If your business has more than one location, shop or department, the owner wants the whole picture and each manager wants their own numbers. Within one business, Xero handles this with tracking categories rather than separate organisations. Here's how to set it up so the reports split cleanly, and how to get each person the right figures every month.
Set up a tracking category for your branches
Go to Accounting > Accounting settings > Tracking categories and add a category, for example "Branch" or "Location", with one option per site. A few things worth knowing:
- You can have two active tracking categories at once, so "Branch" can sit alongside something like "Department".
- Xero suggests keeping each category to about 100 options or fewer.
- Options you've used can't be deleted, only archived, so name them carefully.
Tag transactions consistently
The reports are only as good as the tagging. Tracking can be applied to invoices, bills, bank transactions, manual journals and other transactions, as well as payroll employees and fixed assets. You can also set default tracking on contacts, so a supplier who only serves one branch is prefilled with that branch. Anything left untagged shows as Unassigned on the Tracking Summary report, so check it each month and fix what's there.
Shared costs, like head office rent or software, are the usual judgement call. Some businesses leave them unassigned; others split them with a manual journal. Pick one approach and stick with it, or the branch figures won't be comparable from month to month.
Reports by branch in Xero
- All branches side by side: open the Profit and Loss and use Compare tracking categories to get one column per branch.
- One branch only: use Filter on the same report and pick that branch.
- Debtors by branch: the Aged Receivables Summary can be grouped by tracking category.
- Budgets by branch: in Budget Manager you can add a budget tied to a tracking category, then filter Budget Variance by branch to compare actuals against it.
Two limits: you can't combine tracking columns with comparison periods in one view (branches side by side, or months side by side, not both), and the balance sheet can only be filtered by branch, not shown with branches side by side. More detail in Xero reports by tracking category.
Getting each person their own figures
A common setup is one pack for the owner and one per manager:
- Owner or finance lead: the Profit and Loss with every branch as a column, plus the Balance Sheet and aged receivables for the whole business.
- Each branch manager: the Profit and Loss for their branch only, so they see their own sales, costs and margin without the others.
In Reportpost that's a handful of schedules on the same Xero organisation. Under More options, choose your branch category under P&L by tracking category, then either show every option as its own column (for the owner) or pick one branch (for its manager). Give each schedule its own recipients and message, set it to send a few days after month end, and send yourself a test first. Comparison columns don't apply to a P&L by tracking category, so it's one period per pack.
You can try the demo without connecting Xero.
Separate companies rather than branches? See consolidated reporting in Xero.
Related: Xero reports by tracking category, sending monthly management accounts and a Xero month-end checklist.