Stop Chasing Timesheet Errors How XERO + BundyPlus Automate Payroll Accuracy

Stop Chasing Timesheet Errors: How Xero + BundyPlus Automate Payroll Accuracy

Xero is BundyPlus's original — and still most-used — payroll integration. In this episode, Steve and Levon sit down to unpack why it's stood the test of time, how the Xero ↔ BundyPlus workflow removes manual timesheet errors, and what that means in practice: fewer payroll mistakes, a full audit trail, and real-time visibility over who's clocked in and when.

In this episode:
✅How the Xero integration setup works (and why it takes minutes, not hours)
✅Why accurate time capture is the foundation of accurate payroll
✅What BundyPlus adds on top of Xero: rounding rules, exception flags, multi-level approvals
✅The importance of an audit trail for compliance and internal disputes
✅How employee records stay in sync automatically between platforms
✅Why this integration scales from 1-employee businesses to 200+ employee franchises
✅The real ROI of automating your timesheet-to-payroll workflow

Timestamps:
00:00 – Why the Xero integration setup is so seamless
01:18 – Welcome back: spotlighting Xero, one of our OG integrations
01:35 – A look back: Xero since 2016 and BundyPlus's first API integration
02:27 – Why time capture matters for payroll accuracy
03:07 – "Assumption is the mother of all stuff-ups"
03:45 – What BundyPlus brings to Xero: time capture, rounding rules, flagging inconsistencies
05:36 – Why auditing and record-keeping can't be overlooked
06:19 – The approval workflow: multi-level sign-off before export
07:20 – Catching payroll errors before payday
08:59 – Reducing manual data entry and human error
09:06 – Keeping employee data in sync automatically
09:54 – The power of a single source of truth
10:07 – The real ROI: accuracy and efficiency
10:49 – Audit trail = confidence and resilience
11:12 – Real-time visibility and reporting for your team
11:36 – The biggest takeaway: why Xero remains the top integration
12:18 – What Xero's longevity says about the partnership
13:04 – Wrap-up and where to get started

Got questions about connecting Xero to BundyPlus?
Drop us a line — links in the show notes below — and we'll get you up and running in minutes.

Subscribe for more BundyPlus podcast episodes on payroll, time & attendance, and workforce management.

Have questions about upgrading your time and attendance system? Reach out to the BundyPlus team — we're happy to help you find the right solution for your business. https://www.bundyplus.com.au/pages/book-a-demo

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

What I mean by efficiency is even some of the other payroll systems that that we have API integrations for, it's just completely seamless. Especially the setup. I mean, I just got out of a call now, which is why we're a bit late to start this podcast, which was a zero integration. And had that been another payroll integration, we would have been probably even more late. It's just as straight as straight as, you know, logging into your zero account, authorizing the connection, and bang, the two platforms that are connected. Once that it's kind of like a set and forget thing, and there's no kind of things that you need to do to keep the integration connected. So once that's set, Xero is effectively the source of truth. You'll be able to directly onboard your employee data. All that kind of stuff gets synced directly up to your clock. So if you're using the mobile app, it's easy enough for that to just to onboard your employees to our mobile app from Zero being the source of truth. And then when it comes to exporting timesheets, so all of your pay items are synced directly with Bundy Plus. So even some of the other payroll systems that we have that are API integrations, there's still a bit of manual work to map things back. But with Zero, it's it's really straightforward. That whole process can take maybe just 10 minutes to get your account set up, employees onboarded, pay items onboarded, all that kind of stuff is just a couple of clicks away.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Welcome, Lavon. Thanks, Steve. How's it going? Not too bad, not too bad. So yeah, Zero.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, I remember um going back well 2026 now, going back to, I mean, I first started with the company in 2016 where the Cloud Bundy Plus Live was in its infancy and wasn't even live yet. But I think even at that time we, or yourself especially, understood the opportunity with the integrations and the capabilities for API integrations and specifically with Zero. So thinking back to then and where we've come now with the growing list of almost 50 different payroll integrations, I think it's yeah, testament to capitalizing on that back then that Zero is now our most commonly used integration and our first API integration. I'll accept your title of uh visionary then. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yeah, I'd have to agree. Like Zero was one of our uh our first targeted ones because it's like up in the top two in Australia, sort of, and New Zealand, NYB and Zero. They're the two for the SMEs. And probably for me too, it's the ones that the accountants tend to favor or recommend to some of the small businesses, which is you know our niche. And you know, it it clearly had a problem to start with. It didn't have really much as far as timesheet capture, it was very much trust based. So yeah, it was an easy one to uh kick off our integration journey. So leading into that, why does uh time capture matter for payroll?

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Uh well, the obvious one is like without accurate records, then your payroll's not accurate. Uh that would be the most critical one. So yeah, it's only really gonna be as as good as the time capture or the employee data is. So incorrect hours or just missed clockings, all that kind of stuff is just really just gonna affect everything downstream with your payroll. Yeah. So you don't want to rely on assumptions or guesswork to finalise your payroll. So that's where essentially Bundy Plus comes in and that's highlights the importance of this integration and the efficiency of this integration is I think where zero kind of yeah stands apart or why it is one of our most commonly used um payroll integrations.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah, I'd I have to agree, and I think it's that assumption thing. Like there's a few, you know, versions of assumption sayings. There's the PG one and the standard one. I'll just go with the standard one because it's a bit more you know podcast friendly, but like assumption is the mother of all stuff ups. If you're assuming that people are clocking in on time and just doing manual timesheets within zero, then that's definitely going to be, you know, like a potential weak point in your whole sort of operations goes. So what is what does Bundy Plus bring to Zero?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, sure. So I mean the going back to what I was saying about the efficiency of the integration, but aside from that, I mean you've got the accuracy of the employee records. Um, you've got the ability for different time capture methods with physical time clocks as well as um our mobile app solution, all the time interpreting tools, so being able to calculate overtime, setting rules for rounding, and essentially just any being able to flag any inconsistencies or misclockings or people who have clocked in outside of the hours they're supposed to, or that that doesn't align with their shift times. But I would also say um what I mean by efficiency is even some of the other payroll systems that we have API integrations for, I mean that the it's just completely seamless, especially the setup. I mean, I just got out of a call now, which is why we're a bit late to start this podcast, which was a zero integration. And had that been another payroll integration, we would have been probably even more late.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Don't name and shame. Don't name and shame.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

But so it's just as straight as straight as logging into your zero account, authorizing the connection, and bang, that the two platforms are connected. Once that it's kind of like a set and forget thing. There's no kind of things that you need to do to keep the integration connected. So once that's set, zero is effectively the source of truth. You'll be able to directly onboard your employee data. All that kind of stuff gets synced directly up to your clock. So if you're using the mobile app, it's easy enough for that to just to onboard your employees to our mobile app from essentially from zero being the source of truth. And then when it comes to exporting timesheets, so all of your pay items are synced directly with Bundy Plus. So even some of the other payroll systems that we have that are API integrations, there's still a bit of manual work to map things back, but with Zero, it's really straightforward. That whole process can take maybe just 10 minutes to get your account set up, employees onboarded, pay items onboarded, all that kind of stuff is just a couple of clicks away.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Cool. I think probably the one that um you've missed from that is the auditing. So because the auditing side is so important with your uh record keeping, not only from a fair work, from just from you know a dispute, internal dispute sort of thing, you know, when did Mary clock in? Why was this clocking changed? So that's another big one that you can't just rely on the zero with just manual timesheets. Actually, I'm not even sure if they have any auditing on the timesheets. If I entered in nine o'clock, I don't think it even says who did what. So that's another really critical one is the auditing side.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, full audit trail on basically everything within the system, whether that's tracking who's changed what in the system, yeah, all that all that kind of just to have that level of transparency for um for security's sake as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

So as far as your business processes, what does Bundy Plus bring to that? Like as far as processing your timesheets?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, sure. So I mean, outside obviously the stuff we've mentioned of capturing the employee time, the workflow between Bundy Plus and Zero in terms of reviewing the timesheets, approving and then exporting. So that whole process is very kind of streamlined. You can have multiple levels or up to two levels of approvals, which kind of gives you that extra layer of uh transparency or security. So you could have, for example, your supervisors who do the first level of approval and then someone higher up, payroll officer manager who does the final approval. Once that's done, the exporting of the timesheets very uh efficient. It's just a matter of again a couple of clicks and that data is sent straight across to Xero. Main advantage there being no files required. So there's no downloading of uh files out of Bundy Plus that you have to upload into Xero. It kind of just magically appears as a timesheet in Zero. Um and you can still do your final approval from that end and make further changes on the Zero side if you needed to, and then obviously pay your pay your staff from there.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, exactly. And it's that it's been that ability to be able to capture those errors, those exceptions, there'll always be you know exceptions. We're all human and like the best um payroll error is the one you capture before payday, right? You don't want to be madly rushing around trying to find out, hey, what it when did you clock, why didn't you clock, why is this missing? So you get that opportunity to do it prior to zero, which is which is an awesome benefit to the process.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Yeah. And it's kind of hard to miss because before you're approving the timesheets, you're obviously got the ability to that's where all your flags and exceptions are going to show. And even if you still did, when you do that export process, that'll give you another chance to where any of those flags will reappear if they haven't been addressed properly.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

So like we're adding in another process, does that uh hinder or is it the reduction of like that manual process that you were doing before, which is the key advantage?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah, I think that will that alone increases the accuracy quite a fair bit because you've got the confidence of the time records being correct, because that's obviously come from the time clock or the mobile app. You've then got the review and the approval process. So if there were anything that needs to be changed, that's all taken care of in that process before it's gotten to um to zero. So it's almost like you've got multiple steps, almost like a 2FA of approving timesheets.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah, and you're not, you know, farting around with spreadsheets and bits of paper and things like that. So it is really that that dreamline process.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, because it's a funny thing, some people, some of the integrations that I've dealt with, I mean, even though they're using zero, they're they maybe they're not aware, but they still decide to export, like run the a pay run report, for example. And then they'll manually key that into zero. And that's where you start to open up things for errors or mistyping or human error, just whatever that is. Yeah, fat finger typos. Yeah, exactly, all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

All right, so the employee data, where does that sort of feed into everything?

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the other the half of the equation. So you've got the accurate timesheets, that's one part of it. So your employee information is kept current as well. So when you even the ability to onboard new employees, once that connection is already established from the beginning when you first set up your account, if you ever need to, especially if you have seasonal work or you're uh there's a lot of employees come and go quite regularly, you'll have the ability to even automate that process where Bundy Plus is constantly checking zero for new employees to make sure the platforms are aligned. So yeah, anything else I missed there?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

No, I think it comes back to that's that single source of truth. You don't want to be changing some person's name because they married in two different platforms. You'd rather just keep it as one, sync it through, automatically goes to the clock or the mobile app, doesn't really matter. So yeah, that's just one of those benefits you get. Okay, so it's pretty obvious businesses see the value in this integration. So what would be the key value that businesses will get from actually, you know, going to the effort, even though it's only 30 seconds, connecting up, what's the return on investment?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Um I'd say accuracy and efficiency would be the two standout ones for me, especially as it relates to zero. We'll discuss the accuracy in terms of the record keeping and the not requiring or not having any uh manual guesswork that can obviously affect your accuracy and then the efficiency in terms of setting up the account and then just the ongoing processes and data flow between the two systems, those would be the two main ones. Then from a kind of fallback security point of view, the audit trail. So what we mentioned earlier about having the full audit trail on any changes made within the system. Um and I think overall all that just kind of leads to m better confidence and uh resilience, which is something we've touched on in previous episodes for your entire payroll process. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

And probably the other thing I would think of is like the visibility to your team because you now have you know real-time clocking information on an app or on your desktop on Bundy Plus, you get to see who's in, who's out. You can you can basically intervene those things that might be disrupting your workflow during the day, then what the paper timesheet method wouldn't have found or would have, you know, not picked up earlier. So yeah, the visibility is always a good you get extra reports, of course, that you can do job costing and stuff at that within Bundy Plus. Yeah, and as you said, it's just that sort of confidence in the data that you're getting is much more accurate. It's going in seamlessly with very little human touch, potentially the multi-level approval if you need it or not. So Livon, uh what's the biggest takeaway? Like given it's our, you know, one of our biggest integrations, like why is that?

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah, look, I think the reason why it is our most commonly, not just because it's our oldest one, it's it's been around for the longest, but the reason why it's the one that's most adopted really just comes down to the efficiency and the accuracy of the integration and it for all business sizes. So for our smaller businesses from one to ten employees all the way up to larger um businesses or uh or franchises that have over 200 employees, uh it stands apart for that reason. All right, Steve. So since uh going back to where we started, since we've seen this uh zero B around from our first payroll integration, our first API integration to where it is now still our most commonly used integration or payroll integration, why is that or what is that a testament to?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Uh I think it's probably the robustness of it. It's you know stood the test of time over many years, you know, hundreds and hundreds of companies. But it's also too for me, like with payroll, it's hard to change or accounting, it's hard to change. People do, it's a big process. But if you've got zero, then why wouldn't you want the most accurate employee data feeding into your platform or your accounting of choice? I mean, that to me is a captain obvious bit of this. Like uh Bundy Plus gives you that accuracy and those the audibility that you need. Um so yeah, that would be my key takeaway and potentially why it's so successful, because we literally give you the ability to it enhances zero. It's you might as well call it zero plus with the two combinations. So yeah, that would be mine.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Nice one. Can't argue with that. Good bit of uh cross-marketing there as well, Zero Plus. Yep. Trademark. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Cool. All right, I think we've covered um zero. It's uh a great integration. If you've got any questions, you can uh see the show notes below. Just shoot us a line, we can get up and running pretty quickly. You might actually get to speak to the man himself, Lavon. But other than that, you have a great day, Lavon.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

You too, Steve. All the best. See you in the next one.