This guide has been written for Planday customers creating a new Deputy account and assumes you have already completed steps 1-4 outlined in Getting started with Deputy from Planday and are ready to import employee data into Deputy:

1. Export data from Planday
2. Review your employee data in a spreadsheet
3. Import Planday employee data into Deputy

 

1. Export data from Planday

To export employee data from Planday:

1. On the People tab, select Employees. Click on the Tools menu and select Export data.

2. For the Employee Details template, click Create report.

3. Export the file as an Excel format file. You can select the fields you want to export. In the image below, the fields that will be able to be imported into Deputy have been selected. The fields that have not been ticked are unable to be imported into Deputy. There is no problem if you want to export all data fields - you may wish to do this for your own historical records - however, the data in these extra fields will be ignored by Deputy during import.

Note: “Salary Identifier” in Planday is called “Payroll ID” in Deputy.

Click OK when you are done with selecting fields.

4. Ensure you choose All Departments to export data from.

Note: You can choose to include deactivated employees, however please be aware that all employees imported into Deputy will count as users for subscription calculations. In Deputy, deactivated employees are called archived employees, however importing them into Deputy would first add them as an active employee incurring a cost and then it would be up to the System Administrators to archive them to avoid further costs. Therefore, it is not recommended to import deactivated employees. However, you may like to export the data from Planday for your own historical records.

If you wish to export only employees with changes within a data range you can do this also.

Click Export data when you have made your selections.

An Excel file will be downloaded to your computer.

 

2. Review your team member data in a spreadsheet

Open the Excel file in a spreadsheet editor to view your data.

There are a TWO critical amendments we need to make now while the file is in Excel and there are also other optional amendments you can make:

1. Departments converted to Locations

Planday exports the data for Departments as separate columns however Deputy expects to receive one “Main” or “Primary” location during import with any additional locations added in a different column.

You can see in the example below from the spreadsheet that there are two employees who work in Coco’s Coffee Van and the rest only work in Coco’s George Street Cafe.

To ensure the data is ready to import into Deputy we will change the Department Column Header to “Location”. For each employee row in Excel, we will add the actual name of the Location to the cell (it must match the Location you have set up in Deputy). We will change the column with the header for Coco’s Coffee van to “Additional locations” and then add the exact location name to the employee who work in that additional location instead of the X.

If you have many “Additional locations” to add for any employees, you can add them all into the Additional Location column just ensure you separate them with a comma.

Note: you can find the Location code of the Locations you have created on the Locations tab, under General. You can change it here in Deputy if you require but if you do, ensure it matches the code you enter in the Excel sheet and also matches your location code in your payroll system if you are exporting timesheets to payroll.

2. Date format needs to be converted

Planday exports all dates in the format DD/MM/YYYY and Deputy needs to import it as YYYY-MM-DD.
This will affect all dates in the file including Birthday and Hire date.

To correct the format in Excel, simply insert an extra column in the spreadsheet to the right of the Birthday column, name it “Date of Birth” in the header row (or a title you will recognise later during import) and then type the formula in the empty cell:

=DATEVALUE( )

Click and drag down the column to apply the formula to all cells that require the date format to be updated. This will convert the dates to the correct format for Deputy.

Repeat this process for the “Hire date” column to ensure the Hire dates are also in the correct date format for import.

 

Optional extra data to add to the spreadsheet

You might like to add extra data to import. Deputy allows you to import other data not exported by Planday such as Emergency contacts, Library Award assignments and pay rates. For a full list of the data fields you can import in this file read Bulk import team member data.

If you choose to add data you will need to insert a column and name it something meaningful that you can recognise during the import process such as “Emergency contact name” and then populate the column with the correct data for each employee.

Once you are happy with the file, save it as a CSV on your computer.

 

3. Import Planday employee data into Deputy

Before you import employee data into Deputy please ensure all your Locations are set up and the Location Names and Locations codes match those in your file.

The minimum amount of employee data you can import in Deputy via file import is:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email (must be unique in Deputy as it is used as the unique identifier for each employee record)
• Location name
• Location code

1. Log into Deputy. On the People tab, click on Add People and select Bulk import and update from the drop-down menu.

2. Confirming that we want to Add team members, click on Continue to upload.

3. Map the fields listed on the left from Planday to the fields on the right from Deputy. Ensure the correct Date of Birth and Hire Date fields are mapped to Deputy remembering that we have one in the Planday date format and one in the Deputy Planday format. There is a tooltip that appears when you hover over a date field to remind you which format the data should be in for import.

If the wrong data set has been automatically mapped just use the dropdown menu to select the correct one. If there is a data set you don’t want to import to Deputy at all just leave the dropdown menu unselected.

4. Click Continue when you are happy with how the fields are mapped between the two systems.

5. You will now see all your data sorted into the data columns. If there are any data fields Deputy considers Invalid they will be highlighted red. You can hover over the cell to see the issue.

If you have a few errors you have the option to type over the data and correct it now. If you have many errors you might decide to go back to your Excel file to correct the data and start the import process from the beginning.

6. You have the option to enter data directly into the table by either typing or copying and pasting from another source on your computer. In the example below the user is typing a mobile phone number for Adrian.

7. If the field in Deputy allows you to select from a list of options such as for stress profiles, then you can start typing and then select from the available list.

8. Ensure the Send Invite column is set to false. You may not want to invite your employees to join Deputy until you have everything set up. You can invite them to join later when you are ready as a bulk action.

9. Once you are happy with your data set and have no fields flagged red as invalid, click Submit.

You will see a progress message. You can do other tasks in Deputy while this is running but it should not take too long to import.

10. When the data has finished uploading you will receive a job complete message. If any records were rejected they will be highlighted and you can correct the errors and resubmit the data.

Click Close.

11. Click on the X on the top right of the window.

12. Click Yes, exit.

13. When we click on the People tab in Deputy we can see that the employees are now added to Deputy but not invited.

Learn how to search, filter and configure the display in the People tab.

14. When we locate and click on the name of an example employee “Priya Brown” we can see that the data we imported has been added to her profile. You can click Edit to add any other information.

15. When we select Employment on the left-hand side we can see information uploaded such as Primary Location, Hire date and Payroll ID. Click on Edit to add or amend information.

We can see that Coco’s Coffee Van was added as an additional location in her profile since this employee has that location listed as an additional location in the Excel file we imported.

If you make any changes to employee profiles don’t forget to click Save before closing the window.

16. If you find that you wish to bulk update some information you previously uploaded, let’s say for instance that you wanted to add a Library Award and pay rate to a group of your employees you can use the bulk importer tool on the People tab again.
Simply select Update team member then click Download. Open this new spreadsheet in Excel and add the information you need to add, save it and click Continue to upload and follow the same process as before to import the new data.
Note: that it is also possible to set pay rates in bulk within the Deputy People tab if you prefer that option.

Once you have imported your employees from Planday you can now continue setting up your Deputy account.