There’s no doubt the most important part of any small business is its people. That’s why we’re committed to making it as easy as possible for you to manage your business and employee information in Xero, whether it’s payroll and timesheets, or leave and expenses.

Xero Expenses continues to be one of our most loved products, helping you track and manage employee expense and mileage claims for your business. It’s available in all regions and can be accessed via our desktop solution or mobile app.

Last year, we injected Hubdoc’s technology into Xero Expenses, making it faster to process expense claims by automatically extracting information from the photo of the receipt. Now, we’re going one step further, by integrating our Xero Expenses technology into the Xero Me app.

Save time on employee admin with Xero Me

Xero Me is an app for employees of businesses that use Xero Payroll (available in Australia, New Zealand and the UK). It empowers your employees to access and update their information on the go, so you can spend more time on your people and less time on the paperwork.

Your employees can use Xero Me to:

• submit timesheets – enter time and select an earnings rate, create multiple entries each day, submit timesheets for approval, approve timesheets (managers only), get notified about approvals
• manage leave requests – apply for leave, view upcoming leave requests, edit or delete requests, approve or reject leave requests (managers only), get notified about approvals
• check payslips – view past payslips, download PDF versions of payslips, get notified when a new payslip is available

Expenses coming soon to Xero Me

Previously, employees needed to use the Xero Expenses app in addition to Xero Me if they wanted to submit an expense or mileage claim. We know using two different apps was a hassle for employees, so we’ve made Xero Expenses available inside Xero Me, so we have one app for employees that does it all.

Xero Me will include all the functionality that your employees can currently access in Xero Expenses, with a fresh new look that makes it easier for them to submit and manage their claims.

There’s nothing you need to do — over the coming weeks, new employees invited to Xero Expenses will be asked to download Xero Me, and existing employees will be prompted to use Xero Me when they open Xero Expenses to submit a claim (their expense claims and history will be waiting for them).

If you have admin or approval level access, you will still need to use Xero Expenses (desktop or mobile app) to manage your business expenses as usual.

Making it easier to set up new employees

In the weeks ahead, we’ll also be rolling out changes to make it easier to add a new employee to Xero Expenses. This will help you capture all the information you need up front, without having to resend emails, chase employees for information or manually add it yourself.

When you add a new employee to Xero Expenses, they’ll get a welcome email with instructions to add their personal information and bank details to Xero Me, so they can quickly get reimbursed for their expenses. You can see who has accepted the invite in Xero Expenses, and quickly resend if needed.

These changes are all part of our commitment to making life better for people in small business and their advisors, by helping you manage your business and employee information in Xero. I hope your employees enjoy their new Xero Me experience — I can’t wait to hear what they think.