Migrate from ELMO Suite to BambooHR

Rostering data has no native BambooHR home

ELMO's Rostering module stores shift patterns, start/end times, break durations, and location assignments per employee per pay period — a rich scheduling model with no equivalent in BambooHR's standard schema. BambooHR has no scheduling or rostering module; time-off tracking is the closest functional overlap. We handle this gap by mapping the most recently active roster pattern to custom text fields on each employee record (Shift_Pattern__c, Roster_Location__c) and exporting the full roster history as a structured CSV. Recurring roster rules like rotating shifts or split-week patterns are summarized as text descriptions rather than fully replicated. If your team relies on ELMO rostering for time-and-attendance enforcement, you will need to either configure BambooHR's Time Tracking add-on, integrate with a dedicated scheduling tool, or rebuild roster rules manually.

BambooHR custom fields must be created before bulk import

BambooHR requires custom fields to be defined in the admin settings before data can populate them via import or API. ELMO teams frequently have 20–60 custom fields distributed across HR Core and module-level employee records — fields for clearance levels, visa status, badge numbers, cost centres, or module-specific attributes. We surface every ELMO custom field during discovery, then create the corresponding BambooHR custom field (matching display name, field type, and pick-list values) before the import run. If a BambooHR custom field is missing, the import skips that value silently. Our pre-flight validation catches this by comparing ELMO field names against BambooHR's field manifest before any records are written. Budget time for the BambooHR admin to approve custom field creation — BambooHR requires an admin to confirm custom field setup in the UI before our import can write to those fields.

Leave balance calculation diverges between ELMO and BambooHR

ELMO tracks leave as entitlement minus usage (a net balance model) while BambooHR uses accrual policies with running balances that advance over time. For an ELMO employee with 20 days annual leave granted and 8 days taken, the net balance is 12 days. In BambooHR, if you configure a monthly accrual policy, the employee starts at 0 and accrues each month — the opening balance of 12 days must be set explicitly as a manual balance adjustment in BambooHR's Time Off settings. We calculate this for every employee and every leave type, then document it as a BambooHR manual balance entry. If ELMO tracks leave on an anniversary-year basis and BambooHR uses a calendar year, the opening balance calculation must account for the partial year. We flag this date-basis discrepancy during the test migration and provide a calculation worksheet for your BambooHR admin to enter manually or via our balance-import tool.

Module-level employee data creates overlapping records in ELMO

ELMO's modular architecture means the same employee record can exist with different data in HR Core, Payroll, Rostering, and Performance modules — phone numbers updated in Payroll may differ from those in HR Core, or a termination recorded in Payroll may not be reflected in HR Core. This module-level duplication is a known ELMO pain point (G2 reviewers describe 'module synchronization issues' as a recurring frustration). During migration, we establish a single source-of-truth hierarchy: HR Core is primary for identity and employment data, Payroll for pay-related fields, Rostering for scheduling attributes. Where modules disagree, we flag the conflict in the migration report and your team decides which value wins. This conflict-report step adds a validation loop to the discovery phase but prevents silent data corruption where one module's stale value overwrites the correct one in BambooHR.

Performance review competency ratings need BambooHR custom field mapping

ELMO's Performance module supports competency-level ratings — a review can have multiple competencies each scored independently (e.g., 'Communication: 4/5', 'Problem Solving: 3/5'). BambooHR's native Performance Review module uses a single overall rating per review cycle. Competency scores in ELMO have no direct BambooHR native field — they are stored as BambooHR custom fields on the Performance Review record (e.g., Communication_Rating__c, Problem_Solving_Rating__c). If your organisation has configured many ELMO competencies (10+ per review template), each becomes a custom field in BambooHR. This increases the per-employee custom field count and the BambooHR admin's setup workload before import. We map every configured ELMO competency to a named custom field, but the custom field creation step must be done by a BambooHR admin with access to the Performance module settings. We provide the full list of competency-to-field mappings in the pre-migration setup plan.