Templates
Xero tracking category for clinic locations
Revenue by location in Xero usually comes from a Location tracking category rather than from one organisation per site. One file, one option per site, and the profit and loss splits into a column each. All three canonical templates spend tracking slot two on Location, matched by name. A separate organisation per site buys a cleaner split and costs a subscription each.
Key facts
- The slot budget
- A line item carries a maximum of two tracking category elements, and the profit and loss endpoint takes two tracking categories and no third7
- Where Location sits
- Tracking slot two in all three canonical templates, matched by name and created only with the practice's consent9
- What a second organisation costs
- A Xero subscription of its own. The Australian plans start at A$37 a month for Ignite, with Grow at A$78, Comprehensive at A$107 and Ultimate 10 at A$143 once any introductory period ends8
- Who the introductory price is for
- A customer buying their first organisation on xero.com, so a second site starts at the standard price8
- What Cliniko pushes
- No tracking category. Its Xero setup article documents sales accounts and clearing accounts and names none4
- The one to one constraint
- The native Cliniko integration maps one Cliniko instance to one Xero organisation, which decides the question for a practice running a Cliniko per site5
- What Zanda pushes
- Two tracking categories with multiple options, with Location as the worked example and telehealth and in home services among the options3
- What Splose pushes
- Tracking categories for locations and practitioners, with each workspace linked to one Xero organisation and each organisation to one workspace2
- Option names
- A tracking category name and a tracking option name are capped at 100 characters each, and an option carries a status of active, archived or deleted7
- How many sites one category can hold
- Xero states no cap on the options in a category. It puts 100 as the figure to stay under for reports to load quickly, and caps the categories themselves at four with two active12
- What a bookkeeper asks for
- Income accounts split by payer, then tracking to separate revenue and costs by practitioner or by clinic location where a practice works across multiple sites10
One file, or one file per site
A practice working from two addresses asks one question before it asks any other: one Xero file or two. It is not a reporting preference. It decides how every invoice posts from the day the practice system is first connected, and it is slow to unwind, because a year of postings carries the shape it was posted under.
Xero answers it with a tracking category. One file, one category named for the site, one option per site, and the profit and loss splits into a column each without a second subscription, a second bank feed or a second chart to keep in step. The other answer is real and sometimes the right one, and it is not free.
What the standing map does not carry
Start with what the map already decides, because it is not the site. A row asks who paid and what kind of work it was, and answers with an account code and a Xero tax rate. Here are five lines a two site clinic can bill in one week.
Read them down the page and not one of them decides anything from the site. Two of the reasons mention where the work happened, and the account and the tax rate still come from the payer. That is deliberate. The payer changes the tax rate and the timing of the money, so the payer belongs in the account code. The site changes neither, so it belongs on a tracking option, where it can be added, renamed and archived without anybody touching the chart of accounts.
The slot Location takes, and what it takes it from
Xero holds two of those cuts at a time. Its own API specification puts it in the data rather than in a settings screen: any line item can carry a maximum of two tracking category elements, and the profit and loss report endpoint takes a first tracking category and a second and offers no third.
All three canonical templates spend the first slot on Practitioner and the second on Location, both matched by name and created only with the practice's consent. Matched by name is the part that bites: the option has to already exist in the Xero file, spelled the way the practice spells it, or the line arrives with the site left blank and nobody notices until the report is run.
So Location is not free. It is the second of two, and giving it to the site means the practice has answered the site question and given up the next one. Xero tracking categories for a clinic covers the setup itself, and this page is about whether the site deserves the slot.
The price of an organisation per site
A separate Xero organisation per site gives the cleanest split available. Two files, two charts, two bank feeds, and little room for the second site's invoice to land in the first site's column. Practices with separate entities behind the two rooms often have no choice, because the entities lodge separately.
For a practice that could go either way, the price is visible. Xero's Australian plans start at A$37 a month for Ignite, and the three that carry the features a clinic file usually needs are Grow at A$78, Comprehensive at A$107 and Ultimate 10 at A$143. The introductory pricing is offered to a customer buying their first organisation, so the second site starts at the standard rate, and a light second file can start on Ignite.
- A chart to keep in step. Two files drift the first time somebody adds an account to one of them and not the other.
- A practitioner who works at both sites, who is now in two files and reconciles in neither on their own.
- A group view across the two files, which this page cannot price because no Xero page it could read says how one is assembled.
- A practice system that may connect once and not twice, which is the next section.
What the practice system can push
The practice system often settles the question before the owner gets to it. A tracking category that nothing fills is a column of blanks, and a system that connects to one organisation at a time makes the second file somebody's manual job.
| System | What it pushes for a site | The constraint it states |
|---|---|---|
| Cliniko | Nothing. The Xero setup article covers sales accounts and clearing accounts and names no tracking category | The native integration maps one Cliniko instance to one Xero organisation |
| Zanda | Two tracking categories with multiple options, with Location as the worked example and telehealth and in home services among the options | The export runs in batches rather than as each invoice is created |
| Splose | Tracking categories for locations and practitioners, set up in Xero and then assigned in Splose | Each workspace links to one Xero organisation, and each Xero organisation to one workspace |
| PracSuite | Tracking categories applied to the invoices and payments the sync creates, chosen under Businesses | Its worked example is a category called Business whose options stand for each business in the account, and the category has to exist in Xero first |
| A third party integrator for Cliniko | The site split sold as the thing the native integration does not do | Named as splitting revenue and costs by Cliniko location or business inside one Xero organisation |
The Cliniko rows are the ones that surprise people. A practice running one Cliniko account per site is already on the path to one Xero organisation per site, because the native integration maps one instance to one organisation. A practice running one Cliniko account with two business locations inside it has the opposite problem: the site is in the practice system and does not reach Xero at all, which is the gap the third party integrators sell into.
A location is not only an address
The word location is narrower than the slot is. Zanda's own export guide gives the worked example as a Location category whose options include a named clinic, in home services and telehealth, which is three ways of delivering work rather than three street addresses.
That is worth settling before the options are typed. Telehealth and mobile work carry different costs, often a different funder mix, and a very different profit per hour. A practice that files them under the nearest physical site cannot separate them later without recoding the lines. The option list is the cheap thing to get right at the start and the expensive thing to change afterwards.
The single site case, where the slot is worth more elsewhere
With one address, slot two answers a question that has one answer. Every line carries the same option, every report splits into a single column, and the slot is spent on a fact the practice already knew.
A single site practice has the same two slots as a group and one fewer question to spend them on, so the second is free for the cut it actually argues about: the discipline, a funded program, the referral source, or the room. Where the discipline goes works that trade through for a clinic running several disciplines under one file.
The cost of taking Location by default is invisible on day one. It shows up a year later, when the owner asks a question the ledger cannot answer and the answer would have been sitting in the slot the address took. Recoding a year of invoices to free the slot is possible and is nobody's favourite week.
Naming a site, and closing one
Two mechanical details decide whether the category survives contact with a real practice. Names are capped: the API specification puts a tracking category name and a tracking option name at 100 characters each, which is generous for a suburb and tight for a sentence, so the option is a name and not a description.
And a site that closes is archived rather than deleted. A tracking category and its options carry a status of active, archived or deleted, so archiving keeps the history in its column and stops new invoices offering the option. Archiving a tracking option walks the procedure, and tracking category reports covers reading the columns back out.
One more note on sourcing, because it matters for a page like this. Xero's own healthcare guide, read on 3 Sep 2026, splits revenue accounts by payer type and says nothing about splitting by practitioner or by clinic location. The sentence that pairs the two is on an Australian bookkeeping practice's physiotherapy guide, which is what this page cites for it.
What Ledger Map does with it
Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved before anything syncs. A line resolves to its account and its Xero tax rate through that map, and the tracking options ride alongside it: Practitioner in the first slot, Location in the second, matched to the options already in the Xero file by name and created only where the practice has asked for them.
None of it is a treatment Ledger Map picked. The account codes and tax rates on the map excerpt above come from the canonical template the practice starts from, a deposit posts as one balanced document set that leaves one exact match in the bank feed, and a line the map cannot resolve becomes a question with the options shown rather than a silent posting. How it works shows the map and the approval step it goes through.
Questions
Should a multi site clinic run one Xero organisation or one per site?
One organisation with a Location tracking category answers the site question inside a single chart, a single bank feed and a single subscription. One organisation per site answers it more cleanly and costs a Xero subscription each, from A$37 a month on Ignite and A$78 to A$143 on the Grow, Comprehensive and Ultimate 10 plans, plus the work of keeping two charts in step. Separate entities behind the two rooms usually settle it on their own, because the entities lodge separately.
How do I get a profit and loss by clinic location in Xero?
Create a tracking category for the site, add one option per site, and make sure every invoice carries an option. The profit and loss then splits into a column per option. Xero's report endpoint takes two tracking categories and no third, so the site is competing with whatever else the practice wanted to split by.
Does my practice management system push the site to Xero?
It depends on the system. Splose sets up tracking categories for locations and practitioners and syncs them. Zanda documents two tracking categories with multiple options and uses Location as its example. PracSuite applies tracking categories to the invoices and payments its sync creates. Cliniko's own Xero setup article names no tracking category at all, which is the gap third party integrators sell into.
What happens to the tracking option when a site closes?
It is archived rather than deleted. A tracking category and its options carry a status of active, archived or deleted, so the closed site keeps its column in last year's reports and stops appearing on new invoices. Deleting instead is the thing that costs you the history.
I only have one site. What should go in the second tracking slot?
That is the practice's call, and Location is not the only candidate. With one address the site column has one value in it, so the slot is available for the cut the practice argues about: discipline, a funded program, the referral source, or the room. The first slot is usually spent on the practitioner, because that cut drives payouts and cannot be rebuilt later.
Read next
- Xero how toXero tracking categories for a clinic
- TemplatesMultidisciplinary clinic chart of accounts
- Xero how toArchive a practitioner in Xero tracking
- Xero how toReport by tracking category in Xero
- TemplatesAllied health chart of accounts, by funder
- ProblemsAll practice revenue lands in one Xero account
- HubTemplates
Sources
Open questions
- Whether Xero assembles a report across two organisations without a third party consolidation tool could not be confirmed from any Xero page an automated fetch could read, so this page prices only the subscriptions and not the group view.
- How many sites one category can hold is settled: Xero states four categories with two active and gives 100 options as the figure to stay under for report speed rather than a cap. What the settings screen shows a practice with several sites already coded, when a site is closed mid year, is still only described here from the API specification.
- The repository research records the sentence about separating revenue and costs by practitioner or by clinic location against Xero's own healthcare guide. That guide, read on 3 Sep 2026, does not carry it. The same sentence is on an Australian bookkeeping practice's physiotherapy guide, which is what this page cites, and the Xero guide is listed as unverified.
- Zanda's export guide names Location as its worked example but does not say whether the site on an invoice is pushed automatically or set per calendar, so the mapping detail is left open here.
- No SERP snapshot exists for the templates family, so the questions below the body come from the corpus question list rather than from a captured People also ask block, and the current top five for this query is unknown.
- Xero Accounting API specification, tracking categories and line items
Xero. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 30 Aug 2026.
primary
- Bookkeeper for a West Melbourne physio clinic
True Tally. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 1 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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