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In MYOB, under Payroll details tab and Salary and Wages tab, you can select a Wage expense category (account) for each employee. This is really handy if we have lots of staff and different departments. In Xero, we can allocate a specific tracking category eg. Cafe, Factory, Admin, but not a specific Wage expense account for each employee. So all wages are allocated to the Wages and Salaries account, and each month I need to do a manual journal to reallocate to the correct wage expense accounts. Eg. Reallocate Wages and Salaries to Wages and Salaries - Admin, Wages and Salaries - Factory, Wages and Salaries - Cafe. Unfortunately when running the Balance Sheet report and applying filters, it shows a negative amount under Wages Payable - Payroll account, and a Tracking Transfers account with a positive amount. These figures cannot be hidden either. Having each employee with a specific wage expense account would be brilliant!

I would like to second Matt Withers idea. It would be helpful if two sets of tracking categories can be included in Payroll so we can effectively generate the required information in Xero at source.

We can categorise invoices into two tracking categories so why not payroll?

yes we need this ASAP!!

We are a not for profit and I spend so long each month journaling the wages and super! Makes me want to go back to Reckon!

Agreed - spend sooo much time figuring out what hasn't been assigned a tracking category in wages, it's not just the leave & super but items added that aren't on timesheets like allowances.
Totally painful and such a waste of time!

We really need to track hours between jobs but then also to be broken up in cost codes (tasks in the job)

This is critical and vital!
Employees do work on different aspect of the business and it would be really, really helpful to be able to track the different aspects......like customer service hours, marketing, dispatch etc

This is a critical feature, central to having functional payroll reporting.

Typical Xero, give you an option which is then useless because you cannot assign a different category to each employee (one who works in category A area and another who works in category B).
Xero - you need to up your game if you want to seriously compete with MYOB in the minds of accounts professionals.

I thought I was going crazy thinking it was something we were not doing. You follow all the processes regarding tracking categories around payroll to find that you can't even report on them. The reports default to the assigned tracking category, which is great if staff don't work across multiple venues. I too need this for my NFP/Social Enterprise Hospitality Groups.

yes this would really help, as you have to journal the difference, and it may not be accurate.

I also need to utilise this feature for our payroll only database - why is it not payroll setting related?

I've just went looking to set up employee groups for the first time and I can't believe this is part of the LIMITED TWO tracking categories available!!!

How is this not a separate payroll function!?

I completely agree with Luke Reade's comments below. We have exactly the same issue as a NFP. For grant acquittals we are asking all of our staff to track their hours by grant using tracking categories but then can't run reporting on it! It doesn't make any sense at all.

Very important!!!, I have clients that they want the same option as MYOB, tracking categories for payroll for superannuation, annual leave, LSL, PAYG Withholding and other expenses regarding payroll that consider important to start using Xero instead of MYOB.

Also, it is important to business that working with grants.

I believe that Xero can do better job than MYOB.

I've just spent some time trying to find how to do this - to view, by month, tracking category breakdown of staff salaries paid, for the purposes of both 1) grant reporting and aquittal, and 2) budget management. What's the point of staff filling out time sheets, assigning hours to tracking categories, and then not seeing this breakdown, having to use a spead sheet to convert hours (in 'timesheet details' report) to dollars spent, including superanuation etc).

We should be able to do a monthly P&L, click on salaries and see a column with the tracking category breakdown. This could also be done in timesheet details report giving a column in $ not just hours.

We could do this for non-salary expenses by having charts of accounts that reflect budget line items, but salaries are different in that a staff member could spend various times on different tracking categories.

As we already have two tracking categories used for our accounts, we are not able to set up Employee Groups for payroll!!!
Employee groups should be in Payroll as Standard.
Be better if Payroll was a standalone package.

I agree with so many of the comments. I would like to be able to split an employee's wages across multiple tracking categories for funding acquittal purposes.

I think that adding tracking categories to the pay template would be great as you can set and forget until circumstances call for the template to be updated. It would mean you can add multiple earning lines to track across multiple categories too. On top of this you can add tracking to reimbursements, deductions and superannuation.

It would be a valuable upgrade to many.

Please allow and update XERO timesheets with project tracking to be approved and not override salary wage earners and then this would allow the tracking to work on each project P&L report without having to manually produce these in an EXCEL Spreadsheet, thank you!