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AU Payroll - Specify leave approver

Ability to specify a set approver for a specific employee for when they submit leave requests.

Employees who are nominated as a leave approver should only be able to approve leave for the specific employees who have them nominated as their approver.

Alternatively, employees who have the "Authorised to Approve Leave" checkbox ticked should only be able to approve leave by employees in the same Employee Group.

Only payroll admins should be able to approve leave for all employees.

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Robert Firth shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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Not in pipeline  ·  AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded  · 

Thanks for the great discussion and all the votes on this idea. We know that without the ability to set specific leave approvers, it can be harder to keep governance clear, avoid self-approval and ensure requests go to the right person.

While we’re not planning to develop dedicated approval workflows in the near term, we want to share a tip that many have found useful. You can help streamline the process by guiding employees to select their direct manager from the approver list. While all payroll admins and leave approvers are listed, this step helps make sure requests reach the right person and keeps oversight clear.

Your feedback here is incredibly valuable for future planning and we’ll continue to keep an eye on this idea’s traction. We’ll keep it open for voting and will share any updates if plans change down the track.

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  • Erin Starkey commented  ·   ·  Report

    It would be great if we could specify a work email address for leave approvals for employees who have the "Authorised to Approve Leave" checkbox ticked rather than the leave approval emails being sent to their personal email address. Leave approvals are a work task and employee information (payslips etc) are personal. Or there should be levels of payroll admins if an employee should have 2 logins to Xero (work & personal) - some line managers only need to approval leave and expense claims but have no other payroll access.

  • Tina Andersen commented  ·   ·  Report

    I cannot believe the XERO Development Team have not even considered this. Not all payroll admin should have access to approve leave or timesheets for all employees. We have our Accountants now annoyed that they are getting each and every Christmas holiday request, which is time consuming for them to have to delete.

    The user access module needs to be updated to allow additional levels and requests per 'payroll admin' very similar to how the rest of the system works. Considering that payroll would be the most confidential part of the account, Xero has left this wide open to anyone with 'payroll access' not smart !!

  • Miriam Fatela commented  ·   ·  Report

    I agree, we need to be able to set what managers need to approve the employees leave.

  • Jo Hempel commented  ·   ·  Report

    I definitely agree with this! We need to be able to set what managers need to approve the employees leave.

  • Sarah Ludlow commented  ·   ·  Report

    Critical - larger payrolls with multiple divisions cannot delegate the managers responsibilities properly.

  • Ryan Bellevue commented  ·   ·  Report

    Definitely a good idea. Several of our client need the second option mentioned where leave is limited by employee group (or something similar where it is done on the set up end, as opposed to being done by the employee). Though it would be nice to limit even payroll admins in the same way.

  • Thea Merritt commented  ·   ·  Report

    Agree, one client has employees in different states and particular managers need to approve particular employees leave. Would be great to allocate employees to a particular approver/manager.

  • Alanna Cooper commented  ·   ·  Report

    Just allocating a specific supervisor to a specific employee for all timesheets/leave would be great

  • Natalie Macinic commented  ·   ·  Report

    Agree, as not all payroll admin should have access to approval for all employees

  • Emma Rosenblatt (Accounts) commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is so necessary! Otherwise, people with payroll access who can approve leave can not only approve everyone's leave instead of just the people they are managing but also their own...Not a good process at all. Unfortunately it is things like this that make Xero not good for larger companies and only suitable for a one-man show or small team.

    Secondly, there is no history or timestamp of the approver, who and when the leave was approved.

  • Megan McConville commented  ·   ·  Report

    Agree - furthermore, there should be a way payroll admin can ensure another user approves their own leave. Currently, when the payroll admin posts a leave request this is immediately approved. Instead they should be able to select somebody else to approve their leave, and ensure it is NOT automatically approved in the system.

  • Peter Park commented  ·   ·  Report

    I think this is real stupid.

    If you see User role access to payroll in xero,

    It states Limited access Approve Leave and timesheets for others.

    If they have permissoion and have Xero me accesss.

    So how do you give them permission.

    Managers should be approving time sheets not payroll admin etc.

    If it says you can then you should be able to right.....

  • Anna Cicognani commented  ·   ·  Report

    100% agree - it's not good for all leave approvers to see everyone else's leave, and the approvals need to be hierarchical instead. This has been a shortcoming for a long time.

  • Sara Hopper commented  ·   ·  Report

    The ability to be able to assign specific approvers to employees would be useful. It would also be good to not allow approvers to be able to select themselves to approve their own leave.

  • VJ Boland commented  ·   ·  Report

    I hope this is coming sometime VERY soon as I cant read the responses from Xero.
    this (along with a few other reasons) that I havent got my workforce using XeroMe yet

  • Cindy Randall commented  ·   ·  Report

    This would be invaluable! Currently we have multiple accountants, a bookkeeper, business partners, etc. all in the list as approvers - when only one person actually needs to get the email. Being able to just have the one approved person for that specific employee would make things so much easier - especially for onboarding new employees.

  • Sara McIlwraith commented  ·   ·  Report

    The ability to have a two tiered leave approval process would be extremely helpful, so the Supervisor approves the annual leave first and then the Manager/Director/CEO confirms its ok.

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