This article describes how to import the attendance periods for different employees into Personio all at once. You can import the attendance periods in bulk as an alternative to having your employees manually record their attendance through Employee profile > Attendance.

Tips
▶︎ You can now find and download import templates directly in Personio. Click Import
and choose the import type to see the relevant template.
▶︎ You can import both past and future attendance periods. Importing past attendance periods allows you to for example have the historical salary data of employees who are paid on an hourly basis calculated automatically by Personio.

Prepare your import file

Before importing your attendances into Personio, you must prepare your import file. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Imports section of your Personio account.
2. Select the file type Attendance and download the Excel template.
3. Open the Excel template and enter the required information in the relevant columns. Each line corresponds to an attendance period for one employee. If you wish to record several attendances for an employee, you need to create several lines.
   

   Note
   Each employee is uniquely identified by their email address.

   The lines in the following columns must be formatted as specified below:
   ▶︎ Date: Date dd.mm.yyyy
   ▶︎ Start time: May only contain text (hh:mm) and must not be formatted as time.
   ▶︎ End time: May only contain text (hh:mm) and must not be formatted as time.
   ▶︎ Comment: May only contain text.

   Tip
   You can use the Comment column to add notes, for example if an employee was late for work because of a medical appointment.

4. Save the complete Excel file.

If the start and end times are formatted as hh:mm:ss, please complete the following steps:

1. Add two blank columns to the right of the ‘endtime’ column.
2. Enter the following command in the second line of the first blank column: =TEXT(C2;"hh:mm")
3. Enter the following command in the second cell of the second blank column: =TEXT(D2;"hh:mm")
4. You can now enter the headings for the new columns you have just created.
5. The first blank column should be named ‘Start time’, the second one ‘End time’.

Note
Please check carefully that you select the correct columns when importing your data.

Import attendance data

Once you have completed the Excel template, follow these steps to import your file:

1. Navigate to the Imports section of your Personio account.
2. Select the file type Attendance.
3. Click on Upload file and select the file to import.
4. In Configure columns, assign the columns of your Excel file manually to the corresponding attributes stored in Personio, if needed. Then click Next.

5. In Preview import, review your import data. 

   Tip
   If you notice any errors, you can simply cancel the import and correct them in the Excel sheet and start with step 1. If you experience errors during the import, take a look at our troubleshooting article on imports in the Help Center.

6. If the data is correct, click Import.

We are happy to assist you in importing your data. If you are planning to do an import and need our assistance, you can contact our service team through Help in your Personio account.