Using Xero Practice Manager with an Offshore Indian Bookkeeping Team

Why XPM Setup Matters When You Add an Offshore Team

Xero Practice Manager (XPM) is built around staff, jobs, tasks, and WIP. Adding an Indian bookkeeping team to this structure is straightforward — they are staff members like anyone else in the system. The risk is not in the tool but in the setup: practices that add offshore team members without updating their job templates or workflow statuses end up with an invisible offshore queue, no review gate, and no way to tell at a glance where each client file sits.

Done properly, XPM with an offshore team gives you a single dashboard showing every client file across both your local and Indian team — who has it, what stage it is at, and whether it has passed your review before delivery. That visibility is what makes the white-label model work at scale.

This guide covers the specific XPM configuration steps for an offshore team. If you use Karbon, Sage Handisoft, or another practice management tool, the same principles apply — the step names will differ but the structure is identical.

Step 1 — Add Indian Team Members as Staff

In XPM, go to Settings > Staff and add each Indian team member as a staff record. Use their name and email address. Key settings to configure:

• Capacity (hours per week) — set based on their contracted hours, not a local full-time equivalent. A dedicated Indian bookkeeper contracted for 40 hours/week is set to 40h. A shared resource working 20h on your practice is set to 20h.
• Cost rate — set to the actual monthly cost of the Indian CA firm divided by contracted hours. This populates your WIP cost view and lets you calculate margin per client accurately.
• Charge rate — set to your client charge rate. XPM will calculate WIP value against this rate. This is what appears in client billing reports.
• Role / group — create a "Offshore — India" group in XPM to distinguish Indian team members from local staff in capacity and workload reports. This makes capacity planning across the two teams cleaner.

Step 2 — Build Job Templates for Recurring Offshore Work

Job templates are the engine of XPM. For an offshore team, build separate templates for each recurring work type so that when a job is created, the task list, assignees, and estimated hours are pre-filled.

The critical element in every template is the final Review task, assigned to a local CA. This task must be completed — with a time entry logged — before the job status can move to Delivered. Without this gate, it is possible for work to reach the client without a local review, which undermines both quality control and your PI insurance position.

Step 3 — Configure Job Statuses as a Workflow

XPM's default job statuses (Not Started, In Progress, Completed) are too coarse for an offshore team model. Create a custom status set that reflects the actual workflow:

• Not Started — job created, not yet picked up by Indian team
• In Progress — India — Indian team is processing the file
• Ready for Review — Indian team has marked all tasks complete; local CA needs to review
• Under Review — local CA is actively reviewing
• Revision Required — local CA has flagged items for the Indian team to correct
• Approved — local CA has signed off; ready for lodgement or delivery
• Delivered — work delivered to client or lodged with ATO

These statuses make your XPM jobs board a live view of the offshore workflow. At any point, a partner or manager can see exactly how many files are sitting in "Ready for Review" (Indian team's output waiting for local review) and plan their day accordingly.

Step 4 — Using XPM Notes for Async Briefs

XPM's Notes function on each job is underused by most practices. For an offshore team, it becomes the primary async communication channel for file-specific instructions. Establish a convention:

• When creating a new job, the local CA adds a note with any client-specific instructions ("this client uses cash accounting — do not accrue invoices" or "payroll runs on the 15th — align STP to that date")
• The Indian team uses notes to flag unusual transactions or queries, tagging the relevant local CA
• The local CA responds in notes with the answer, keeping all context attached to the job rather than in a separate email chain

This note history becomes a valuable record over time. When the Indian team processes the same client in subsequent months, they can review prior notes and avoid repeating the same queries. After 2–3 months, most recurring client files run with minimal queries because the notes have captured all the edge cases.

Step 5 — WIP Monitoring and Capacity Planning

XPM's WIP report shows unbilled time across all staff. With an offshore team, monitor WIP weekly — specifically the "In Progress — India" bucket. Jobs sitting in that status for more than their estimated hours typically indicate a complexity issue that needs your attention.

For capacity planning, use XPM's Capacity report at the start of each month:

• Check whether the Indian team is under or over-allocated for the coming month
• Pre-load jobs for the upcoming BAS quarter or year-end 4–6 weeks in advance so the Indian team's schedule is visible before the crunch
• Use the Capacity report to decide whether overflow from a new client can be absorbed without disrupting existing clients' turnaround times

What XPM Does Not Handle — Where to Supplement

XPM is a practice management tool, not a communication platform. Three things it handles poorly for offshore teams:

• Real-time messaging — XPM notes are not instant. For urgent queries during the Indian team's business hours (2–6 PM AEST), use Slack or Teams. Keep XPM notes for structured, job-specific records.
• Document briefing — sending a complex brief via XPM notes is clunky. Use Loom video recordings for any brief that requires walking through a file. Attach the Loom link in the XPM note so it is easy to find later.
• Time zone visibility — XPM does not display team members' local time. Add a world clock widget to your browser bookmarks bar showing IST so you know at a glance whether the Indian team is in their working hours when you send a query.