Many KazooHR clients pass employee HRIS information to KazooHR via CSV file sent to a secure FTP site. Clients are responsible for uploading the HRIS files with complete employee data. To ensure the system data is up to date, we recommend posting files at a minimum of twice per month up to a maximum of once per day.

File content

The content of this file will be derived from an export of your existing HRIS provider. To simplify the process, we recommend working with your HRIS provider to automate sending files. In compliance with our SOC 2 certification, Kazoo will process the files within 3 business days (excludes federal holidays or weekends). In most cases, files are processed within 1 business day after posting.

Upload, error reporting, and SOC 2 compliance

The information in the file must be presented in a specific and consist format to be ingested properly. Prior to launch, Kazoo partners with clients to test the creation and passing of the HRIS file. We will ensure it meets the format types required to process on an ongoing basis. During implementation and after launch, Kazoo is unable to process files containing errors will not be processed. Our Support team will return the file and help troubleshoot the issue. You are responsible for sending and confirming any updated employee data in the system and resolving any issues causing the file to error out.

Below is an example of the HRIS processing schedule:

Regular Business Day

Wednesday Thursday Friday
HRIS file posted into STFP portal at 10:00am CDT. In most cases, Kazoo’s Customer Success team processes and verifies the HRIS file within 1 business day. Including the weekend, Monday is the third business day after the HRIS upload. The Customer Success team will process the file by the end of the day.

Holiday Weekend

Wednesday Thursday & Friday Monday Wednesday
HRIS file posted into STFP portal at 10:00am CDT. Thanksgiving holiday weekend, no files are processed In most cases, Kazoo’s Customer Success team processes and verifies the HRIS file within 1 business day. Including the holiday weekend, Wednesday is the third business day after the HRIS file was uploaded. The Customer Success team will process the file by the end of the day.

Fields

HRIS file fields populate a user’s profile in KazooHR, manage permissions, and drive workflows.

Important Note: Fields MUST be listed in a specific order to enable processing of the file. An Example CSV with the correct column headers can be found here.

Required HRIS fields:

Field Required/Optional Description
FirstName Required Employee First name
LastName Required Employee Last name
FullName Required Employee Full name formatted FirstName LastName
UserName Required Company email or employee ID are recommended
Email Required Company email address is recommended
StartDate Required Same as hire date. Used for Anniversary recognition, if enabled
BirthDate Required Format mm/dd. Used for Birthday recognition, if enabled
EmpID Required This is the employee ID, used as a unique identifier for each employee in the system. Note: Do not use SSN.
Department Required Name of the user’s department
Role Required Denotes a user’s system level access. Kazoo offers five levels of system roles. Admin, Employee, Manager, Director, Executive, Consultant
Position Required Recommended Employee job title
Location Required Enter the user’s location; if they are remote, you can enter “Remote” into this field.
NewUserName Optional When a username needs to be changed in the system, it must be changed in this field or a duplicate user could be created. When doing so, enter the old username in the UserName field and enter the NewUserName here.
ManagerUserName Optional Email or username of current user’s manager
HomeZip Optional User’s home zip code
WorkZip Optional User’s work zip code
DepartmentCode Optional If you do not have department codes, leave this field blank.
SuppressBirthday Optional This field is used for TRUE or FALSE when Recognition is turned on in your environment.
SuppressAnniversary Optional This field is used for TRUE or FALSE when Recognition is turned on in your environment.
OffBoardType Optional This is required for off-boarded users or those who are being off- boarded with your HRIS file. Options are “Voluntary” and “Involuntary.”
OffBoardDate Optional This is required for off-boarded users or those who are being off-boarded with your HRIS file. Enter the date employee off-boarding occurs. Formatted mm/dd/yyyy

Additional information can be passed to user files via this process. Please speak with your customer success representative before leveraging the following fields:

Field Description
JobLevel Used in reporting to segment employees by level.
JobCode Used in reporting to segment the employee by job code.
HomeCountry Used in reporting to segment the employee by their home country different from their work location’s country.
MailCD Used in reporting to segment the employee by their mail code.
UnionCode Used in reporting to segment the employee by internal union code.
BenefitStatus Used in reporting to segment the employee by their current benefit status.
Cost Center Used in reporting to segment the employee by their cost center.
Pay Grade Used in reporting to segment the employee by their pay grade.
Compensation Used in reporting to segment the employee by their compensation.
Business Unit Used in reporting to segment the employee by business unit.
Employee Type Used in reporting to segment the employee by type. Choose from Contract, Full-Time, Intern, Part-Time, Unknown. If nothing is set we use “Unknown” by default.
Payroll Group Used in reporting to segment the employee by their payroll group.

HRIS File Security considerations

KazooHR supports an SFTP and GPG encryption format. In order to facilitate the exchange, your KazooHR representative will send a copy of our public key to be used by your technical representative to encryption of the outbound files. Your technical representative then needs to provide KazooHR a copy of your public key. This will be embedded into the FTP site for encryption upon upload to the site. All HRIS file exchanges will use these keys to manage security throughout the FTP process. Please reach out to your account manager for more information before initiating this process.

Considerations & Troubleshooting tips

  • An employee with special characters in their name (é, ñ, etc.) should be updated via an .xlxs – formatting for special characters in a .csv does not save properly.
  • All headers must be capitalized as shown and without spaces.
  • Required fields are required for all employees – active or off-boarded.
  • Email: The employee’s email must be in a valid email format. If there are extra spaces (liz smith@example.com), no domains listed (lizsmith), other invalid email formats (lizsmith@example…com), etc., the file will return an error.
  • NewUserName: Utilize UserName and NewUserName fields to change a username and prevent creating a duplicate employee. The NewUserName field cannot match the current UserName field. If there is a new username not listed in the NewUserName column, a duplicate user will be created.
  • EmpID: An employee ID must be unique to the employee within the company. If there are two users with the same employee ID, the file will return an error.
  • Department: The department and characters must match exactly to what’s listed in the system. “Client Success - North America” and “Client Success, North America” are read by the system as two separate departments.
  • Manager UserName: The manager’s username cannot match the employee’s username (an employee cannot be listed as their own manager). The manager must also be active in the system—if the manager has previously been off-boarded, the file will error out.
  • OffBoard Type: You must indicate Voluntary or Involuntary and provide an off-board date to off-board a user.
  • A manager cannot be offboarded if they have direct reports listed in the system. If this field is not populated, the offboard will not process and the employee will remain active in the system.
  • Any department goal owner or goal approver must have goal approvership transferred prior to being offboarded.
  • Specific modules and configuration decisions may impact offboarding. Reach out to your account manager before off-boarding users.