Connect once in Settings, Venue, Integrations and Roster handles everything up to the pay run: your team and pay rates come in from Xero, approved timesheets and leave go back out as drafts for your bookkeeper to sign off. Available for AU venues.
What syncs, and which way
Xero to Roster:
- Your employee list, when you import your team - name, email, phone, employment basis
- Ordinary earnings rate per employee, when you pair them
Roster to Xero:
- New employees, when you push a worker across from their profile
- Approved timesheets, exported as drafts
- Approved full-day paid leave, as a leave application
Setting it up
- Connect Xero. Settings, Venue, Integrations, then Connect Xero. You'll sign in to Xero and authorise Roster once.
- Import or pair your team. Bring your existing team in with Import from Xero on the Team page, or pair each Roster worker to their Xero employee record one by one. Either way, Roster pulls the ordinary earnings rate automatically - nothing to copy across by hand.
- Map your leave types. Match Roster's leave categories to the equivalent Xero leave types so approved leave has somewhere to land.
- Approve timesheets as usual. Nothing changes about how you run the roster or approve hours - export happens after approval, per pay cycle.
- Sign off in Xero. Exported timesheets land as drafts. Your bookkeeper reviews and confirms them in Xero like any other payroll input.
When you're ready to run payroll end to end, follow Complete a pay run with Xero - the step-by-step runbook, including what to do when the export complains.
If a worker doesn't have a rate set in Xero yet, set a venue-wide default ordinary rate so their shifts still cost correctly in the schedule until it's fixed on their Xero record.
Bringing your team in from Xero
From Team, choose Import from Xero and Roster pulls your active employees into a review table before any invites go out: name, email, phone, employment basis and pay rate. Salaried employees get a derived hourly rate (annual salary divided by 52 weeks and their weekly hours) so their shifts still cost correctly on the schedule. If there's nothing to derive a rate from, that field is left blank rather than guessed - a guessed rate that's wrong is worse than one you know to go check.
Cost centres and tracking categories
If your Xero organisation tracks wage costs by cost centre (a tracking category nominated under Timesheet Categories in Xero's payroll settings), Roster can tag every exported hour with the right one - including when staff work across multiple sites or areas.
Set it up once under Settings, Venue, Integrations, in the Cost-centre tracking card on the Xero integration:
- Pick a venue default - the cost centre used for any hours that don't have a more specific mapping.
- Optionally map each of your areas to its own cost centre. Hours follow the area of the shift they were worked in.
From then on, exported timesheet lines carry the matching tracking option in Xero, so wage costs report by cost centre without the bookkeeper re-keying anything. Multi-venue groups connect each venue to the same Xero organisation and give each its own default - a worker covering two sites in one pay period lands in one Xero timesheet with their hours split correctly per site.
One thing to know: if your Xero org enforces timesheet tracking and the mapping isn't set up in Roster yet, Xero rejects untagged timesheets - the export will tell you exactly that and point you at the setup card.
Coming soon
Being straight about the current limits:
- Leave balances don't sync yet. Roster sends approved leave to Xero, but doesn't read accrual balances back - check a worker's remaining balance in Xero before approving leave.
- No automatic pay-run posting. Exports land as drafts by design. A human always signs off in Xero before anything pays out.
- One ordinary rate per worker. Xero receives hours against whichever ordinary earnings rate you've paired - Roster costs award and penalty loadings internally when building the schedule, but doesn't send Xero a per-shift loading breakdown.
Frequently asked
Does this work for MYOB too? MYOB payroll follows the same shape - connect it in Settings, Integrations, and approved timesheets export for your bookkeeper to review.
What if I don't use Xero or MYOB? Export approved timesheets to CSV or Excel and hand them to any payroll provider or bookkeeper.