How to add employees in bulk

Import in the right order

Employee rows refer to other records: a department, a designation, a location. If those do not exist when the employees arrive, the import either fails or creates near-duplicates such as 'Accounts' and 'Account'. Build the masters first, then the people, then the data that depends on people. Following the order below saves a second round of corrections.

• 1. Departments, designations, locations and grades
• 2. Holidays for the year
• 3. Employees, with joining dates and employment types
• 4. Reporting managers and departments linked on each profile
• 5. Opening leave balances
• 6. Shifts and rosters

Clean the sheet before you import

Most import problems come from the spreadsheet, not the software. Work through the file column by column with a filter and fix each issue at the source. It is slower than hoping the import will cope, and much faster than correcting records one at a time afterwards.

• One row per person, no merged cells, no subtotal rows
• Dates in one format and stored as dates, not text
• Employee codes stored as text so leading zeros survive
• Names spelt as on PAN
• Mobile numbers with ten digits and no spaces
• Department and designation names spelt exactly as in the masters
• No duplicates: check PAN, Aadhaar and mobile number columns
• Former employees kept in a separate sheet

Worked example: 420 employees across three branches

Sharma Foods has 420 employees in Indore, Dewas and Ujjain. The first look at its payroll sheet finds one designation spelt five ways, from 'Sr. Sales Exec' to 'Senior Sales Executive', nine mobile numbers shared by two people, and 23 joining dates typed as text. HR spends two days cleaning: it builds a designation list of 38 titles, maps every variant to one of them, and fixes the dates. A test import of 20 rows shows one more problem, a location spelt 'Dewas ' with a trailing space. After the fix, all 420 rows import, and branch heads check their people's reporting managers and departments within the week.

Checks after the import

Do not declare the import done when the software says it succeeded. Compare headcount by branch and department with last month's payroll register. Open one record in twenty and check it field by field against the source. Confirm every person has a reporting manager, since approvals and team views depend on it, and look for anyone reporting to someone who has left. Check that opening leave balances match last year's closing balances before employees start applying for leave.

Step by step

1. Freeze a cut-off date and export. Pick a date, export current employee data from payroll and attendance, and stop making changes in the old files after that date.
2. Clean the masters first. Build clean lists of departments, designations, locations and grades, and map every spelling variant in the employee sheet to one master value.
3. Clean the employee sheet. Fix dates, codes, names, phone numbers and duplicates column by column, and move former employees to a separate sheet.
4. Import the masters. In ZeniaHR, Data Import takes departments, designations, locations and holidays from Excel or CSV, with automatic column matching.
5. Run a test import of 10 to 20 rows. Pick rows from different branches and employment types. ZeniaHR checks rows before importing, so fix the source sheet for anything it flags.
6. Import all employees. Run the full import, up to 10,000 rows in ZeniaHR, and compare the imported count with your sheet.
7. Link reporting managers and departments. In ZeniaHR, link each person's reporting manager and department on their profile after an employee import, then open the org chart, which flags broken reporting lines.
8. Load opening leave balances and verify. Import opening leave balances as of the cut-off date and ask a few employees in each branch to confirm theirs before leave applications start.

Frequently asked questions