Migrate from Payroll Automation to BambooHR

Employee records from the Payroll Automation platform map directly to BambooHR Employee. Core fields—name, address, SSN, date of birth, hire date, termination date, employment status, pay type (salary or hourly), pay frequency, and federal/state tax withholding (W-4 equivalents)—migrate 1:1. Custom fields migrate to BambooHR custom fields if the source API exposes them. The BambooHR Employee record serves as the parent record for all downstream objects including payroll, time-off, and onboarding.

Historical wage rates, salary changes, bonus schedules, and equity compensation entries require sequenced extraction from the Payroll Automation platform so that year-to-date totals accumulate correctly in BambooHR. We extract the full compensation timeline, map each change event to a BambooHR Pay Change record with effective date and amount, and verify that the current pay rate matches the most recent entry before the first BambooHR payroll run. If the source platform stores YTD gross as a running total rather than per-period detail, we reconstruct the per-period breakdown using pay frequency and date ranges.

Payroll runs are the highest-risk object in this migration. Native CSV exports from Payroll Automation platforms convert paychecks into flat amounts, destroying the itemized breakdown of federal withholding, FICA (employee and employer), state and local taxes, 401(k) deductions, health insurance contributions, HSA/FSA deductions, and other voluntary deductions. We extract at the paycheck line level via API, preserving every withholding and deduction entry so that W-2s and IRS audit trails are accurate post-migration. Each payroll run is sequenced chronologically, and the YTD accumulator in BambooHR is validated against the source YTD totals before the next run is imported.

Federal, state, and local tax withholding records carry over into BambooHR's tax configuration so that payroll runs generate accurate withholdings from day one. We map source tax codes to BambooHR's jurisdiction-based tax setup, reconcile year-to-date federal income tax withheld, Social Security withheld, Medicare withheld, and any state/local withholding amounts against the BambooHR YTD totals. Any jurisdiction mismatch or missing W-4 data flagged during reconciliation requires correction in the source platform before the final tax filing period closes there.

Health insurance, retirement contributions, HSA/FSA deductions, and voluntary benefit deductions each have distinct deduction codes, employer-match logic, and pre-tax or post-tax classifications that must carry over accurately. We extract deduction amounts, frequencies (per pay period, annual cap, life event changes), employer contribution rates, and benefit plan identifiers from the source platform and map them to BambooHR's benefit deduction configuration. If BambooHR does not natively support a specific deduction type, we document the gap and recommend a manual setup or third-party benefit admin integration.

Child support orders, tax levies, and wage garnishment orders carry legally enforceable effective dates and dollar limits or percentage caps that cannot be approximated or rounded. We extract garnishment records with the full order details—creditor, case number, deduction amount or percentage, maximum deduction, and expiration date—and map them to BambooHR's garnishment setup. Note: BambooHR supports garnishment setup but recommends third-party compliance tools for calculating deductions against each paycheck to account for federal and state exemption rules. We flag any garnishments that require calculation-level precision for the customer's review before activation in BambooHR.

Accrued PTO, sick leave, and other leave balances are stored differently across Payroll Automation platforms, with some using accrual-per-pay-period logic and others storing current balance snapshots. We extract both the current balance and the accrual rate or policy from the source platform, map them to BambooHR's Time-Off configuration (which supports unlimited, accrual, and front-loaded policies), and reconcile the opening balance in BambooHR against the source snapshot. Any proration logic for mid-year hires that used the source platform's accrual schedule is noted for manual adjustment in BambooHR after migration.

Departments, cost centers, job titles, reporting hierarchies, and employment type (full-time, part-time, contractor) migrate as configuration data attached to each BambooHR Employee record. These are standard fields with well-documented schemas across both platforms, and the mapping is direct. We use the department structure to group employees for BambooHR's reporting and approval workflow configuration.

If the Payroll Automation platform includes an ATS or has exported applicant records, we map them to BambooHR's native Applicant records. BambooHR's ATS includes job board posting integrations, a candidate pipeline, rating and notes fields, and offer management. We map the applicant name, email, applied position, application status, source channel, resume file reference (as a ContentDocument attachment), and any custom fields the source platform exposes. Applicant history migrates as-is; BambooHR's hiring workflow is configured post-migration based on the customer's existing hiring process.

New-hire onboarding tasks, document completion statuses, and e-signature records from the source platform split across multiple BambooHR objects. Task checklists map to BambooHR's onboarding task list; completed documents map as BambooHR file attachments to the Employee record; e-signature status (signed/pending/not sent) maps to BambooHR's document tracking. Note that BambooHR's onboarding is a structured workflow builder, and the actual task sequence and conditional logic must be rebuilt by the customer's admin post-migration. We deliver a written map of the existing onboarding steps and their completion states to serve as the rebuild reference.