Payroll is involved with everything to do with the payment of an organisation’s employees along with meeting obligations associated with payroll such as superannuation.

This guide is designed to help you with setting up and using payroll in Xero. The guide is split up into a few parts being:

Part 2: Setting up your payroll & Gathering Information
Part 3: Adding Employees
Part 4: Processing Payroll in Xero and Generating Pay Slips
Part 5: Employee Portal for Timesheet & Leave
Part 6: Superannuation, PAYG Withheld & Payment Summaries

This guide can help you in organising your payroll in Xero, but you’ll need to rely on external sources to make sure your meeting all your payroll obligations. Here’s a list of useful resources:

• ATO website:
  • Payroll obligations for employers - Very useful!!! You should start here!
  • Tax tables for withholding and link to tax withheld calculator
  • Payroll tax - employer expecting payroll over $550K
  • PAYG withholding - more details
  • Annual reporting for payroll
  • Superannuation payment obligation - rates and dates
• Fairwork Australia Website:
  • Pay calculator to see how much an employee should be getting along with entitlements
  • Workers Compensation - shows links to various state websites to help with determining if you need workers compensation insurance. For example, Worksafe Victoria says you need to take our WorkCover Insurance unless your annual financial year payroll is less than or equal to $7,500.
  • Main website of Fairwork Australia.

So… let’s get started! Go to Part 2 - Setting up your payroll & Gathering Information