How to Bulk Import Employees

Getting Started

Go to Settings > Bulk Upload.
Click the Bulk Employee Upload button.
You'll be taken through a guided 4-step wizard.

Step-by-Step

Step 1: Upload Your File
- Drag and drop your file into the upload area, or click Browse Files to select it.
- Supported formats: CSV, XLSX
- Maximum file size: 10 MB
- Maximum rows: 10,000
Download Options
- Download Import Template — downloads a blank CSV pre-formatted with all supported columns. Great for starting a fresh import.
- Download Current Employees — downloads a CSV of your existing employees, pre-filled with their current data. Use this to review or bulk-update employee details: make your changes in the file and re-upload it.
File Preview
- Once uploaded, you'll see a Data Preview showing the first few rows so you can confirm the right file was selected.
- To start over, click the X button next to the file name to remove it.

Step 2: Map Your Columns

Match the columns from your file to Timecloud employee fields.

Click Auto-Detect to let the system automatically match columns based on common naming patterns.
Use the dropdown menus to manually assign or adjust any column mapping.
Click Clear All to reset all mappings and start fresh.

Required Fields

Field	Description
First Name	Employee's first name
Last Name	Employee's last name
Email	Employee's email address (also used to match existing employees)
Shift Pattern	The shift the employee is assigned to

Optional Fields

You can also import these additional fields:

Middle Name, Preferred Name
Payroll Code, Custom Code 1, Custom Code 2, Custom ID
Contract Type, Hourly Rate, Role, Status
User Group Layer 1–3, Default Job Layer 1–2, Device Area
Award, Employee Type, Award Base Rate
Gender, Ethnicity

A green check mark appears next to each successfully mapped field. Required fields that haven't been mapped will show a warning icon with a message listing the missing fields.

Note: If your file uses the older column names "Location Layer 1", "Location Layer 2", or "Location Layer 3", they will still be recognised automatically.

Step 3: Preview and Validate

Before importing, the wizard validates your data and shows a summary:

Total Records — how many rows are in your file
To Create — new employees that will be added
To Update — existing employees (matched by email) that will be updated
Invalid — records with errors that will be skipped

Reviewing Records

Use the Valid Records and Invalid Records tabs to review each group.
Invalid records show the specific error for each row so you can fix them.
Click Export Invalid Records to download just the problem rows, fix them in your spreadsheet, and re-upload.

When you're ready, click Start Import (or Import X Valid Records if some records are invalid).

Step 4: Import Progress and Results

A progress bar tracks the import in real time, showing records processed, created, updated, and failed.
Once complete, you'll see a results summary:
- Created — newly added employees
- Updated — existing employees that were modified
- Failed — records that couldn't be processed (with error details)
Expand the Created Employees or Updated Employees sections to see the full list.
If any records failed, click Export Failed Records to download them for review.
Click Done to finish, or Import More to start another upload.

Nested Departments in Exports

When you use Download Current Employees, the User Group Layer columns reflect the full department hierarchy — even for employees assigned to nested sub-departments.

If an employee is assigned to a child department (e.g. "Team A" inside "Operations > Field Team"), the export fills in all parent layers automatically: Layer 1 = "Operations", Layer 2 = "Field Team", Layer 3 = "Team A".
This also applies to the Department column in the Employee Report — it always shows the top-level department name, regardless of where in the hierarchy the employee is assigned.

Tips

Download and edit: Use Download Current Employees to export your current roster, make bulk changes in the spreadsheet, then re-upload the file to apply updates across the board.
Email matching: The system uses the email address to check for existing employees. If an email matches, that employee's record will be updated rather than duplicated.
Fix and re-upload: You don't need to re-upload your entire file. Export just the invalid or failed records, fix the issues, and upload only those rows.
Column naming: The auto-detect feature recognises common naming patterns (e.g., "First Name", "FirstName", "first_name"), so you usually won't need to map columns manually.
File size: Keep your file under 10 MB and 10,000 rows. For very large imports, consider splitting into multiple files.
Nested departments: When downloading employees, User Group Layers are populated from top to bottom — so a deeply nested assignment still shows the correct parent departments in each layer.