This article explains how to use the integration with Xero Payroll. For more information about the integration scope, the eligibility criteria, and how to set up the integration, refer to the Help Center article Set-up the Xero (UK) Integration.

Which employees are considered in the sync with Xero?

After the setup, authorizing, and configuring the integration, you are now able to sync your employees’ data to your Xero tenant. Personio considers the following aspects of a successful sync:  

• Employees with Include in UK Payroll set to Yes and the status set to Active, Inactive and Onboarding will be synced with Xero.
• Employees must be assigned to an authorized legal entity.
• Updating information will be based on the email. As a result, all employees in Xero must have email addresses, as they must match the emails maintained in Personio.
• For an employee to be successfully synced, there should be no validation errors to be solved. Any errors will be shown in the employee profile or Payroll Xero Payroll, the latter being where you can manage your payroll sync with Xero. Find more details section How to sync your data with Xero. 

Note
The sync sends changes up to the pay period dates for salaries and other compensations. New starter information is sent up to the current sync date. This means that employees with hire date after the sync date are not included in the sync.

Important to note

• Ending employment is not supported: When an employment is terminated within Personio, there is currently no way for Personio to automatically set the end date for the employee in Xero. Therefore, it is required to mark the employment as terminated in Xero.
• Excluding employees from the sync: If you wish to exclude an inactive employee from the sync, you will need to set the attribute Include in UK Payroll to No.
• Xero working patterns are not following an equal distribution of hours over Monday to Friday need to be adjusted in Xero after a sync. Currently, the sync will take the Personio attribute Weekly Hours and equally distribute over Monday to Friday for the relevant employees. If an employee does not follow this pattern, amendments need to be made in Xero.
• In case you have any hourly workers in Xero, you might see an error after syncing your data when Personio surfaces the results of the sync. This is because Personio will identify employees in Xero who are not part of the sync and will raise the error message stating "The following employees only exist in Xero, but not Personio[...]". This error is expected and can be ignored, since Personio does not include hourly salary in the data sync.
• Payslip transfer: Payslip imports from Xero to Personio are not supported in the Xero integration. This limitation is due to Xero's API not supporting payslip transfers.

How are compensations synced with Xero?

Before conducting a sync, make sure to map Personio Compensations to Xero Earning. Once this is done, the mapped compensations will be considered in your Xero data sync. Find the sync session in the section below.

Note the following aspects:

• Personio must clear the employee's current earning from their Xero pay template to sync compensations. This is necessary so that Personio can be used as the leading system for compensation management. As a result, all relevant compensations are expected to be maintained in Personio. However, if no fixed salary or additional compensation is mapped in Personio, those specific values will remain unchanged in the Xero pay template.
• Any Personio compensations that are not mapped to an earning type in Xero will not be synced.
• Once a salary is synced, the earning types are not updated.
• One-time compensations, recurring compensations and bonuses can only be synced for monthly payroll periods or periods that include the first of the month.
• Mid-month salary prorations in custom periods are accurately synced with Xero.

Note
If a fixed salary exists in Xero, it needs to match with the Personio value in the first sync so that the compensation can be identified. If the values for an employee do not match, Personio will raise an error after the sync.

How to sync your data with Xero

To access the payroll overview and sync the data with Xero, you need edit rights for the Payroll in Personio:

Manage your monthly sync in Payroll > Xero Payroll. In this overview, you can see all relevant employees for each existing legal entities in Personio. The Pay Period information in the upper left corner is retrieved from Xero and includes the current payroll cycle. Syncs will be not available where there is already a draft payroll available in Xero.

To sync your Personio data with Xero, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Payroll Xero and choose the relevant legal entity in the left upper corner.
2. Review if there are any open tasks to ensure that the sync includes all relevant employees.
3. Click on Sync with Xero to sync the data with Xero.
4. Personio will provide a status of the data transfer and include any additional information about eventual issues.

Note
The sync sends changes up to the pay period dates for salaries and other compensations. New starter information is sent up to the current sync date. This means that employees with hire date after the sync date are not included in the sync.

Add the remaining data to Xero after the sync

Since not all relevant data is automatically synced with Xero, consider to add further information. The preliminary payroll might help you to get this information in a consolidated format for the relevant month. The following information is not supported:

• The sync of bonus payouts
• The sync of hourly workers
• The sync of hourly time off
• Management of student loans, pensions, and director status is dealt with in Xero
• Inactive employees are synced, but further information are required in Xero (for example, ending an employment or processing payment)
• Managing working patterns other than 5 days  

Tip
You can sync your Personio time off to Xero Leave. Learn how to use this feature.