AU Payroll - Ability to apply work patterns to part time employees
Suggest the ability to apply work patterns to part time employees. For example, we have a part time employee who works 7 hours on Mon, 6 hours on Tues and 6 hours on Wed.
At the moment, if a Public Holiday falls on a Monday, it does not correctly work out hours worked.
The same happens if Annual Leave is taken; incorrect hours are calculated which affects AL accruals.
Hours worked have to be calculated and added manually.

Hey everyone 👋 Thanks so much for all the detailed feedback on applying work patterns for part-time employees. We’ve been following the conversation and understand that manually adjusting pay runs for pro-rata entitlements can be a real challenge. It’s clear that having this automated could save time and give you greater peace of mind.
I’m pleased to let you know our product team has reviewed this idea and we’re updating the status to ‘Accepted’. This means that while it’s not on our immediate roadmap, it’s something we see real value in and want to bring into Xero when we can prioritise the work.
In the meantime, the workarounds shared here, like manually adjusting hours in each pay run, remain the best approach. We really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts, as your feedback plays a crucial role in shaping Xero. We’ll keep you updated on any developments here. 🙂
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Kelly Walker commented
Would also be helpful for FT employees, particularly trades that work longer hours x4 and a shorter day at EOW.
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Jackie Chalwell commented
this will be so timesaving if we can have this feature in Australia please
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Sheila Quarta commented
Agree. When staff apply for leave and during public holiday, we have to constantly do a manual split of hours between ordinary, Pub Hol and leave and this allows for mistakes.
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Anne McPhee commented
Agree. Every time there is a public holiday we have to go in an manually adjust the payslips of everyone who does not work a standard week. The Christmas / New Year period was a nightmare
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Lubi Thomas commented
Definitely need this feature ASAP!
We have multiple part-time employees working different days, and manually going through and correcting Public Holidays and Leave is very time-consuming. We need the same work pattern set up in Australian Xero! -
Alix Anderson commented
Definitely need this feature ASAP!
We have multiple part time employees working different hours/ days and having to manually go through and correct Public Holidays and Leave is very time consuming. We need the same work pattern setup in Australian Xero! -
toby france commented
critical and needed asap
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Lubi Thomas commented
Critical feature for our Part time employees. the lack of this option is causing a lot of back of house labour to ensure everything is correct, including when PH land on days other than Monday's and leave management etc. Please get this on line ASAP.
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Andrew Cameron commented
This feature would be so handy for our part time employees for the reasons already mentioned.
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Mackenzie Stratford commented
Critical feature we should have access to
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Nancy Ibrahim commented
this feature should be added for part time employees, XERO Australia.
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Justine Sheehan commented
Don't know why this isn't available Australia
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Cathy Wicks commented
Very Disappointing this feature is not available in Australia
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Emma Petrig commented
Xero needs to keep up with the various payroll obligations employees face.
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Daniel Thompson commented
This is a must have for us, it's a real pain dealing with payroll without it! And I understand the feature has been available in NZ for some time... https://blog.xero.com/nz/product-updates/nz-payroll-bolstering-product-new-value/
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Giovanna D'Rozario commented
Can't believe this option is available overseas but not here!
This is a business critical feature we need otherwise we will need to go with another payroll solution
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Warrick Dunn commented
Should be a basic feature of all accounting software. Its actually such a but pain every single payroll!
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Karyn Muscat commented
I actually can't believe that this isn't an option. I thought I must have been doing something wrong as I thought this would be just a basic function. Xero really needs to get this implemented...
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Sarah Locke commented
This is really more than critical. This flexibility should be in a payroll system especially now that work conditions have become more flexible. I hope this can be done asap.
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Accounts Expertunity Pty Ltd commented
A hassle for me every time there's a public holiday or annual leave. The system assumes part-timers work reduced hours across 5 days, rather than allowing for the actual days worked. Along with all the other limitations of Xero payroll, I would suggest they integrate a 3rd-party solution (as Quickbooks did with Keypay) and spend their very limited development dollars on fixing the multitude of other ****-ups that we've been waiting years for.