It is your responsibility as an employer to provide your employees with their payslips each month.  Currently there is no automatic system for this in Xero; your staff are not notified when their current payslip becomes available, they either request this information from you or you may have a set date that you distribute payslips.

This places the administrative burden on you – the employer, each month to remember to go into your Xero account, print off the payslips and then distribute them to the appropriate staff members.  Alternatively, you can email the payslips to your staff, but you must have an email address set up in the employee details to enable this to happen.

A time saving and efficient alternative to the above is to let your staff members access their own payslips – using Xero Me.

1. What is Xero Me?

Xero Me is a self-service tool which gives the employee access to their payroll whenever it is convenient for them. They can log in to view their current payslip and check pay details, as well as additional services such as checking their next pay date, and access to historic payslips which they can view and download as a pdf.

According to its creators, Xero Me greatly improves the employee – employer relationship while allowing small businesses to effectively streamline their day-to-day operations.

2. How do you set up your employees on Xero Me?

To allow your employees to use Xero Me, you must have an email address in the staff members’ record and then you invite that member of staff to Xero Me.  Once the invite has been accepted, that employee will then be granted access to a part of Xero called ‘My Payroll’.

You can find more information about setting up an employee on Xero Me – here.

In ‘My Payroll’ they will be able to access the following:

• Payslips
• Form P60
• Individual Payroll record where they can update personal details if applicable.
• When the next pay day is.
• Submit leave requests and timesheets, if you use this feature on Xero and give them permission to do so on Xero Me.

3. The Xero Me App

The Xero Me App gives your employees self-service access to their payroll from their phone. As above, to access this information on their device, the employee will need to accept the invite from Xero, set up their login details and install the app using Xero Me for iOS or Xero Me for Android

The Xero Me app means your employees can have access to their payroll records at any time, from anywhere so they can always stay up to date.

4. Points to consider when introducing Xero Me to your employees

Xero Me is all about giving your employees more flexibility over when and where they access their payroll information, but as with any new system, your employees may have questions or concerns.

Remember apps are all about personal choice and preferences. Some of your employees will not want to install this app as they may feel they have enough apps running on their phones or they may not want something related to work on their personal devices. Using My Payroll on the computer works perfectly well too.

Security may be a concern to your staff, so it is worth mentioning that using Xero Me is very secure and no one else will have access to their personal payroll details (other than your current Xero administrators of course). Likewise, for employers, there is no additional security risk as your employees will only be able to see their own records.

If you have any questions about introducing Xero Me or payroll in general, please do not hesitate to contact Ruth Phelps.