Guided walkthrough

Set up payroll

From pay settings to a finished export, once, properly.

Step 1 of 8

How Orbit pays

Approve, review, export — in that order, every time. A few things about pay are fixed and cannot be turned off; they are worth two minutes before you start.

Review the options shown for your own business in Orbit. Available choices depend on your organisation’s settings.

Open in Orbit

This walkthrough explains the steps. Moving through it does not change your business or mark work as completed. Links to Orbit open in a new tab and may require sign-in.

All steps

How Orbit pays
Approve, review, export — in that order, every time. A few things about pay are fixed and cannot be turned off; they are worth two minutes before you start.
Open in Orbit
Set the store’s pay settings
Which award applies, where the store is, and when its pay week starts. Orbit prices every hour off these, so they come first.
Open in Orbit
How your payroll behaves
This page is where the way payroll runs is chosen. Some things are locked because they are floors, and some options are greyed because they are not built yet — you can see the whole shape either way.
Open in Orbit
Connect Xero
Orbit sends approved hours to Xero rather than retyping them. You will sign in to Xero and come straight back here.
Open in Orbit
Match your people to Xero
Orbit suggests a match for everybody it recognises; you confirm them and sort out anyone it could not place. Hours only travel for people who are matched.
Open in Orbit
Approve the period’s hours
The export will not run while anything in the period is still open or waiting on a manager. Clear them and the wall comes down on its own.
Open in Orbit
Run the export
Orbit works the figures out again at this moment and keeps an unchangeable copy of exactly what it said. That copy is what your bookkeeper gets, and the period locks behind it.
Open in Orbit
That is payroll set up
Every run from here follows the same three steps, and past runs stay in the history exactly as they were sent.
Open in Orbit

Read the related guide

Guide · Payroll

How Orbit works out pay

Approve, review, export — and what is frozen afterwards.

Read guide