How do I import employee data?

Question

How do I import employee data?

Answer

Background
Pacific Timesheet has import tools so you can easily import hundreds or thousands of employee profiles with no manual data entry. Once employee data is in the system, the import/export tools can also be used together to modify employee data on a large scale. 

Employee Import Template
To import employee data, you will first need to get the employee import template.

1. Navigate to the Employees tab
2. Click on Tools (the downward pointing triangle next to add and delete).
3. Click on Export Employees
4. If you have Excel on your computer, the employees.csv file will open up in Excel in a comma separated value format.
5. Note that this file contains one row of data properties for each employee.
6. Save this file in a newly created local directory folder called "Pacific Timesheet Setup."
7. You now have a saved employee import template that you can use in the future to import large numbers of employees in one import operation.

Importing Employees

Preparing your employee import file:

1. Save a copy of your employee import template file.
2. Prepare this employee.csv file by copying and pasting any electronic data you might in other Excel sheets.
3. Required fields are login name, last name, and status (active, inactive or locked).
4. Note that there are many important properties you will want to designate for each employee. The most important of these are first day, permission, policy, timesheet template, locale, time zone, and approvers. 
5. There are other secondary, but also important fields, such as pay rate, bill rate, scheduled hours per week, per day, timesheet memory and other fields. 
6. To learn about the function of these fields, click on the Help button while on the employees tab and a detailed help topic will open in a new tab with detailed descriptions of all these fields.
7. Once you have setup all the data you need, you are ready to import your employees.

Importing the Employees File

1. Navigate to the Employees tab
2. Click on Tools
3. Click on Import Employees
4. Click on Choose File
5. Find the saved employees.csv file you want to import and select it.
6. Note the Match Field can be set to match the imported data records against the employee ID, login name or email address. 
7. Click Okay
8. The system will import new employee records and update existing employee records.
9. Import errors will display on the screen.
10. Take note of error messages and modify your employees.csv file to correct errors.
11. You can import this file as many times as you need. Not invalid data will be imported.
12. Typical error messages can be "No Policy with Name Non-Exempt Policy" or "No Timesheet Template with name Employee Timesheet" indicate that you are trying to assign employees to templates, policies, permissions or groups that do not yet exist.
13. To troubleshoot, create those items in the system that you need, and import employees again.

Approver Assignments A-B Files
For larger new systems, you will be trying to import employees and use the import process to assign employee approvers. Note this is another case where you can try to assign an approver to an employee who might not yet exist in the system. You will need to use an A-B file method where the A file, named employees-a.csv, contains all employee data, but without the columns designating approver assignments, and the B file, named employees-b.csv, contains all employee data with the columns designating approver assignments. To setup your A and B files:

1. Setup all your approver assignments in a master employees.csv file which contains all data you want to get into the system.
2. Note that you have up to four levels of approval you an assign, with a backup approval at each leve.
3. Always designate an approver by using the approver user's login name in the approval field.
4. Save a copy of your master employees.csv file with the new file name "employees-a.csv.
5. Delete all approval and backup approval columns and data from the file.
6. Save another copy of your master employees.csv file, renaming this file employees-b.csv. 
7. Next, import employees-a.csv so you have all employees (employees and approvers) in the system.
8. Then, import employees-b.csv so you add all approval and backup approval assignments to all employees.
9. Most errors will involve assigning users as approvers who do not have the permission to approve timesheets or expense sheets. 
10. To troubleshoot, make sure to assign these approvers with a higher-level permission that gives that the right to approve time and expense sheets.