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Import attendance periods

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

Before you start

  • To import attendance periods, you need edit permissions for Attendance periods import via Configurations > Imports. You also need edit permissions for Attendance data of the employees you are importing attendance data for. Learn more about import permissions.
  • Imports cannot be reverted. Make sure the data you're importing is correct, and consider importing a small data set first to test the results.
  • 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

Note:
Each employee is uniquely identifiable by their email address.

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

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. In the Organization section, click Imports.
  3. Select the upload type Attendance and download the Excel template.
  4. Open the template and read the guidelines.
  5. Fill out the template with the relevant attendance information.
    ▶︎ Each line corresponds to an attendance period for one employee. Personio uploads work periods and break periods as separate rows. If you wish to record several attendances for an employee, you need to create several lines.
  6. Save the completed file.

Import attendance data

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

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. In the Organization section, click Imports. 
  3. Select the same upload type: Attendance.
  4. Click Next and upload your completed template.
  5. If needed, match the columns in your file to the corresponding attributes in Personio.
  6. Click Next and review your file for any errors. If there are errors, follow the instructions to fix them.
  7. If the data is correct, click Import.

Update old files to the current Attendance template format

We recently introduced a new version of the Attendance import. The old version is no longer available in Personio. A key difference between the two versions is the template format.

Attendance V1 template (old format) Attendance V2 template (new format)

Separate columns for date, start time, and end time.

Here’s how it looks:

Date (YYYY‑MM‑DD) | Start time (HH:MM) | End time (HH:MM)
 

Unified date‑time format for start and end.

Here’s how it looks:

Start (YYYY‑MM‑DD HH:MM) | End (YYYY‑MM‑DD HH:MM)

 

You may have existing attendance import files that match the old template format. If so, you can update them so that they match the new template format. You can then import the data into Personio under the new Attendance import.

Note:
While the Excel formulas below can help you with this process, we can't offer tailored support for any issues you may experience with Excel.

Follow these steps:

  1. Open your existing attendance import Excel file (old format).
  2. Insert two new columns to the right of the existing End time column. Name them “Start” and “End.”

  3. In the first new column (Start), enter the following formula in the second row:

    =TEXT(B2,"yyyy-mm-dd") & " " & TEXT(C2,"hh:mm")

    This is assuming column B = Date and column C = Start time.

  4. In the second new column (End), enter the following formula:

     =TEXT(B2,"yyyy-mm-dd") & " " & TEXT(D2,"hh:mm")

    This is assuming column D = End time.

  5. Copy these formulas for all following rows in your dataset.
  6. Select the two new columns (Start and End) that contain the formulas.
  7. Copy them and right-click on the same selection.
  8. Select Paste special > Paste values > Values. (If you’re using Google Sheets, select Paste special > values only.) This replaces the formula results as static text instead of a live formula.
  9. Remove the old Date, Start time, and End time columns.
  10. Save your file. Make sure the format matches the new Attendance v2 template.

Once your file is ready, you can import it into Personio.

Additional notes:

  • If your time values include seconds (HH:MM:SS), adjust the formula to:
=TEXT(B2,"yyyy-mm-dd") & " " & TEXT(C2,"hh:mm:ss")
  • Make sure your Excel regional settings use a consistent date and time separator (hyphen and colon).
     

 

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