Migrate from Personio to BambooHR

Personio Employee records map directly to BambooHR Employee. The employee's UUID from Personio is stored in a custom field bhr_legacy_id__c for reconciliation. BambooHR requires the Employee record to exist before any related objects (Absence, Documents, Compensation) can be imported, so we import Employees first and use the returned BambooHR employee ID as the foreign key for all dependent objects. We handle Personio's date-format inconsistencies (DD/MM and DD.MM by locale) by normalising all dates to ISO 8601 during extraction and validating numeric fields against expected ranges before load.

Organisational hierarchy of departments exports from Personio as a flat or nested list depending on the customer's configuration. We map departments to BambooHR Departments before Employee import so that the department_id resolves at the time of Employee insert. BambooHR supports a flat department list; nested sub-departments in Personio map to the parent department in BambooHR with a note that hierarchical org chart visualisation is handled in BambooHR separately.

Personio Absence records (vacation, sick leave, and other absence types) map to BambooHR Time Off entries. Each absence category in Personio must be mapped individually to a BambooHR Time Off type because the system-level type names differ between platforms. Entitlement balances export from Personio as effective-dated records and are created as accrual rules in BambooHR. We flag any absence categories that have no direct BambooHR equivalent (for example, special German leave types) and present a mapping table to the customer for confirmation before import.

Employee documents (contracts, certificates, ID scans) stored in Personio are retrieved via the API and mapped to BambooHR Employee Files. Document naming conventions in Personio vary by company and by folder structure, so we flatten the hierarchy into a single file list per employee and map the Personio document category to a BambooHR file category label. Binary file content transfers directly. We flag any files that exceed BambooHR's size limits or use unsupported formats.

Personio Recruiting Positions (job postings with department, location, status, and hiring manager metadata) map to BambooHR Job Openings. We map Personio's position status (open, paused, filled, cancelled) to BambooHR's Job Opening status equivalents. The hiring manager field resolves via the Personio manager UUID to the corresponding BambooHR employee record.

Personio Applications (candidates linked to recruiting positions) map to BambooHR Candidates. The candidate's email address serves as the dedupe key during import. Standard application fields (name, email, phone, status, source) migrate directly. However, custom_attributes configured on Personio application forms are not accessible via any documented API endpoint, so we request the customer to enumerate these fields and their data during scoping, then create equivalent custom fields in BambooHR before applying the values. Without this step, custom candidate data is not transferred.

Personio stores salary, bonus, and compensation data as effective-dated entries per employee. We export the full compensation history with each effective_date preserved as a distinct record and insert all dated entries into BambooHR's pay history fields. BambooHR supports a single current compensation rate; historical entries are stored in a custom pay history table that we create as part of the schema. We flag any compensation components (allowances, equity, benefits in kind) that have no direct BambooHR field and present alternatives to the customer.

Employee benefit enrolments (health insurance, pension, company car, etc.) stored against the Personio employee record map to BambooHR's Benefits section. Benefit types and coverage levels transfer directly. Any benefit plans requiring carrier-specific configuration (e.g., German private health insurance providers) are flagged as items requiring post-migration setup rather than data migration because BambooHR's benefit module handles enrolment rather than carrier-level detail.

Personio Performance Reviews with their review cycle, status, ratings, and reviewer assignments map to BambooHR Performance Reviews. Review templates and custom form question text vary by company in Personio, so we export the review status and scores and note that BambooHR's review form builder requires the customer's HR admin to recreate the questionnaire structure. We preserve the reviewer assignment as a BambooHR reviewer relationship and carry over any written review text as notes.

Personio Goals and OKRs with titles, descriptions, progress percentages, and employee linkages map to BambooHR Goals. Goal alignment hierarchies (company goals cascading to team and individual goals) do not have a direct BambooHR equivalent, so we flatten the hierarchy and link each goal to its contributing employee with the parent goal ID preserved in a custom field for reference. BambooHR's goal-tracking module does not support automatic cascade calculations.

Personio custom attributes on Employees, Positions, and Applications are detected via API schema introspection. We create matching custom fields in BambooHR before migration, preserving the Personio field label as the BambooHR field name. Data type mapping converts Personio field types (text, number, date, select, multiselect) to their BambooHR equivalents. Custom attributes on recruiting application forms require the customer to provide the enumeration separately because the Personio API does not expose them.

Personio absence approval chains, onboarding step workflows, and document signing approval sequences are not exposed via the API in a migration-ready format. We do not migrate workflow definitions. We deliver a written inventory of every active Personio workflow and approval chain with its trigger, conditions, actions, and assigned approver, which the customer's HR admin uses to rebuild equivalent automations in BambooHR's workflow builder. Onboarding document templates and e-signature workflows are listed separately as items requiring manual recreation.