses + 2 payroll licenses. Especially when the payroll ones are more expesnive than the accounting software licenses. Xero any comments on introducing a more developed payroll system so everything can be done from within Xero without the need for 3rd party payroll partners?

Any help here would be much appreciated: I am trying to do our end of FY year accounts and I am having real difficulty with the Wages figures. It looks like the PAYG withholding tax payments have been included for the period April 2011 to July 2011 – after we started using the Payroll function, but not for the period July 2010 to Mar 2011. These payment are sitting in PAYG Withholdings Payable and do not appear on the P&L. Should those PAYG Tax payments be included under Wages?. Thanks..