As well as with exporting timesheets to Xero Payroll to pay your employees, Deputy can also export timesheets to populate invoices in Xero for billing clients or contractor-issued invoices.
This article assumes you have already connected Deputy to Xero and will cover:
Accounts receivable invoices - Time Billing Invoices
You might like to implement this process if your employees in Deputy work directly with your customers and you want to bill the time worked to your customers via Xero invoicing.
Let's look at how to do this:
1. Deputy does not have Customer Relationship Management capability, however, you can set up your Locations or Area in Deputy as your customer's names with your areas as the services you bill them for.
Example:
This is a business that has its staff working directly with its customers providing business and accounting advice billed by the hour. Its customers are set up as Locations in Deputy.
2. Once the customer's business is set up as a Location in your Deputy account your employees that are providing a service to that customer can be assigned to that location and can clock on and off to generate timesheets in the relevant location's (or customer's) area.
Example:
David is working with the customer "Ben's Burgers" to help them with their accounts three days this week. David will clock in and out of these shifts to generate timesheets for the time worked at Ben's Burgers.
3. Timesheets are then approved by a manager on the Timesheets > Approve Timesheets page.
4. To export these approved timesheets as invoices, go to Timesheets > Export Timesheets.
5. Use the location and date selector to ensure you have the correct timesheets and select the names of the employee timesheets you wish to export.
6. Click Export Selected Items.
7. From the payroll application dropdown menu scroll down to select Xero Time Billing.
You can also select the following options in this pop up:
| Field name | Options | Notes |
| Invoice To: |
|
your answer here will depend on whether you set your Deputy Locations or Areas up as your customer names |
| Markup % | enter a value to specify a percentage to mark up the employees base hourly rate when invoicing the customer | % mark up is applied to the employee's hourly rate of pay |
| Item |
Choose from:
|
If you select No item the invoice in Xero will use the hourly rate from the timesheet in Deputy. If you select Use Area Export code in this field, it will ignore the hourly rate set in Deputy (and the % markup field above) and use the selling price specified with the item in Xero. You can map Deputy Area Export Codes to Xero Item codes by editing the area export code in Deputy to match the Xero Item Code. See using Xero Inventory codes when Invoicing |
| Tax Code | Tax code for the invoice line | |
| Hide employee names in invoice line description | Tick the box to hide the name of the employee who worked the hours in the invoice generated in Xero. | Xero invoices created from Deputy exported Time billing timesheets will include the employee name by default. If you want to hide it, select this option. |
9. Once you have selected your options click Export.
10. Once you export the selected timesheets from Deputy to Xero, an invoice will be created per location / area of timesheet depending on which option you chose in the Invoice To field and each timesheet will be a separate line in the invoice.
Example:
In our example, an invoice is created in Xero for our customer Ben's Burgers to bill them for the time David spent working on their accounts for the past three days. Each timesheet from each of the days David worked is a separate line in the invoice.
Accounts payable - Xero contractor invoices
Just as you can generate invoices based on timesheets for customers in Xero, you can also generate self-issued invoices to contractors for the hours they have worked for your business. Usually, in the contractor industry, you have to wait for the invoice from the contractor to pay them. In Deputy, since you can truly track the hours of work you can just pay them.
To do this:
1. Once your contractor has timesheets submitted and your manager in Deputy has approved them, they are ready to export.
2. Go to Timesheets > Export Timesheets.
3. Use the location and date selector to ensure you have the correct timesheets and select the names of the contractor timesheets you wish to export.
4. Click Export Selected Items.
5. Select Xero Contractor Invoice (Accounts Payable per Employee).
6. Select from the options available:
| Field name | Options | Notes |
| Account: |
Select the account in Xero you want the cost of the contractor hours attributed to. |
This list is populated from your accounts list in your connected Xero account. |
| Item |
Choose from:
|
If you select No item the invoice in Xero will use the hourly rate from the timesheet in Deputy. If you select an item code, it will ignore the hourly cost of the employee and apply the purchase price specified for the inventory item in Xero. See using Xero Inventory codes when Invoicing |
| Tax Code | Tax code for the invoice line |
7. Once you have selected your options click Export.
8. Once you have exported from Deputy to Xero and one invoice per employee/contractor will appear in Xero, Business > Bills to Pay.
Using Xero Inventory items when invoicing
In both of the above-described scenarios, if you do NOT choose an item in the options when exporting Deputy timesheets, the hourly rate set in Deputy and applied to the timesheets exported will flow through to the invoice in Xero.
If you are using Xero Inventory items and need to charge your customer's specific rates for different services you can set up Area export codes and map these to Xero inventory codes to cater for this.
To do this you would:
- Set up your customer as a Location in Deputy and set up areas within it for each of the different services you provide.
- Add an area export code to your areas in Deputy.
- Create your inventory items in Xero being sure to match the item code in Xero to the Area export code in Deputy.
- If you export your Deputy team sheets as Xero Time Billing choose Use Area Export code.
- If you choose to export your Deputy timesheets as Xero Contractor Invoice (Accounts Payable) click on the Item drop-down field and choose the Xero Inventory Item from the populated list.
Note: If you choose to use this option to match Deputy area export code to the Xero Inventory item code then the timesheet data that is exported will use the cost you have set in the Xero inventory item NOT the Deputy hourly rate set in the employee's profile in Deputy.