This screen allows you to assign locations to employees which can later be used to report the labour costs of each location.

A short video on this setup can be found here.

Note: A location does not have to be a geographical place. It can be a branch of your business.

Add a location

1. Click the  Business menu.
2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
3. Under Pay Run Settings, click Locations.
4. Click Add to add a new location.
   

To add a new location, you need to enter the following information:

• Location name - Required field.
• State.
• Country - This field is only required if you have an employee classified with an income type of  "Foreign employment" and need to record the country where the employee is working and, as a result, is being paid earnings for such work. This is an essential setup for STP reporting. Otherwise, leave the field blank.
• Time zone.
• Is a sub location of - If you want this location to be a sub location of another.
• This location correlates with a record in another system.
• Make all sub locations report to this location - When this is enabled, report will not split data into sub locations under this location. All report data will be "rolled up" and included in this location.
• Default shift conditions - Only shows if certain payroll settings apply.
• Make this location available to all employees.
• General Ledger Mapping Code - See further down for more information on this.

The parent location shows at the top, with sub-locations indented underneath. Additional sub-locations are further indented. For example, in the image above, the 'Buckland Street' location is a sub-location of 'Chippendale', which is a sub-location of 'Newton.'

Import and Export Locations

You can also import and export locations to excel and csv file. 

Export Locations

1. Click the  Business menu.
2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
3. Under Pay Run Settings, click Locations.
4. Click the Export button.
   
5. Select a file format.
6. Click the Download button.

The file you export will have the following fields:

• Id
• Location Name
• Is A Sub-location Of
• External ID
• Is Enabled For All
• Rollup Reporting
• State
• Country
• Shift Condition

You can also have the ability to include Xero Tracking Categories/Netsuite Classes & departments in the export, if integrated.

New feature from 5th December 2022

Import Locations

1. Click the  Business menu.
2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
3. Under Pay Run Settings, click Locations.
4. Click the Import button.
   
5. Click the Import button in the Import Locations screen.
6. Click the Upload data from file button.
7. Choose the file you exported and edited.

You have the ability to import these fields:

• Id
• Location Name
• Is A Sub-location Of
• External ID
• Is Enabled For All
• Rollup Reporting
• State
• Country
• Shift Condition

Note: If you would like to import a top level location, follow these steps:

1. Click the  Business menu.
2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
3. Under Advanced, click Advanced Settings.
4. Tick the Allow multiple top level locations checkbox.
   
5. Click the Save button.

Once that is done, you can import top level locations by leaving the ‘Is A Sub-location Of’ column blank. Here is an example:

Delete a location

1. Click the  Business menu.
2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
3. Under Pay Run Settings, click Locations.
4. Click the  icon for the location you want to delete.
   

   Important

   You cannot delete a top-level location in the platform.

   
5. Click the Delete button.

Note: If you delete a location, previous data belonging to that location will still be in the system, but you will not be able to report on it, or it will be lumped into an unknown location field.

An alternative to deleting a location is to rename your locations to Z_Old {old name}. This way they are still in the system but at the bottom of the list.

Restore a location

1. Click the  Business menu.
2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
3. Under Advanced, click Restore Deleted Items.
4. Click the Deleted category dropdown.
5. Click Location in the list.
6. Click the Restore button for the location you want to restore.
   
7. Click the Restore button to confirm. 

General Ledger Mapping Codes

The General Ledger Export codes are used when there are a lot of locations and pay categories and to form 'implicit' account codes.

For example, lets say:

• You have a pay category called 'Ordinary Hours' with a GL mapping code of 'ORD'.
• You have a location called 'Sydney' with a GL mapping code of 'SYD' and a location called 'Brisbane' with a GL mapping code of 'BRIS'.

What would happen when producing the journals is that any Ordinary Hours earnings in the Sydney location would be allocated to an account called ORD.SYD. Any Ordinary Hours earnings in the Brisbane location would be allocated to an account called ORD.BRIS.

They are not necessary to fill in, and you can generally just set up your accounts in the chart of accounts settings page. If they are not present, the account settings in the chart of accounts will be used.

Note: The employee's primary location will be the location used to assign the leave provisions, not the location where the employee worked. 

Enable multiple top-level locations

By default, the system will assign the first location configured within the business as the top-level location. All new locations will either be sub-locations of this primary location or existing locations.

You can enable the ability to create multiple separate top-level locations

To do this:

1. Click the  Business menu.
2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
3. Under Advanced, click Advanced Settings.
4. Tick the Allow multiple top level locations checkbox.
   
5. Click the Save button.

This will change the interface slightly when viewing a location. You will gain access to a setting (a check box) to specify whether the location is a sub-location or not.

Bulk Add a Location

When new locations are added via employee import, not all data is completed and the user needs to manually go into the new location to update the other fields. Now, we have added the option to add employees to a location from the Add a location step.  You can select via several filters to add (individually or in bulk) or remove employees from a location instead of having to go to the employee list. When assigning employees, you can select by specific employee, employee group, employing entity, or pay schedule. There could be some more options we can add.

1. Click the  Business menu.
2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
3. Under Pay Run Settings, click Locations.
4. Click Add to add a new location.
5. Select the settings you want for that location.
6. Click Employee List.
7. Choose based on these filters:
   • Pay schedule
   • Employing entity
   • Tags
   • Employee groups
   • Primary location
   • Employee list
   
8. Click the Save button.

Set up a Xero Tracking Category

If you have integrated Xero for your accounting, you can configure Xero Tracking Categories within locations within your payroll platform. This feature allows you to map specific locations to tracking categories in Xero, making it easier to organise and manage your accounting data.

To add a Xero Tracking Category:

1. Add a new location as shown above.
2. Use the Xero Tracking Category dropdown ‌items to select a tracking category.
3. If this location correlates with a record in another system, click the checkbox.
4. Click Save.