Getting Started with HR Partner

Congratulations! You’ve subscribed to HR Partner! You can breathe easier knowing that all of your employee records are in one, secure place and knowing that your processes are ab

But where do you go from here? What do you actually do first? Glad you asked! 

HR Partner is a simple-to-use HR (human resources) management app for you and your employees. While being easy to use, there is a lot of power under the hood - which is why we created this quick guide to help you become familiar with the app in the least time possible. 

Here's our guide to getting started...

• Basic Setup
• Inviting Other Admin Users
• Adding Your Employees
• Setting Up Time Off / Leave
• Setting Starting Leave Balances
• Creating Your Company Library
• Inviting Your Team to the Employee Portal
• Next Steps

You can also download our >  Getting Started Checklist  < so that you can check things off as you go along.

Basic Setup

Company Info

Here’s where you set up the most important parameters for your company. Of course, you can add things and change them later, but it’s generally recommended that you get the basics right first…

To do this, go to Setup > Company Info from the side menu, then work through the sections there. In particular;

• Check your Company Name
• Set your Company's primary Country location
• Set your Company’s primary timezone
• Upload your Company logo
• Set your Default Department
• Set your label for Employee Groups
• Make changes to your Display & Interface
• Make changes to which features are visible initially

Categories

Next, set up your categories - these are the 'major' drop down lists that apply to each employee you have. You can set them up by going to Setup > Configure > Categories. 

It’s particularly important to setup your;

• Departments
• Locations
• Employee Groups (optional)
• Employment Statuses

We would also suggest that you update:

• Positions
• Tags
• Termination Reasons
• News Categories

Your trial account has trial data in each of these Categories already and you can always add more or edit them later, but it really helps to get the basics right!

Lists

Then, go into the Lists area and set up the List options for your Company. You’ll find this under Setup > Configure > Lists. Note that these can also be added “on the fly,” but it’s good to get them started.

It’s most important to configure your options for;

• Absence Statuses

And perhaps;

• Performance Review types
• Asset Types
• Renewable Document Types
• Training Types
• Or any other lists in this section

Custom Fields

Next up, create and manage your Custom Fields. These are completely optional, but If your company wants to track something specific for employees, you can create your own Custom Fields.

You’ll find this under: Setup > Configure > Custom Fields

You can add different types of fields here: text, numbers, date/time, checkbox, etc.

Inviting Other Admin Users

Next we'd recommend that you invite other Admin Users to join your Company and help you with the setup process!

To add Admin Users, go to Setup > Users, then click “Add a New User”. 

Enter their name and email address and select their permissions. In particular, choose which Modules they should have access to, and decide if you want them to have access to all Departments and Locations, or just selected ones.

Take a look at this article to help you through this: Adding other Admin Users

Once you’ve done that, you should take some time to go through HR Partner with them and explain what you want help with - usually entering data and files at this stage! You can also share this video tutorial here. 

Adding Your Employees

Now it’s time to add some employees to HR Partner.

There are actually 3 different ways you can add employees in HR Partner;

1. Manually Add Employees Individually

   To add employees one by one, simply go to Employees > All Employees, then click the “Add Employee” button. (There’s also a shortcut from the dashboard.)

2. Import a CSV File

   To import employees, go to Employees > Import > Import CSV. There you’ll find a sample spreadsheet and instructions.

3. Link to a Payroll System

   If you are integrating with a compatible payroll system (like Xero or KeyPay), you can use this to import your employees from that system.

   First you need to set up the integration under Setup > Configure > IntegrationsThen, go to Employees > Import > Integration

You can see more details on each of these methods for Adding New Employees here.

Once your employees have been added to HR Partner, you can then go through the Employee Records Modules and add the information you want to start recording straight away. For instance, you might decide to get everyone's "Positions and Salaries" informationAdd employees one by one and go through all modules they want to use and get as much information for each employee one at a time, or

If you have quite a few employees, chances are you might want to enlist some help! Here’s where it pays to enlist the support of your fellow Admin Users.

Setting Up Time Off & Leave

We always recommend setting up the general settings for your Company and adding your Employees first, but once that's done you can start setting up Time Off & Leave.

Leave Settings

Start by going to Time Off & Leave > Configure > Leave Settings. The Leave Settings page contains leave settings that affect all of the leave policies that you will create, including more advanced options. We recommend reading through each of these options to update things for your Company.

Here, you need to;

• Edit settings for how leave requests are processed,
• Edit settings for leave notifications,
• Edit Calendar visibility,
• Edit the standard working hours for your Company,
• Make changes to more advanced leave processing.

Most companies find that many of the default settings work well for them, but this is where you can get some more flexibility if you need it. 

If you are the person that approves leave, you can enter this here too. Otherwise, you’ll need to come back to this once you’ve entered the other Admin Users.

Leave Policies

Once your global leave settings are edited to suit your needs, you can create individual Leave Policies for your Company. Go to Time Off & Leave > Configure > Leave Settings.

HR Partner allows you to set up different Leave Policies for each type of leave that your Company offers Employees. When setting up a new leave policy, you can edit the parameters, restrictions, and accrual rules for each policy.

For a full breakdown, please read through Setting Up Time Off & Leave Policies here as well as the definitions for Time Off and Leave terms.

The leave policies you set up will be used to calculate the amount of time off that your employees will have so it's important that you get the ‘rules’ correct for best results in HR Partner. Only set up the policies that your company needs, and remove others that don’t apply.  When setting up a policy, please carefully check the following:

• The name of the policy is easily understood by your employees
• Auto accruals are turned on for this leave type
• The default annual allowance is set correctly (you can change allowances for individual employees later)
• Any rules around resetting the leave every year, and/or carrying over balances into the new year, are set correctly
• Choose an appropriate color for the policy, which will show on all the calendars in the system
• Setup any Restrictions that apply to this leave policy (eg only for certain Locations, Employment Statuses, etc).

Work Days

Next, check that the default work days are correct for your Company. To do this, go to Time Off & Leave > Configure > Work Days. Nominate the default working days (e.g. Monday to Friday) and the default working hours per day for most employees. 

Usually you only need one for Monday to Friday, but if you have part-time or contract employees who work odd days, you can set extra work day templates in here for them - these will affect their leave and time off calculations later.

See details on Setting Up Working Day Templates here.

Holidays

This is where you can set up public holidays for your Company which will show on your calendars in the system, and be factored into the ‘days off’ calculations for your employee time off. To do this, go to; Time Off & Leave > Configure > Holidays.

You can either add them manually or import for your country (recommended!). If you have several locations, you can choose which holidays apply to each location. You can also delete any that don’t apply for your Company.

See details about Entering Public and Bank Holidays here.

Set Starting Leave Balances

Although you've set up your Leave Policies, HR Partner doesn't know how much leave each employee has already taken and what their current balances should be. You don't need to add past records for this, but instead, you need to update all of their starting balances.

To do this, pick a point in time a date that you will change the leave calculations over to HR Partner. Then export data for that date (usually from your payroll system), go to Time Off / Leave > Balances, then click on the "Allow Editing" button in the top right. Then go through each employee and update their balances (current for the date you've chosen), for each type of Leave. Again, if you have a lot of employees, you may wish to do this in batches.

Don't forget, we have a detailed article the full help article and section on Adjusting Leave Balances here.

Creating Your Company Library

The Company Library is where you store Company-wide documents that your employees can download and look at via their own ESS Portal. You can upload files or add links, as well as set up your own hierarchical structure of categories (or ‘folders’) to store files in. For further security, each folder can have its own visibility settings, too!

To add documents, simply upload them by clicking in the upload area, or add links by clicking on "Add External Link". External links can be to files, help on Dropbox, Google Drive or anywhere on the web. Just make sure that your team members have access to all the files you want them to view.

To set up categories, simply go to the Library menu option, then;

• Add New Category
• Set the permissions for the category
• Upload or add links to the relevant files

See details about Using the Document Library here.

Inviting Your Team to the Employee Portal

Now that you have your employees entered and all of their leave balances are up-to-date and accurate, you can start getting your team involved. To do this, just go to  Employees > Self-Service and then choose which employees you want to invite. You can invite specific Departments or Groups of Employees to start and you can always resend an invitation to access the ESS Portal.

When introducing employees to HR Partner, some things to cover include;

• Encourage them to enter their contact details, photo, and also an introduction/biography about themselves
• Show them how to view the employee directory and see their colleagues' (public) details
• Show them how to access documents in the Company Library
• And perhaps most importantly, explain how they can submit Leave Requests.

See also our article about Inviting Your Team to the Employee Portal here.

Next Steps

Congratulations! You’ve made it through the core setup steps! 👏👏👏  You now have your Employee Records online, and employees can start submitting leave requests.

Of course, there's much more to HR Partner, though, and you can feel free to jump into these areas as well. You may want to dive into;

• Communicating with Employees
• Recruitment
• Checklists (usually for Onboarding)
• eSignatures
• Expense Claims
• Custom Forms
• Timesheets
  
• Projects and Costing
• Reports

So from here on, it’s "choose your own adventure"...

Also check out more tutorials in our Knowledge Base here.

But if you ever get stuck, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team - just email us or click on the chat icon in the bottom right corner of every HR Partner screen (see below). This will open a chat window where you can talk directly to one of our support team. If we are not available, we'll respond to you via email as soon as we can.