Time & Attendance for Xero

Now that you have loaded in your employees and structured them into reporting lines and teams, the next step is to set up the time and attendance elements of Employment Hero HR. This includes Employment Settings that relate to Time and Attendance, Location and Public Holiday Calendars, Leave Management and Timesheet Management. 

In addition to the above, this module will help further your understanding of the integration between Employment Hero HR and Xero.

The Time and Attendance settings in Employment Hero HR include options to set up two level leave approval, selecting the timesheet type to be used, and enabling negative leave balance.

Enabling Two level leave approval will require employee leave requests to be approved by both the primary manager and secondary manager. 

Follow the steps below to enable/disable Two level leave approval:

• Navigate to Settings and scroll down to General Settings 
• Click Company Settings and select the Employment Settings tab 
• Select YES to enable two level leave approval. If two level leave is switched to ‘yes’, all leave must be approved by both a primary and secondary manager in order to sync to Xero.
• Select NO if you don’t wish to enable two level leave approval. If two level leave is switched to ‘no’, leave requests will only need to be approved by the primary OR secondary manager. Whoever approves first.
• Click Save.

In Employment Hero HR, you have four timesheet options to choose from. This includes:

• Start and end times based on daily entries
• Daily hour based on daily entries 
• Daily hours based on weekly entries 
• Start and end times based on weekly entries

When choosing your timesheet option, it is important to note that:

• Only daily timesheets can sync to Xero. 
• Only daily timesheets are currently available to use via our mobile app (Daily hours based on daily entries and start and end times based on daily entries). Weekly timesheets are not available for mobile app submission at this time. 
• Weekly timesheets are only available for Premium and Platinum subscriptions (Daily hours based on weekly entries and start and end times based on weekly entries). They are not available for organisations on a standard subscription. 

Follow the steps below to select your timesheet option: 

• Navigate to Settings and scroll down to General Settings 
• Click Company Settings and select the Employment Settings tab 
• Select your timesheet type from Timesheet entry
  • Start and end times based on daily entries
  • Daily hour based on daily entries 
  • Daily hours based on weekly entries 
  • Start and end times based on weekly entries
• Click Save. 

Enabling Negative Leave Balance is an open beta feature. It will allow your employees to submit leave requests that would reduce their balance to a value below zero.

If this is disabled, Employees will receive an error message when attempting to apply for leave that would put them into negative leave.

Please note, managers/admins will be able to submit leave requests for any employees even if this would mean the balance would go into a negative value. 

Follow the steps below to enable negative leave balance:

• Click the Beta feature (beta icon) in the top menu 
• Toggle “Prevent negative leave balance” to ON and confirm you wish to Opt in
• Navigate to Settings and scroll down to General Settings 
• Click Company Settings and select the Employment Settings tab 
• Select Enable under Negative leave balance
• Click Save.

Employment Hero will update an employee’s leave balance each time a new pay slip imports from your payroll over to Employment Hero.

If your organisation has not completed a pay run since integrating with Employment Hero, you can manually import your leave balances to allow your employees to see this information upon their first log in to Employment Hero.

Follow the steps below to manually import your leave balances from Payroll into Employment Hero:

• Navigate to Settings and scroll down to General Settings 
• Click Add-Ons and select Action next to Xero
• Click Update 
• In the Payslips section, click Update from Payroll 
• Select the pay run for the payslip you wish to import 
• Click Import. 
• This will import the payslips for each employee for a specific pay run and will update their leave balance.

Please note the following: 

• Employees will not be notified of newly uploaded payslips if you are in ‘set-up mode’.
• Employment Hero will check for eligible payslips once a day and will automatically import them after you have posted a pay run.
• For employees to view their leave balance in Employment Hero, the option “Show Balance on Payslip” must be selected in Xero. 
• Admins will not be able to view employee payslips in Employment Hero HR. Only employees will be able to view their own payslips in Employment Hero HR.

In summary, creating Locations and Public Holiday Calendars will: 

• Allow you to link employees to a public holiday calendar that best suits their location in the world.
• Ensure any leave requests taken on a public holiday will not impact an employee’s leave balance.
• Allow you to assign policies, certifications, and tasks to employees in specific locations. 

Follow the steps below to add in your locations:

• Navigate to Settings and scroll down to General Settings 
• Click into Locations & Public Holidays 

• You may see some of your existing locations already under the Locations tab, as they sync from Payroll
• To add a new location, select Add New Location 
• Enter the Name and Country of the location and click Submit. 

Follow the steps below to link your locations to a Public Holiday Calendar: 

• Select the Public Holidays tab

• Select the Standard Public Holiday Calendar to use one of the inbuilt Employment Hero calendars connected to States. 
  • Enter the Name and select the Locations and the State Standard Public Holiday Calendar.
  • Click Submit. 

• Select the Custom Holiday Calendar if your locations aren’t represented. 
  • Enter the Name and select the Locations
  • Enter the Year (i.e., 2023)
  • Click Add New to add the Name of the Public Holiday and the Date on which it falls.
  • Add as many Public Holidays as you need to and click Submit. 

Employees can follow the steps below to submit a leave request:

• Navigate to Time and select Leave 
• Click Create Leave Request 
• If you are an Admin or Manager submitting the leave request on behalf of an employee, you can select the employee name from the Personnel drop down menu.
• Select the Leave Category
• Select the Leave dates 
• Add in any comments and attachments if needed
• If you aren’t requesting a full day, you can expand the Leave Details section at the bottom to specify how many hours you are requesting.
• Click Submit.

Primary/Secondary Managers and Admins can make leave requests on behalf of an employee.

If an admin creates a leave request for another employee, it will be automatically approved.

Leave requests can be edited after they have been approved, but the updates will go through another approval process.

Once the employee requests leave, the Primary Manager will receive an email notification of the request. 

Managers will follow the steps below to approve a submitted leave request:

• Navigate to Time and select Leave Management 
• All pending leave requests will be displayed
• Select the leave requests and click Approve Selected or Decline Selected.

Please note the following:

• Existing leave requests in your payroll will not be transferred to Employment Hero.
• Admins can approve a leave request at any time; however, they will not be notified unless the employee is their direct report.
• If a leave request has been approved but is later deleted, it will need to be manually deleted from payroll. An email will be sent to your payroll admin to alert them.

As an Admin your first role is to outline which employees are required to fill in a timesheet. 

Follow the steps below to enable timesheet submissions:

• Navigate to People and select Employees List 
• Select the employee that you wish to enable timesheets for 
• Click into the Pay details tab and select the Pay Run Details tab 
• Scroll to Timesheet type and select the option most relevant to when they should submit timesheets. 
• Click Save.

Employees can follow the steps below to submit a timesheet: 

• Navigate to Time and select Timesheets 
• Click Add new timesheet 
• The timesheet will display the options that reflect the timesheet type selected in Company Settings 
• Enter in the timesheet information and click Save. 

Note: Timesheets can be edited at any time, but will be locked once the timesheet has been included in the pay run.

Once the timesheet has been submitted, an email notification is sent to a Primary and Secondary manager.

Managers can follow the steps below to approve a submitted timesheet: 

• Navigate to Time and select Timesheets Management 
• All pending timesheet requests will be displayed
• Select the timesheet requests and click Approve Selected or Decline Selected.

Please note the following:

• Managers/Admins can submit a timesheet on behalf of an employee.
• Timesheets must be manually imported into Xero by an Admin by selecting the “Upload to Xero” button available on the Timesheet Management tab.
• Timesheets will appear in “drafts” in Xero and must be approved by your payroll admin before they are added to a pay run.

Two level leave approval requires all employee leave requests to be approved by both the primary manager and secondary manager.

Negative leave balance allows your employees to submit leave requests that would reduce their balance to a value below zero.

If this is disabled, Employees will receive an error message when attempting to apply for leave that would put them into negative leave.

Employment Hero will update an employee’s leave balance each time a new pay slip imports from your payroll over to Employment Hero.

Employment Hero will check for eligible payslips once a day and will automatically import them after you have posted a pay run.

If your organisation has not completed a pay run since integrating with Employment Hero, you can manually import your leave balances to allow your employees to see this information upon their first log in to Employment Hero.

• Select General Settings and Add Ons
• In the Xero tab, select Actions and Update
• Find Payslips and select Update from Payroll

This will import the payslips for each employee for a specified pay run and will update their leave balance.

Note: If you do not have set-up mode switched on, an e-mail alert will be sent to your employees to let them know this payslip is now available in Employment Hero.

Firstly, ensure you have followed the steps above to import your most recent payslips.

If you still cannot see employee leave balances, ensure the option to “Show Balance on Payslip” is selected for each applicable leave category on Xero.

No. Employment Hero HR is your source of truth and all timesheets and leave requests must be entered into Employment Hero HR. 

If a timesheet or leave request is entered directly into Xero, it will not be displayed in Employment Hero HR at any stage.

No. Timesheets must be manually imported into Xero by an Admin by selecting the “Upload to Xero” button available on the Timesheet Management tab.

Timesheets will appear in “drafts” in Xero and must be approved by your payroll admin before they are added to a pay run.