Check a pay period's hours before anybody is paid

Payroll goes wrong in the gap between three different numbers. The roster says what you planned. The timesheet says what happened. Payroll pays whatever somebody typed into it on Monday. In most venues nobody ever puts the three side by side, so the errors only surface when a staff member counts their own pay.

Pay review is the step in between: one screen for a pay period, every person on it, checked and corrected before a single hour reaches payroll.

Start from the roster, not from memory

Open Tools, then Pay review. Click New pay period, set First day and Last day, then click Read the roster.

Everybody with a confirmed shift between those two days gets a row: how many Days they worked, what the Roster came to, and the Hours you are paying. The message above the table says how many people came in and how many shifts are still to confirm.

Only confirmed shifts are read. A shift nobody has confirmed is left out rather than paid at its rostered time, which is the right way round: a rostered shift is a plan, and plans change on the day. If the count of unconfirmed shifts is high, click it, confirm them in Timesheets, then come back and click Refresh from roster.

The expensive number is the break nobody entered

No break recorded under a name counts the days where nobody entered a break when the shift was confirmed. Nothing has been taken off those days, so the hours in front of you are the full span from start to finish.

This is the single most common way a venue overpays, and it is invisible on a roster: the shift looks like every other shift. Decide what that person should be paid for those days and type it in. One unrecorded half hour break, across four staff, across a fortnight, is most of a shift.

Correct the pay without touching the roster

Type over the figure in Hours to change what somebody is paid for the period. Roster beside it keeps showing what was confirmed, so you can always see the two together and explain the difference later.

Add somebody the roster missed puts a person on with hours of your own. The bin takes a person off this period.

Nothing here changes the roster, and that matters when you come back. Somebody you removed who came from the roster returns the next time you refresh, because the roster still holds their confirmed hours. If they should not be paid, the fix belongs on the roster.

The roster has moved on means shifts were confirmed or changed since you started. Refresh from roster brings them in, keeps the hours you typed yourself, and tells you how many of each it did.

Say who everybody is in Xero, once

A roster holds the name you call somebody. Payroll holds their legal name. Dave on the roster is David on his tax file declaration, and Kate is Katherine, so most people will not match on their own.

Click Check Xero. The Payroll column then shows each person's Xero employee, or a chooser. Pick the right employee under Choose in Xero. That choice sticks, so it is a one time job per person, and Matched to under a name means somebody made it. A line above the table counts the people nobody has matched, and their hours wait until you pick.

One Xero employee belongs to one staff member. Picking somebody who already has a match fails and names who holds them, because two timesheets for one employee in one period pays them twice. Nothing is ever guessed from a name, and if an employee leaves Xero the row asks you to pick again rather than quietly falling back to one.

Freeze it, send it, then read back what landed

Check the totals and click Mark as reviewed. The hours are frozen, and Reopen unfreezes them.

Click Send to payroll. Each person's hours go to Xero as a draft timesheet for the period. You still open Xero and approve them: Xero only counts an approved timesheet in a pay run, and Xero works out tax and super from its own employee records.

Afterwards the Payroll column says where each person's hours are, in words rather than a tick: Not sent, Sent to Xero with the date, Changed since Xero got ... when you edited the hours after sending, or the reason Xero refused them.

Check Xero reads back what Xero actually holds for those dates, at any time. In Xero then shows each person's hours there and their state, such as draft or approved, in amber when the figure differs from what you are paying. Hours Xero holds for somebody the list cannot name are shown above the table, which is how you catch a timesheet entered by hand at the other end.

What it is not

Pay review does not pay anybody. It works out hours and hands them to payroll, and Xero does the tax, the super and the payslip. If you would rather the whole run happened in one place, Run Pay works out withholding, super and net pay and writes the payslips itself, for Australian companies.

Sending needs your own Xero organisation, connected under Admin, Accounting, Xero, by somebody who is a payroll administrator in Xero. Hours cannot go to QuickBooks.

The habit worth keeping

• Confirm shifts as the week goes, so the period opens with a small unconfirmed count rather than a week of guesswork
• Read No break recorded first, every period, before looking at anything else
• Match every person to their Xero employee the first time, and never again
• Mark as reviewed before sending, so the hours somebody questions later are the hours that were sent
• After sending, click Check Xero once, and act on anything amber