Templates
Multidisciplinary clinic chart of accounts
A multidisciplinary clinic splits its revenue accounts by who pays, because Xero holds two active tracking categories and practitioner and location usually take both. Discipline then has three honest homes: item codes in the practice system, a second block of account codes, or the location slot traded away. Pick one before the first invoice syncs, since every posted invoice carries the shape.
Key facts
- What the chart splits by
- The payer. The canonical allied health template carries 18 revenue accounts and not one of them names a discipline6
- What the template says out loud
- Revenue is split by who pays, not by practitioner, and practitioner and location are handled by tracking categories instead6
- The slot budget
- Four tracking categories in a Xero organisation and two of them active at a time, which is the limit the slot arithmetic on this page runs on12
- How many options a category can hold
- Xero puts 100 options per category as a guide for keeping reports quick rather than as a ceiling, so a discipline list is not what runs out first12
- How many accounts Xero expects to perform
- 699 is the number Xero puts as the one to stay under, which a discipline block stays well inside, so the cost of a longer chart is who has to code to it rather than Xero11
- Who holds the two slots
- Practitioner in the first and Location in the second, both matched by name, which is what leaves discipline without a slot6
- What Cliniko can route
- Billable items, products and practitioner items into their own Xero sales accounts, on top of the one default sales account7
- What Zanda cannot route
- Service categories organise services in Zanda but do not route invoice line items to different Xero accounts, so the discipline cut there is really a calendar cut8
- What Splose can route
- A default account for invoice items, with another account set per service, so the account can sit on the invoice line itself3
- What a bookkeeper asks for first
- Separate income accounts for Medicare, private health, NDIS, DVA and private, then tracking for practitioner or clinic location9
Three questions, two slots
A clinic running physiotherapy, exercise physiology and dietetics asks its books three questions at once. Who paid, which practitioner did the work, and which discipline was it. Xero answers the first from the account code and the other two from tracking categories, and it holds two active tracking categories at a time. Practitioner takes one. Location takes the other in any practice with more than one room worth reporting on. Discipline arrives to find both slots gone.
This is not a setting to turn on later. It is a shape a practice picks once, usually in the week the practice system is first connected, and it is slow to undo because every invoice already posted carries the shape it was posted under. The rest of this page is the three ways out, and what each one costs.
What the template already splits, and what it does not
Start from what the canonical allied health template already does, since a multidisciplinary practice is the case it was written for. It carries 18 revenue accounts, 23 revenue rows and 11 deposit rails. The revenue accounts split two ways: one block per payer, and a second block for the kinds of work that carry their own tax treatment, such as reports, supervision and training, products, cancellation fees, travel, group sessions and room rental.
Read the rows sideways and the gap shows. A physiotherapy hour and a dietetics hour billed to the same payer land on the same account, because a row asks who is paying and what kind of work it is, and does not ask who delivered it. That is deliberate. It keeps the chart small enough to read and it keeps the payer question answerable, which is the question the profit and loss is usually opened for.
The three places a discipline can live
There are three honest answers. Each of them gives something up, which is why a practice has to choose rather than have the choice made for it by whoever connects the integration.
- Item codes in the practice system. The discipline is carried by the billable item, and the item is mapped to its own Xero sales account. The chart grows by one account per discipline and the practice system does the routing.
- A second block of account codes. The chart itself carries the discipline, either as a block per discipline underneath the payer split or as a payer split repeated inside each discipline. Nothing is asked of the practice system beyond sending the right account.
- The second tracking slot. Location is given up and Discipline takes the slot, which only works for a practice that reports on one site or is content to answer the site question from somewhere else.
Option one, item codes in the practice system
The cheapest option on paper, and the one that depends most on which practice system the clinic runs. Cliniko says its single default sales account will be enough in many cases, and then documents the escape: billable items, products and practitioner items can each be pointed at their own Xero sales account. Set an item per discipline and the routing happens on every invoice without anyone thinking about it.
Zanda routes on a different thing. Its own frequently asked questions say service categories organise services, including on the client portal, but do not route invoice line items to different Xero accounts. What Zanda maps to a sales account is the calendar, and its export guide describes a calendar standing for a discipline or for a practitioner. So the discipline cut holds while one calendar is one discipline, and it stops the day a practitioner covers two disciplines from a single calendar.
| System | What routes an invoice line | What the discipline cut costs there |
|---|---|---|
| Cliniko | A default sales account, with overrides by billable item, product and practitioner item | One item mapping per discipline, kept up as the item list changes |
| Zanda | One sales account, or calendars mapped to sales accounts | Carried by the calendar mapping, so it holds while a calendar is one discipline |
| Splose | A default account for invoice items with a per service override, plus location and practitioner tracking synced to Xero | Service level, so the discipline can sit on the line rather than on the invoice |
The failure mode is quiet. An item added next month with no mapping falls back to the default account, and nobody notices until a quarter of dietetics revenue is missing from the report. See what Cliniko sends to Xero and what Zanda sends for the rest of each integration's shape.
Option two, a discipline block in the chart
Putting the discipline in the account code is the most durable option and the one that grows fastest. The template's payer block runs from 400 to 410, which is 11 accounts. Repeat that block for three disciplines and the chart carries 33 clinical accounts before the report, product, supervision and cancellation rows are counted at all.
Most practices that take this route do not repeat the whole block. They keep the payer split whole and add a small block per discipline for the payers that matter to that discipline, which usually means the two or three funders that discipline actually bills. A dietitian who sees private and plan managed clients does not need a WorkCover account.
Option three, trading the location slot
A single site clinic has a spare slot. Location holds the second slot in the template, and telehealth and home visits count as places there, but a clinic that works from one room and does not report telehealth separately can put Discipline in that slot instead. Every invoice line then carries a practitioner and a discipline, and the profit and loss reports either cut against every payer account at once.
The bill comes later. Opening a second site means either dropping the discipline reporting or rebuilding it into the chart, and the historical lines keep whatever they were tagged with. A bookkeeper writing about physio practices names the two uses tracking usually gets, revenue and costs by practitioner or by clinic location, and this option gives the second of them up.
Whether that trade is worth making is a practice decision, not a rule. It depends on who reads the report and what they do with it, so the tracking category how to sets the two slots up and leaves the choice of what goes in them here.
What each choice reports, and what it costs to keep
| Option | What it reports | What keeps it working | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Item codes in the practice system | Revenue by discipline, and by payer only where the item list happens to split that way | A mapping for every new billable item | An unmapped item falls back to the default account and disappears from the discipline report |
| A discipline block in the chart | Revenue by discipline and by payer together, straight off the profit and loss | Whoever codes an invoice picking from a longer list | The chart outgrows the people using it and correcting journals start |
| Discipline in the second tracking slot | Revenue by discipline against every payer account, and by practitioner | One option per discipline, archived when a discipline stops | The day a second site opens and location has nowhere to go |
A practice with a strong practice system usually takes the first. A practice whose owner reads the profit and loss themselves usually takes the second. The third is for a single site clinic that knows it is staying single site.
The tax rate follows the supply, not the discipline
Whichever option a practice picks, the discipline cut is not what carries the tax treatment. A line resolves through the payer, the kind of work, and whether the service is one the ATO lists, which is why the template keeps its second block of accounts for reports, supervision, training and products. A dietetics consult and a physiotherapy consult sit on the same tax rate, and a report written by either one does not. Exercise physiology is the exception in this clinic's mix, because dietetics and physiotherapy are listed health services and exercise physiology is not.
Most clinical allied health services are GST-free when they meet the health supply rules. But the moment a practice grows, edge cases multiply: medico-legal reports, some workplace assessments, supervision sold to other providers, product sales, room rental to contractors.10
That is the argument for keeping the second block whatever the discipline choice is. The treatment for each of those lines lives on its own page: reports and medico-legal work, supervision and products and equipment. Several of them are unsettled, and those pages say where the doubt sits rather than resolving it.
The settlement side does not change
None of the three options touches the other half of the chart. The template holds one clearing account per settlement rail rather than per funding source, 10 clearing accounts under its 11 deposit rails, because what produces a bank line is the rail and not the payer and not the discipline. A deposit from a plan manager looks the same to the books whether it paid for speech pathology or for occupational therapy.
So the discipline decision is a revenue line decision only. It changes which account an invoice line lands on and leaves the deposit side, the rails and the month end matching exactly where they were.
What Ledger Map does with it
Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved before anything syncs. The map resolves each invoice line to its account and tax rate, and the discipline choice above is one of the things the practice sets in it rather than something the product decides. Start from the allied health template and change the revenue block to whichever of the three shapes the practice picked.
On the deposit side it posts one balanced document set per deposit and leaves one exact match in the bank feed, so a clinic running three disciplines still reconciles one line rather than three. Anything the map cannot resolve becomes a question with the options laid out, not a silent posting.
Questions
Should a multidisciplinary clinic have one income account per discipline?
Only if the practice wants the discipline cut in the chart rather than in the practice system or in a tracking slot. The canonical allied health template splits revenue by payer and leaves discipline out, so adding a discipline block means repeating some part of the payer split. It reports well and it makes coding an invoice a longer decision for whoever does it.
Can I add a third tracking category in Xero for discipline?
No. A Xero file holds two active tracking categories, which the practice system vendors restate in their own setup articles. Practitioner and location usually take both, so a discipline cut has to come out of the account code, out of the practice system's item mapping, or out of one of those two slots.
Which practice systems can send a discipline to its own Xero account?
Cliniko can, through billable item, product and practitioner item mappings set one at a time. Splose sets a default account for invoice items and lets a service override it. Zanda cannot: its own frequently asked questions say service categories do not route invoice line items to different Xero accounts, so the account level cut there runs through the calendar mapping.
Does the discipline change the GST treatment on a line?
It does where the discipline is not one the ATO lists. Physiotherapy and dietary services are listed health services and exercise physiology is not, so a private exercise physiology session is taxable unless a Medicare benefit is payable for it, it is part of GST free hospital treatment, or the NDIS requirements are met. Past that the treatment resolves through who is paying and what kind of work it is, which is why the template keeps separate accounts for reports, supervision, training and products. A report is treated as a report whether a physiotherapist or a dietitian wrote it, and several of those edge cases are still unsettled in the corpus.
What happens to the chart when the clinic adds a fourth discipline?
It depends on the option chosen. Item mappings need one more item per payer that discipline bills, a discipline block in the chart needs new accounts opened before the first invoice, and a tracking slot needs one more option. The third is the cheapest to add and the first is the easiest to forget.
Read next
- Xero how toXero tracking categories for a clinic
- Xero how toReport by tracking category in Xero
- TemplatesAllied health chart of accounts, by funder
- Practice systemsCliniko Xero integration: what syncs, what does not
- Practice systemsZanda Xero integration: what the batch export carries
- GST answersGST on reports and medico-legal work
- HubTemplates
Sources
Open questions
- No search results snapshot exists for the templates family, so the ranked pages, the People also ask list and any AI answer panel for this query were not read when the page was written. The FAQ pairs come from the corpus's own question list instead, and a person should check the live results before publication.
- Whether the second tracking slot should carry sites or disciplines is a practice decision the corpus deliberately leaves open. This page states what each choice reports and what it gives up, and does not pick one.
- Xero's set up article gives four tracking categories with two active at a time, and puts 100 options per category as a guide for report speed rather than a ceiling. The practice system vendors that restate the figure read it as a cap, so a vendor sentence quoting it is the vendor's reading rather than Xero's.
- A note in the research corpus says a Splose post shows reports broken down by account code with discipline named accounts. The Splose Xero feature page read on 3 September 2026 does not carry that wording, so the claim is not used on this page.
- Xero puts 699 accounts as the number to stay under for performance, and a discipline block stays well inside it. How many accounts a practice can carry before its own coding accuracy suffers is a different question and is not published by anyone, so the arithmetic of a block is stated here and the ceiling is left to the practice.
- The GST edge cases a growing clinic runs into, supervision sold to other providers among them, are unsettled in the corpus and are held open on the pages that own them rather than resolved here.
- ato.gov.au refuses automated fetches. The listed health services read here come from a copy of the ATO page captured through a signed in browser session on 3 September 2026, which carries its own last updated date of 12 June 2024.
- Other health services, GST and health
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- Bookkeeper for a West Melbourne physio clinic
True Tally. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 1 Jul 2026.
secondary
- Bookkeeping for speech pathology and allied health practices
True Tally. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated Jul 2026.
secondary
Review
Last reviewed 4 Sep 2026 by Shane
General information for Australian allied health practices, not tax advice. Confirm a treatment with your BAS agent or accountant before you post it.
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