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Xero Groups · Track 3 · Tutorial 1 of 3

Bring in tracking categories

Available on ProPremium

If your Xero organisations track transactions by department, branch or anything else, BrizoConsol can read Xero’s profit and loss by each tracking category, every month, for dashboards and reports. Set it up once per organisation.

You will needHarbour Pty Ltd connected with additional access switched on, as in Switch on additional access. Tracking categories used on its transactions in Xero. Free, Pro or Premium edition.
By the endHarbour Pty Ltd’s Department and Branch categories mapped, October’s P&L by tracking category loaded, and its figures checked against Xero.

1Know what you get

Harbour Pty Ltd runs three branches. In Xero, its transactions carry two tracking categories: Department (Sales, Operations, Admin) and Branch (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane).

Harbour Pty Ltd tracks its Xero transactions by Department and Branch; BrizoConsol reads Xero’s P&L by each tracking category every month into a dataset per category, used in dashboards, charts, tables and custom reports
One dataset per category, filled from Xero’s own report every month.
What is readXero’s profit and loss by each active tracking category, month by month, as Xero calculates it. Amounts with no option come in as Unassigned.
Where it goesOne datasource per category — Xero Tracking: Branch, for example — with the options and the P&L lines. You use it in dashboards, charts, metrics, tables and custom reports.
What it doesn’t changeYour statements and consolidation. Categories are reported on their own, and two categories are never added together.

2Import Harbour Pty Ltd’s tracking categories

  1. Select Harbour Pty Ltd, and open Settings → Organisation Settings → Data Loading.
  2. Click Review Tracking Category Setup at the top of the page.
  3. Click Import from Xero.

Only active categories and their active options are imported. BrizoConsol suggests what each category stands for from its name. If you add a category or option in Xero later, click Refresh from Xero.

This step is optional for loading: each load reads the active categories straight from Xero. You need it for the mappings in the next step.

3Confirm the mappings

A mapping tells BrizoConsol what each category stands for. Two mappings matter most: Department and Store open the shared dashboard templates in the next tutorial.

  1. Under Confirm Mapping, keep Department for Department, and choose Store for Branch.
  2. Click Save Tracking Category Setup.
Tracking Category Setup for Harbour Pty Ltd: Department suggested and confirmed as Department, Branch as Store, then Save Tracking Category Setup
Confirm what each category stands for (1), then save (2).

The other choices — Client Tracking, Project Tracking, Regional Division, Product Line, Service Line, Team/Staff, Other — describe the category. Every category gets its own datasource whatever you choose.

4Load the months

  1. Click ← Back to Data Load.
  2. Tick the months you report on — Jan-2026 to Oct-2026 in the example — and click Load selected.
  3. Untick everything except P&L by Tracking Category, and click Start Load.

Each month’s P&L tracking column shows Loaded when it is in. You don’t need to load Transactions for this: the amounts come from Xero’s report, not from the postings.

After that, the nightly read keeps the last 6 months up to date, and older months are filled in one at a time overnight. To have a month straight away, or after you change it in Xero, load it the same way.

5Check against Xero

  1. Click Review Tracking Category Setup, then View P&L by Tracking Category.
  2. Choose the Tracking Category Branch, From Date 1 October 2026 and To Date 31 October 2026, and click Load Xero Report.
P&L by Tracking Category for Harbour Pty Ltd’s Branch category in October 2026: each line by Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, an Unassigned column for untracked wages, and the total
The untracked amounts (1), and Harbour Pty Ltd’s own total for each line (2).

This report reads straight from Xero, in Harbour Pty Ltd’s currency, AUD. The options’ columns plus Unassigned add up to Total.

Check

Total on each line matches Harbour Pty Ltd’s Profit and Loss for October in Xero. In the example, 6,800.00 of wages has no Branch — head-office staff — so it shows as Unassigned.

A large Unassigned amount usually means transactions were entered without the tracking option. Add it in Xero, then load the month again.

6If something goes wrong

There is no Review Tracking Category Setup buttonAdditional access isn’t switched on for the connection. See Switch on additional access.
Transactions and tracking reports: Available on Free, Pro and Premium.Your group is on Standard, so the tracking report can’t be switched on.
No active tracking categories were found in Xero for this company.The organisation has no active tracking category in Xero. Add or restore one in Xero, then click Refresh from Xero.
Tracking category classification failed before import completed. No tracking categories were imported.The suggestions couldn’t be made, so nothing was imported. Try Import from Xero again.
A category is missing from the report’s listOnly active categories are read. Restore it in Xero, then click Refresh from Xero.

Want more detail? See the documentation

Xero Tracking Categories & Consolidation Data Loading Connecting an Entity to Xero
Next in Report by Xero tracking category Read tracking categories as operational data All tutorials