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Import employees into QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll and QuickBooks Bureau Payroll

SOLVED•by QuickBooks•9•Updated January 05, 2024

Are you looking for a quick and easy way to get your QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll set up and running? Or maybe you need to perform a bulk update of employee data? Either way, importing employees from a XLSX or CSV file is the way to go.

We'll show you how to import employees into QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll, step-by-step. We'll also provide a few tips to make sure the process goes smoothly. So let's get started!

Import employees

There are a few different ways to import employees into QuickBooks, but the best way to get started is by exporting the XLSX (Excel spreadsheet) or CSV (comma separated value) template file first, adding data to it, and then importing it into QuickBooks. This will ensure that all of the necessary data is imported correctly and in the correct format.

Step 1. Export the employee template file

In QuickBooks, go to Payroll.
Select the Employees tab.
Select the ▼dropdown arrow next to Add employee.
Select Export Employees.
From the Data type dropdown, select Empty template.
Choose whether you want to work with an XLSX or CSV file.
Select Download.
On your computer, open the template and add a row for each employee.
When you're done, Save the file.

Step 2. Import the employee list back in to QuickBooks

In QuickBooks, go to Payroll.
Select the Employees tab.
Select the ▼dropdown arrow next to Add employee.
Select Import Employees.
Select the file format, and then Select file....
Select Confirm upload?

Once the import is complete, a report will show with the list of employees that were imported into QuickBooks.

File specifications

There are quite a few fields in the import file, but they're broken into sections. Not all sections need to be present, so you can tailor the file to your needs. However, it's important to make sure that all of the necessary information is included, so that your new employees can hit the ground running.

Employee details

To setup an employee to be processed in a pay run the following fields are required as a minimum:

First Name
Surname
DateOfBirth
ResidentialStreetAddress
ResidentialCity
ResidentialDistrict
ResidentialPostCode
PostalStreetAddress
PostalCity
PostalDistrict
PostalPostCode
StartDate
EmploymentType
PaySchedule
PrimaryPayCategory
PrimaryLocation
PaySlipNotificationType
Rate
RateUnit
HoursPerWeek
BankAccount1_SortCode
BankAccount1_AccountNumber
BankAccount1_AccountName
BankAccount1_AllocatedPercentage

Once an employee is set up in QuickBooks, import files may contain a smaller subset of fields but the following must always be included in order to be able to identify the employee to update:

First name
Surname
Date of birth

Fully qualified locations

Since locations may be nested when importing from the CSV file, it's important to specify the Fully Qualified Location. For the following set of locations:

All Offices
- London Offices
  - Strathfield–the fully qualified location for ‘Strathfield’ would be All Offices/London Offices/Strathfield.
- Devon Offices
  - Logan

Delete import data

If you're looking to remove data from employee records in bulk, you can do so by using an import file. Simply including the value clear in the appropriate field on your import file will remove the data from the matching field on the employee record.