Migrate from Payroll Automation to Bullhorn ATS & CRM

Payroll Automation employee records map to Bullhorn Candidate (for recruiting pipeline and sourcing history) and Bullhorn Contact (for back-office and billing relationships). The mapping uses SSN or employee ID as the dedupe key. We preserve the full employee address, tax withholding status (W-4 equivalents), and emergency contact data in Bullhorn custom fields on both records. The customer's Bullhorn admin determines whether the employee also requires a separate Contact record for client-billing purposes or whether the Candidate record alone carries the payroll data.

Wage rates, salary changes, bonus schedules, and overtime rules from the Payroll Automation source migrate as custom fields on the Bullhorn Placement record. Bullhorn Placement stores payRate, billRate, and margin; compensation history beyond the current rate is stored in Bullhorn custom fields (customText or currency fields) since the standard Placement object does not natively track historical pay changes. We sequence compensation history import after the Placement record is created so the lookup is satisfied at insert time.

Bullhorn does not run payroll internally; it exports time and labor data to a payroll provider via Bullhorn Time & Labor. We map Payroll Automation pay run headers to Bullhorn time period configurations and map individual pay run lines to Bullhorn time entries (RTE or Transaction Uploader format) so that historical payroll data feeds into the Bullhorn time record structure. The export format aligns with Bullhorns Payroll Export and Accounts Payable Export processes.

Federal, state, and local tax withholding configurations from the Payroll Automation source migrate to Bullhorn custom fields on the Candidate or Contact record. Bullhorns standard ATS does not include a native tax withholding configuration object, so we use custom fields to store tax jurisdiction, filing status, and allowances. For customers using Bullhorn with Greenshades or another integrated payroll partner, we map these to the partners tax configuration schema instead.

Health insurance contributions, 401(k) deferrals, HSA and FSA deductions, and voluntary benefit deductions from Payroll Automation map to Bullhorn Placement custom fields and custom deduction codes in Bullhorns back-office configuration. Each deduction type (medical, dental, vision, retirement, HSA, FSA) gets its own code to support W-2 generation and payroll export. Employer match logic is preserved as notes on the Placement record for the back-office team to configure in the payroll export layer.

Child support orders, tax levies, and wage garnishment orders carry effective dates, dollar limits, and statutory deduction percentages that cannot be approximated. We extract garnishment records from Payroll Automation with effective date, expiration date, maximum deduction per period, and court order reference, and map them to Bullhorn Placement custom fields with a garnishment compliance flag. Bullhorns back-office team uses these to configure garnishments in the payroll export layer. We do not file garnishment order notifications; that is a legal compliance step the customer handles directly.

Accrued PTO, sick leave, and other leave balances from Payroll Automation migrate to Bullhorn custom fields on the Candidate or Contact record. Bullhorn ATS does not include a native PTO accrual engine; we store current balance and accrual rate for reference. If the customer uses Bullhorn with a third-party PTO management integration, we map the balance data to the integration's required fields. For staffing firms where PTO is managed by the worksite employer rather than the staffing agency, we scope this object based on the customer's operational model.

Departments, cost centers, job titles, and reporting hierarchies from Payroll Automation map to Bullhorn Department and to Bullhorn team-based user permissions. Bullhorn does not have a native org chart object, but Department is used for branch-level time approval routing, billing segmentation, and user visibility controls. We map cost centers to Bullhorn custom fields on Placement for back-office billing reports.

Employee banking information for direct deposit from Payroll Automation is extracted and mapped for import into the customer's payroll provider (Greenshades, ADP, or another). Bullhorn does not store banking details internally; it passes payroll data to the export layer. We extract the bank name, routing number, account number, and deposit allocation (percentage or flat amount) and deliver it as a structured CSV for the payroll provider onboarding team. We do not store banking data in Bullhorn.

W-2 employee versus 1099 contractor classification from Payroll Automation maps to Bullhorn Placement recordType. Staffing firms distinguish between regular W-2 placements (paid through payroll export) and 1099 contractor assignments (paid through accounts payable export). We map the source classification to Bullhorn Placement recordType so that the back-office payroll versus AP routing is set correctly at migration time.

Active job orders or position records from the Payroll Automation source that represent open headcount migrate to Bullhorn JobOrder. JobOrder captures job title, requirements, department, and status. For staffing firms, JobOrder is the recruiting-side record paired with Placement (the filled, billable assignment). We map open positions to Bullhorn JobOrder with status set appropriately based on whether the position is still recruiting or has been filled and transitioned to a Placement.

Historical time entries from Payroll Automation migrate to Bullhorn Time & Labor format (BTE). Bullhorn supports VTC, Web Time Entry, Rapid Time Entry, and Transaction Uploader formats. We map source time entries to RTE or Transaction Uploader format depending on whether the source data includes individual punch records or summary hours. Each time entry links to the corresponding Bullhorn Placement record via the assignment ID. Overtime hours, holiday rates, and double-time flags map to Bullhorn earn codes for correct payroll export.