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We have the same issue here in NZ - we have a fortnightly flexible working pattern for all our staff and even having the working pattern already released here (which works for all staff and not just part time for the person wondering about fulltime) it doesn't help us much as I still have to adjust leave and payroll each fortnight depending on hours worked, public holidays or leave. A fortnightly schedule would indeed make much more sense!! So unfortunately guys it won't be an ultimate fix for you as I still have to manually adjust for those who don't do the same hours each week.

This is fantastic news and a much-needed improvement for AU Payroll. Thank you for listening to customer feedback and working on a solution.

One request from our side would be to please consider supporting a two-week working pattern, rather than limiting it to a single week.

We process payroll fortnightly, and a large proportion of our part-time employees do not work the same pattern every week. For example:

Some employees work 0.9 FTE, where Week 1 is a full Monday to Friday schedule, and Week 2 is only four days.
Other employees work different hours and even different days between Week 1 and Week 2.

If the system only supports a one-week pattern, these employees would still require manual adjustments for leave requests, public holidays, and payroll calculations, which is the exact challenge many of us are currently trying to overcome.

A two-week pattern would align much better with a fortnightly pay cycle and would cover a significant number of real-world part-time arrangements without requiring ongoing manual intervention.

Please don't limit the functionality to a single-week pattern if possible. A two-week pattern would make this feature much more practical and valuable for many organisations.

Thanks again for working on this. We're really looking forward to seeing it released! 😊

Great this can't come soon enough

Great to see this much awaited feature being added. I would love to see this allowing for a fortnightly work pattern which is required for our staff.

A good start, but very standard work patterns are over a fortnight. Can't wait for this work pattern to be made available.

Thank you. That's great news

Great news. A sorely needed feature.

excellent news, would also be great if this works for full-time employees with a 4 day work week as we have the same issue here with them

This remains a huge issue for my team. Every time we have a public holiday we need to manually adjust almost every payslip. Not only does it affect part time employees but many of our full time employees work different hours each day therfore requiring manual adjustments too.
Please Xero reconsider this request. It seems to be available internationally so why not give us this feature too and make payroll smoother for everyone!?

I agree with all the comments here, it's ridiculous that having set working days/hours for PT employees in payroll isn't available after people have been asking for it for long. We are currently only a small start up but when we grow and start employing many people there's no way I'll be adjusting every payslip and leave request each month so we'll probably just to go with another accounting system that does have this feature.
How hard can it be?

It's beyond my comprehension that Xero refuse to implement this feature (set working days/hours for PT employees in payroll) that was first requested 3.5 years ago, has many customers crying out for it and is available in Xero overseas. With single touch payroll it is more imprtant than ever. The last response from David Reynolds (Xero Admin) in Nov 2025 is completely inadequate. Perhaps they are answering to another master?

This issue seems to have been raised and still present for 12 months and no such turn around has occured yet. In a world of AI products this seems lagging behind from a business plan perspective. Especially if the “working patterns feature” is available in another country but the business will not extend this feature to Aus. Why would they withould a feature already created? it seems it might be best to switch back to MYOB. We need less hands on admin workload not more!

This issue seems to be present for 12 months and no such turn around has occured yet. In a world of AI products this seems very behind. Especially if working patterns feature is available in another country but the business will not extend this feature to Aus, it seems it might be best to switch back to MYOB. We need less hands on admin workload.

This doesn't just apply to part time employees - the concept needs to be expanded to salaried employees who earn/take annual leave based on a bizarre complicated hour calculation method when they work full days regardless of the number of hours.

I would also apply this to full-time employees that have the standard ordinary hours, but spilt differently across different days (e.g. 4x longer days + 1x shorter day)

This is so disappointing to read David. The feature is live in other Xero regions. Given the past two weeks of instability in the Australian environment surely it is time to give us some of these important features we so desperately need.

Just so you can get an appreciation of just how frustrating this is. Not only can you not have employee's self-service for leave requests - because the leave requests are nonsense without a work pattern- for the current easter long weekend I had to manually adjust every single pay slip because of the Good Friday p/h for which we are not even open. Xero just apportions the total hours across the week and applies this amount to any day which are a p/h. This is actually a completely useless feature and costs time as opposed to saving it. Essentially all small business retail have staff with variable hours. You have to. Its not a 9-5 world therefore I have to adjust every single pay slip any time there is a public holiday else you end up with nonsense hours. As mentioned we dont even open on public holiday but I still have to adjust the payslips for these days. ALL OF THIS IS CAUSED BY XERO NOT HAVING THE CONCEPT OF A WORK PATTERN. Why is it taking so long to resolve this.

ZERO action taken from XERO in 3 years... poor form.

...I'm becoming increasingly suspicious that Xero management are out playing the pokies on extended lunch breaks everyday.

I agree Kirk.
Some features we have been asking for NZ uses already have access to.
Sooner or later they will find Australian uses changing to other providers.
We only changed to Xero upon the Accountants recommendations.
I suggested to the company to return to MYOB, their system allows for invoice to be sent at set dates and times as well as all the payroll features.

The Truth is Xero no longer cares about what is needed in Australia; they are too wrapped up in their global push to worry about what Xero considers minor functionality adjustments for Australian users.