Import employees from a CSV file

At TimeForge, we understand that many of our customers switch to us from old-fashioned spreadsheets. That’s why we offer the ability to import employees directly from a CSV file. Most spreadsheets can easily be saved as a CSV, which makes the transition over to TimeForge smooth and painless.

TimeForge is a complete labor management tool that is great for making things like tracking attendance and creating employee schedules quick and easy. Plus, from the employee profile page, you can keep track of information like cell phone numbers, social security numbers, passwords, payrates, and much more.

You can import employees with just a few clicks! Here’s how:

Navigate to your Employees page

Open up the Set Up tab, then select Import Data from the sub-menu. (The screenshot below shows this at the Corporate level, but you can also do it from the Location level, depending on your needs.)

Note

If you can’t see the Import Data button while at the Location level, this means you’re not using a security template. Applying a security template will allow you to import data from the Location level.

Choose the appropriate CSV file

If your file is currently saved as an .xls or .xlsx, you’ll need to first open up Microsoft Excel, then go to File > Save As and export it a CSV. You can then select this .csv in TimeForge.

Review the employee data for import

TimeForge will automatically attempt to match the header of each column with a field in TimeForge, such as “Employee Name” and “Position,” and will show you a preview of the import, starting with the first row in your sheet.

Click the Next link to review each subsequent row (employee) in the file.

If satisfied, click the Import Data button to import the file. If your first row was a header row, leave the box checked to ignore that row when importing.

Caution

If you’re importing from the Corporate level, your CSV should include a column for Location Payroll ID. Otherwise, you will receive an error. At the Location level, the location field is assumed to be the current Location.

Note

TimeForge only looks for matches and updates existing data based on the Payroll ID field for that import type. This is true for all types of data, including positions, departments, locations, employees, etc.

Tip

If you check the second box, “Terminate all employees not in the upload file,” TimeForge will terminate any employee that does not appear in the file you are uploading. This can be helpful if you’ve already created some employees in TimeForge manually but decided to import the rest – checking this box will prevent duplicates.