Employee Bulk Import Feature Pro-Tips

Updating and adding Employee information into Tātou using the Bulk Import File is an important part of the onboarding journey, but can also be an extremely useful tool for updating Employee information when the Bulk Edit Feature is not quite the right fit for the changes you’re looking to make.

Before you Start

If you’ve never used the Employee Bulk Import Feature before, please read the support article here.

Bulk Importing Employee information can unintentionally overwrite existing records if done so incorrectly. We do not recommend using this feature if you have not been trained by either your Organisation’s Tātou Champion, or someone from Tātou Support. To book a training session with the support team email support@tatou.app

Bulk Import Basics

Bulk Import can be used for as few or as many employees as you’d like to create or updated. Only the employees listed on the file will be created or updated.
If the file is used to update existing employees details make sure you switch the upload toggle on so that existing employees are not skipped, but updated

Staff IDs should match your payroll system
Date format: YYYY-MM-DD

Always double-check your import data is accurate and matches the import template exactly. Bulk importing updates a lot of data at once and cannot be undone.

Pro Tip #1: Where to Start?

If you have an existing account or have been using Tātou for some time now running an Employee Export is a great starting point. Why?

To use as a guide: The exported file has all of the columns that are currently populated for ALL active or inactive employees, so users can see examples of what information is populated OR needs to be populated.
Ensure you’re using the most up to date information: We recommend using the Employee Export, rather than a previously used upload, because this ensures changes that have been made in directly in the Tātou Office App are accurately captured in your starting “upload template.”

Pro Tip #3: Create New Groups During Import

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again - Groups are a great tool to use within Tātou, and they can be created when using the Bulk Import Feature.

Locate the column titled groups
Add New Group or Existing Group to employee rows as required using commas to separate different Groups
After import New Groups will have been created, and employees will be added to the groups entered in the upload template.

Pro Tip #3: Reactivating Returnee’s?

For many companies using seasonal employees through the RSE or PALM schemes, reactivating employees can be a time consuming process for a number of reasons (e.g. not everyone comes back, there are new employees mixed in there too, some crew members may not actually return, etc.). Below are some steps to streamline this process:

Run Employee Export
Filter to status inactive
Filter to returnees and copy rows and headers to a new workbook
Update each returnee’s profile information
Change status to active
Use this file to update profile information and reactivate returnees

Pro-Tip: You can add rows to include NEW employees in this same upload if there is a mixture of new and returning employees.

Pro Tip #4: Adding New Employees with INACTIVE Status

Creating Employee’s in Tātou Office App before their start date is a great way to prepare things ahead of time, but you might want not want to activate them before their actual start date. Bulk Import can be used to add new Employees with inactive status. To do this:

Using the upload template OR Employee Export create a new line for the new employee
In the column labeled status make sure it says inactive
When the file is upload the employee will appear in your inactive employees list.