Migrating to a new HRIS platform takes planning and intention, but we’re here to help. This step-by-step guide to HRIS migration covers everything you need to consider—from preparation, data migration steps, and best practices for a smooth roll-out.
Keep in mind that no two HRIS platforms are the same. When preparing to migrate, you may need to reformat some data, decide how your policies and documents should be organized, recreate essential workflows, and more.
Leapsome offers abundant resources in our Success Center to support you throughout this migration process. We aim to make it as easy as possible for you and your HR team to feel at home in our HRIS.
Scope out your transition to Leapsome’s HRIS
To help you plan your HRIS migration timeline, consider these three questions:
- When does your current vendor contract end?
- How much data are you migrating?
- How complex are your policy configurations?
Work backwards from your contract deadline. Consider your company size (10 employees or 500?), the number of documents (100 or 20,000?), and the years of historical data (2 or 10 years?). Organizations with fewer employees or less historical data may require less time than larger, more established companies. Plan accordingly, and don’t hesitate to ask for support from your previous vendor if you encounter any hurdles accessing your data.
Notify your previous vendor about your platform transition as early as possible. This will make it easier to secure support for downloading your data and ensure you have ample time to complete the process.
Download your company data from your legacy HRIS
Downloading your data is a crucial step—this ensures you have everything you need to set up your Leapsome account without missing anything important.
If you're migrating from Personio or BambooHR, you’ll be able to sync employee data directly to Leapsome before your contract ends, which can save you time. That said, it's still essential to back up your data beforehand—this helps you double-check that everything is mapped correctly and gives you a safety net in case anything unexpected comes up.
Here's how to get started:
- Notify your current vendor and ask about offboarding support.
- Update your existing records to avoid redundant work.
- Download and clean employee data: format all cells as text and remove outdated or duplicate entries.
- Download employee and company documents stored in your HRIS.
- Export absence records, policies, payroll data, timesheets, and time tracking records.
- Record workflows you want to reference.
Feeling overwhelmed or working with a short timeline? Prioritize downloading everything you think you might need. You don’t need to upload it all to Leapsome immediately, but it’s essential to have it stored externally before your contract ends.
Prepare your Leapsome account for imports
Once your data is ready, it's time to set up your Leapsome account so it's fully prepared for your migration. These steps will make sure everything is in place for a smooth transition:
- Log into Leapsome and assign your Admins.
- Remove dummy data before adding any real user data.
- Set up basic account settings, including your logo, timezone, and language, and disable unused modules.
- Create custom attributes to include them in your data import.
- Create document categories for easy bulk document uploads.
Migrate your data to Leapsome
When your preparation is complete, you're ready to start migrating your data into Leapsome. Remember, you don't have to do everything at once—you can work module by module and build out your setup at a pace that works for you.
User data
Once your data is cleaned up and ready, follow this guide for the step-by-step process of migrating your user data. If you’re migrating from Personio or BambooHR but haven’t synced your user data with Leapsome yet, you can find instructions here for Personio and here for BambooHR.
The first step, after exporting the template, will be to reformat your user data to match the file that Leapsome can read. Here are a few considerations to ensure an error-free import:
- Leave the column formatting as-is. Any changes, such as deleting columns or removing text from them, will cause errors.
- Turn off "send invitations to log in right after creation". Allow time for adjustments before roll-out.
- Check for errors in the preview after uploading your template.
- Make changes using the template to avoid duplicates.
Documents
Leapsome makes it simple to upload files in bulk with pre-configured access settings. You can follow these instructions to get started, and please note the following file size limitations:
- Max file size per zip upload: 2.5 GB
- Max files per zip: 2,500
Document access is organized by category. If you haven't already done so, configure visibility settings under Settings > Documents > Document categories.
More information on how to bulk upload documents for data migration, specifically, can be found in this article.
Absences
Bringing over your employees' historic absences is key to making sure your team can switch HRIS platforms smoothly, without disrupting their time-off experience. To get this right, you'll want to follow three simple steps:
- Create absence policies.
- Import absences.
- If needed, import absence balances.
Start by testing with one employee to make sure everything looks right before you move on to the full upload. Watch a video overview here.
Importing absences:
- Navigate to Settings > Excel imports > Type of import: Absences.
- Download the template.
- Fill in the sheet with absence data (Note: this sheet will likely include employees with multiple absences attributed to various policies).
- Format all cells as plain text.
- Upload the sheet to Leapsome, review for errors, and confirm import.
Importing absence balances:
This step is only necessary if you need to manually override balances that are incorrect, or if you want to skip importing absences and want to import the correct balances and start from there.
- Navigate to Settings > Excel imports > Type of import: Absence balances.
- Download the template and add absence balances.
- Upload and review changes in employee profiles.
Payroll
With Leapsome's bulk import functionality, you can easily bring over both current and historic salary data, along with additional compensation components. You can also set up your payroll policies. Check out these helpful resources to guide you through each step:
- Creating payroll policies
- Importing salary, bonus, and equity data
- Bulk importing compensation components
To bring in historic salary data, add multiple lines per employee in the salary bulk import—one for each date their salary changed. This gives you a detailed, time-stamped record that you can use to better understand employee lifecycles and trends over time.
Time tracking
If your company uses time tracking, it's important to bring that information over carefully so your team can continue tracking time without interruptions. Here's how to get set up:
- Create time tracking policies.
- Assign policies to employees in Company > Employees.
- Import recent time tracking records via Settings > Integrations and imports > Excel imports.
Recommendations:
- Only import data for the current period to avoid duplicating approval processes.
- Store past timesheets in employee profiles using the standard document upload process.
Considerations:
- Time tracked won't be imported for approved timesheets.
- Imports apply only to employees with active time tracking policies.
- Multiple rows per employee per day are supported.
Workflows
Migrating to a new HRIS is a great chance to rethink your workflows. Use this moment to refresh your processes and make improvements that suit your team's current needs. You can reference your old workflows, but don't feel locked into them—this is your opportunity to build something even better.
Helpful resources:
Offboard from your legacy HRIS
You made it! 🎉 The final step is to securely offboard your team from your previous system. Take a moment to celebrate this milestone—you’re almost fully set up with Leapsome! Now, just make sure to provide a clear timeline for when employees will lose access.
Encourage employees to check their accounts and download any documents they want to retain for personal records. They can upload these to their Leapsome profiles.
Employees may find it helpful to note:
- Hours tracked
- PTO balances
- Past payslips
- Essential documents stored in the system
Encourage employees to actively participate in the transition and check that their information looks right. If anything seems off, like absence balances, make sure they know exactly who to contact to get it sorted quickly—we want everyone to feel confident and cared for throughout the process.
If you have any questions during your migration, reach out via our Support chatbot or contact our Support Team. We’re here to make your HRIS migration as smooth as possible.