Xero how to
Report by tracking category in Xero
Xero reports on a tracking category through Profit and Loss by tracking category, the Tracking Summary report, Budget vs Actuals in Budget Manager, and Account Transactions filtered to one option. The profit and loss reports split revenue by practitioner or location, and a balance is read on the Tracking Summary or on a filtered Balance Sheet. Choose the basis before quoting a number.
Key facts
- The report the question is really about
- Profit and Loss by tracking category, which shows revenue, cost of sales, gross margin, operating expenses and net profit for each option3
- How the options sit beside each other
- The comparison form of the same report gives every option of the category its own column3
- Budgets
- Budget vs Actuals reads a tracking category once budgets are held against its options in Budget Manager3
- Finding the lines with no option on them
- The Account Transactions report filters by tracking option, which is where lines carrying no option show up15
- Where the profit and loss report stops
- Profit and Loss by tracking category covers revenue and expenses, and the Balance Sheet report takes a tracking option as a filter of its own13
- The report that carries a balance per option
- The Tracking Summary shows the options in one category with approved transactions coded to the account types chosen, an opening and a closing balance per option, a Net Movement column, and untracked amounts under Unassigned11
- What its opening balance counts
- Financial year to date for revenue and expense account types, and the sum of all transactions for asset, liability and equity types11
- What can carry an option
- Xero assigns tracking to all types of transactions, as well as to contacts and to payroll employees12
- The platform limits
- Four tracking categories in an organisation with two active at a time. The figure of 100 options in a category is what Xero's set up article gives for keeping reports quick to load, not a count the software refuses to pass14
- Why a group cannot be subtotalled
- Tracking options are a flat list with no headings, so a report cannot roll several options into one line4
- Where funding source lives instead
- The canonical allied health template puts Practitioner in slot one and Location in slot two, and carries funding source in the revenue account code9
- The practice system report next to it
- Cliniko reports practitioner revenue on raised invoices or on closed invoices, and the article documenting the two mentions neither GST nor refunds5
One question, four reports
A practice owner asks for the monthly numbers as though they were one report. They are four report runs. Revenue by practitioner and revenue by location are two runs of a tracking report, one per category. Revenue by funder comes off the revenue accounts. Claims approved but not yet in the bank come off the balance sheet, read per account or filtered to one option. Knowing which is which saves looking for a column that is not going to appear.
The reason is the slot count. Xero holds two active tracking categories, and an allied health practice has usually given both to Practitioner and Location before anyone asks about funders. Funding source then has to live somewhere else, and the place it lives is the revenue account code.
separate income accounts for Medicare, private health, NDIS, DVA, and cash/EFTPOS private7
That is a bookkeeper reaching for the chart of accounts rather than for a tracking slot, and it is the right instinct. The two dimensions answer different questions and they are read on different reports.
The reports that read a tracking option
Four reports in Xero take a tracking category as an input, and one of them comes in two forms. They answer different questions, and only the first is the one people mean when they ask for revenue by practitioner.
- Profit and Loss by tracking category: revenue, cost of sales, gross margin, operating expenses and net profit for each option of one category.
- The comparison form of that report: the same rows with every option in its own column, which is how one clinician is read against another.
- The Tracking Summary: the options in one category against the account types you choose, with an opening balance, a closing balance and a Net Movement column on each.
- Budget vs Actuals: available through Budget Manager once budgets are held against the options rather than against the organisation as a whole.
- Account Transactions, filtered by the tracking category: the way to see which lines carry an option and which do not.
- The export: every one of these leaves as a spreadsheet, which is where a practice usually finishes the payout arithmetic.
One report answers one dimension. Running Profit and Loss on the Practitioner category tells you nothing about sites, and running it on Location tells you nothing about clinicians. Two questions means two runs, and a cross tabulation of practitioner against site is not something the native reports produce.
Where a balance is read by option
This is where practices lose the most time, because the profit and loss reports above read revenue and expenses and stop there. Tracking itself does not. Xero assigns it to all types of transactions, so a spend money or receive money posted to an asset or a liability account carries an option like any other line. Two reports read those options back: the Tracking Summary, whose opening balance for asset, liability and equity types is the sum of all transactions, and the Balance Sheet, which takes a tracking option as a filter.
For an allied health practice that mostly means the clearing accounts. Money claimed and not yet banked sits in the clearing account for the rail it will be paid through, and its balance is read off the Balance Sheet by account. Reading it per practitioner as well means the option was on the receipt line in the first place, which is a coding question rather than a reporting one.
The month end list, sorted
Two advisory firms writing for allied health practices publish nearly the same monthly list: revenue by practitioner and by funding source, labour cost against revenue, aged receivables, and a cash flow view. Here is that list against the report each item actually comes from.
| What the owner asks for | Where the number comes from | What it needs first |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue by practitioner | Profit and Loss by tracking category, comparison form | Every fee line carrying the practitioner option |
| Revenue by location | The same report, run again on the second category | The second slot spent on Location rather than on something else |
| Revenue by funding source | The revenue accounts on a standard Profit and Loss | A revenue account per funder, because there is no third slot |
| Labour cost per practitioner | The same tracking report, once payroll carries the option | The employee group set on each employed practitioner |
| Approved claims not yet banked | The Balance Sheet, read by account, or the Tracking Summary per option | A clearing account per settlement rail, and the option on the receipt line to read it per option |
| Taxable and GST free sales | The activity statement and the GST reconciliation | The tax rate on each revenue account, not a tracking option |
The basis decides what the number means
The same report run on two bases gives two different answers, and both are correct. On an accrual basis a fee counts on its invoice date, which is the day the work was done. On a cash basis it counts on the date it was paid, which for a batch paid funder can be weeks later and in a different month.
Which one to use depends on what the number is for. A payout to a practitioner on a receipts arrangement wants the cash basis, because the practice is sharing money that has landed. A view of how much work a clinician did in a month wants the accrual basis, because that is when the work happened. Mixing them across months is what makes a practitioner's line look like it moved when only the funder's payment run did.
Write the basis on the report before it leaves your screen. A tracking report with no basis on it is a number without a definition, and the person who receives it will assume whichever basis suits their argument. Cash or accrual for the activity statement works through the same choice where the money owed to the tax office is concerned.
Raised against closed, and why neither matches Xero
Most practices already have a practitioner revenue report in the practice system, and it will not agree with the Xero one. Cliniko publishes two: revenue by raised invoices, which includes invoices that are still open, and revenue by closed invoices, which includes only the ones marked closed. That is a third and a fourth definition of the same month.
The raised report is close to a Xero accrual report and the closed report is close to a Xero cash report, but close is not equal. Cliniko dates the second report on the day an invoice was marked closed, which its own article says usually coincides with the date of payment, and a payment recorded in the practice system is not the same event as a deposit landing in the bank. The article documenting those two reports mentions neither GST nor refunds, so a clinician whose month included a reversal is being counted differently again.
- Pick one report as the one the payout is calculated from, and say so in the contract rather than in an email.
- Reconcile it to the bank once, at the start, so everyone can see the size of the difference.
- Check how refunds and credit notes land in whichever report you picked, because a reversal in a later month moves the number in only one of them.
- Keep the option names identical in the practice system and in Xero, or the two reports cannot be laid side by side at all.
What the report is made of
Before quoting a tracking report, it helps to know which of its parts you chose and which Xero chose for you. The category and the basis are yours. The account rows and the option columns follow from how the ledger was coded weeks earlier.
The two things to watch sit at the bottom for a reason. A fee line that reached Xero with no tracking option on it is still in the accounts and still in the totals, so the report balances while one clinician's column is quietly short. Filtering Account Transactions by the category finds those lines, and it is worth doing before the first month a payout depends on the report.
What the native reports will not do
Three limits are worth knowing before a practice designs its options around a report that cannot exist. None is a bug, and all three have a plain workaround.
- No hierarchy. Options are a flat list with no headings, so a report cannot subtotal a group of practitioners into a discipline. Splitting the discipline out as revenue accounts is the usual answer.
- Four categories in the organisation, two of them active at a time. Xero's own set up article gives one hundred options in a category as a load time guide rather than a count the software refuses, so archiving departed practitioners keeps a report readable rather than keeping a practice under a cap.
- One dimension per run. Practitioner by site is two reports and a spreadsheet, or a reporting add-on, rather than a setting.
Whether the practice system puts an option on the line in the first place is a separate question again. Splose maps tracking options for practitioner and location on the way into Xero. Cliniko's integration article documents invoices, payments and account codes and names no tracking category, so on that path the option has to be added in Xero or by something sitting between the two.
What Ledger Map does with it
Ledger Map works on the coding these reports read. One standing map for the practice, approved before anything syncs, resolves each fee line to its revenue account, its Xero tax rate and its practitioner tracking option, so the option is on the line when it arrives rather than added afterwards by hand.
The funder deposits are posted the same way: one balanced document set per deposit, with one exact match left in the bank feed for a person to accept. That is what keeps the clearing accounts readable on the balance sheet while the tracking reports stay readable on the profit and loss. How it works shows the map and the approval step, and setting the categories up covers the part that comes before any of these reports.
Questions
Which Xero report shows revenue by tracking category?
Profit and Loss by tracking category. Its comparison form gives each option of the category its own column, which is the layout people mean when they ask to see practitioners or sites beside each other. Budget vs Actuals and Account Transactions also read a tracking category, for budgets and for finding untagged lines.
Can I report on my clearing accounts by tracking category?
Yes, though not from Profit and Loss by tracking category, which covers revenue and expenses. Xero assigns tracking to all types of transactions, so a receive money line posted to a clearing account carries an option, and two reports read it back: the Tracking Summary, which carries an opening and a closing balance per option and takes asset and liability account types, and the Balance Sheet, which takes a tracking option as a filter. The canonical allied health template holds one clearing account per settlement rail underneath either of them.
How do I get revenue by funding source if both tracking slots are taken?
From the revenue accounts. The canonical allied health template puts Practitioner in slot one and Location in slot two and carries funding source in the account code, so a standard Profit and Loss already splits Medicare, DVA, NDIS, WorkCover and private work without spending a slot on it.
Should the report be on a cash basis or an accrual basis?
It depends what the number is for. A payout on a receipts arrangement wants cash, because the money has landed. A view of the work a clinician did in a month wants accrual, because that is when it happened. Whichever you pick, write it on the report so the reader knows which month the fees belong to.
Why does my practice system report a different figure to Xero?
Because they count different events. Cliniko reports practitioner revenue on raised invoices or on closed invoices, and it dates the second on the day the invoice was marked closed, which its article says usually coincides with the date of payment rather than with a bank date. Reconcile the two once, then pick one as the report a payout is calculated from.
Can one report show practitioner and location at the same time?
Not natively. A tracking report runs on one category, so practitioner by site is two runs and a spreadsheet, or a reporting add-on. Tracking options are also a flat list with no headings, so grouping several practitioners under a discipline is done with revenue accounts rather than with the report.
Read next
- Xero how toXero tracking categories for a clinic
- Xero how toXero payroll tracking for practitioners
- Xero how toArchive a practitioner in Xero tracking
- Xero how toCash vs accrual GST for a clinic in Xero
- ProblemsAged receivables will not split by funder
- ProblemsSplitting Cliniko revenue by location in Xero
- HubXero how to
Sources
Open questions
- Whether the Tracking Summary report offers a cash basis is still open. Its article documents the account types, the balances and the Net Movement column without naming an accounting basis option.
- Cliniko's practitioner earnings article was last updated in 2023 and does not say whether the closed invoice report keys on the invoice closure date or on a payment date. The two are not the same date once a funder pays weeks later.
- Whether Budget Manager holds budgets against both active tracking categories at once was not confirmed.
- The current top five results for this query could not be pulled while the page was written, so what the page adds is judged against the two ranking pages named in the brief rather than against a fresh search.
- Xero tracking categories, a setup guide
LedgerLogic. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 20 Feb 2026.
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- Unleash the power of Xero tracking categories reporting
Calxa. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 11 May 2026.
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- Xero payroll tracking categories guide, with workaround
Satva Solutions. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 1 May 2026.
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- Bookkeeping for a West Melbourne physiotherapy clinic
True Tally. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 1 Jul 2026.
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- Physiotherapy clinic finance
ScaleSuite. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated December 2025.
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- Xero Accounting API specification, tracking categories and line items
Xero. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026. Source updated 30 Aug 2026.
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Review
Last reviewed 3 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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