Payroll Warning for Employees with Pending Leave Requests
When approving a pay run, Xero should check whether any employees included in the pay period have leave requests that are still awaiting approval and inform the payroll officer.
If pending leave requests exist, display a warning before the pay run can be completed, for example:
"2 employees included in this pay run have pending leave requests awaiting approval for the selected period."
This warning should work regardless of whether the business uses Xero Timesheets, enters payroll manually, or imports hours from a third-party timekeeping system.
Why this is important
In many businesses, leave approvals are performed by line managers while payroll is processed by a separate payroll administrator. If a manager hasn't approved a leave request before payroll is run, it's easy for the leave to be overlooked.
This can result in:
Payroll corrections after processing
Overpayments or underpayments
Missed leave entries
Additional administrative work investigating and correcting payroll
There is already an idea requesting reporting for uncompleted leave requests, however reports rely on payroll administrators remembering to check them. A warning during pay run approval would act as a preventative control and help reduce payroll errors before payroll is finalised.
Brendan Hofer
shared this idea
Hi Brendan, just to let you know, this capability already exists in Xero Payroll!
If an employee has an unapproved leave request or timesheet for the pay period of a draft pay run, Xero displays a warning message directly in the draft pay run view:
- "This employee has an unapproved leave request for this pay run. Approve it now."
- "This employee has an unapproved timesheet for this pay run. Approve it now."
This ensures you are alerted to any outstanding requests before posting your pay run.
Hope this helps clarify how this functions! If you need any further assistance setting up or managing pay runs, feel free to reach out to our Xero Support team. 😊
