Employee Management

Manage the full employee lifecycle from hiring to termination with multi-entity assignments and payroll integration

9 min read

Manage your workforce across multiple legal entities with complete lifecycle support -- from onboarding new hires to managing promotions, transfers, and terminations. Every change flows through approval workflows with a full audit trail.

Overview

Employee management covers the complete lifecycle:

Create employees with entity assignments, bank accounts, addresses, and dimensions
Update any detail -- promotions, transfers, manager changes, bank accounts
Terminate employees with soft delete (default) or hard delete for cleanup
Import employees in bulk from HRIS systems or CSV files
Reactivate previously terminated employees for rehiring
Rebuild manager reporting hierarchies when organizational changes occur

Every employee change is tracked through the workflow system with full traceability.

Multi-Entity Architecture

Employees follow the Master + Entity Override pattern:

Master employees hold identity information -- name, email, hire date, personal details
Entity assignments hold role-specific information -- job title, department, cost center, manager
An employee can be assigned to multiple entities simultaneously (e.g., working across US and UK offices)

This means "John Doe" exists once as a master record, but can be a "Software Engineer" in Entity 10 (US) and an "Engineering Lead" in Entity 11 (UK) -- each with its own manager, department, and cost center.

Creating Employees

Required Information

Field	Description
First name	1-100 characters
Last name	1-100 characters
Work email	Valid email, must be unique across the organization
Hire date	Employment start date (YYYY-MM-DD)

Optional Information

Personal details:

Middle name, preferred name, date of birth
Personal email, personal phone
Gender, nationality
Emergency contact (name, phone, relationship)
Notes

Work details:

Job title, department, cost center, location
Manager (by employee ID)
Employment status: active, on leave, terminated
Employment type: full-time, part-time, contractor, intern

Compensation:

Salary, currency, pay frequency

Addresses:

Home, mailing, and work addresses with full address fields
Primary and mailing address flags

Bank accounts (for payroll direct deposit):

Bank name, routing number, account number
Account type (checking, savings)
Default account flag
Bank account details are encrypted at rest for security

Dimensions:

Tag employees with location, cost center, project, or other analytical dimensions

Vendor mappings (for contractors):

Link contractor employees to vendor records for payment processing (1099 tracking)

Updating Employees

Updates support partial changes -- specify only the fields you want to modify.

Common Update Scenarios

Promotion: Update job title and optionally cost center for a specific entity assignment.

Manager change: Assign a new reporting manager. The system automatically rebuilds the reporting hierarchy. Circular references are prevented -- an employee cannot report to someone who reports to them.

Entity transfer: Assign an employee to a new entity with a new role, department, and manager. The employee can maintain assignments in multiple entities simultaneously.

Personal information: Update name, contact details, emergency contact information.

Related Record Changes

When updating addresses, bank accounts, dimensions, or vendor mappings, each record uses an action field:

Action	What It Does	When to Use
add	Creates a new record	Adding a direct deposit account
update	Modifies an existing record	Changing a home address
delete	Removes an existing record	Removing an old bank account

Multiple changes can be combined in a single operation -- for example, updating a job title, adding a new bank account, and changing an address all at once.

Terminating Employees

Soft Delete / Termination (Default)

The standard approach for employee departures:

Employment status set to "terminated"
Termination date and reason recorded
Employee hidden from active employee lists and dropdowns
Cannot submit new expense reports or timesheets

What is preserved:

Historical payroll records
Historical expense reports
All addresses, bank accounts, dimensions, and vendor mappings
Complete audit trail

Hard Delete (Exceptional)

For cleanup of test or erroneous records only:

Requires CFO-level approval (red lane, 3-step workflow)
Permanently removes all employee data including bank accounts, addresses, and dimensions
Encrypted bank account data is purged

Appropriate for:

Test employee cleanup
Duplicate records
Data entry errors (person was never actually hired)

Not appropriate for:

Employees with any payroll or transaction history

Reactivation

Previously terminated employees can be reactivated for rehiring scenarios. This restores the employee to active status while preserving their complete history.

Bulk Import

Import employees from external systems with built-in validation and duplicate detection.

Supported Sources

HRIS systems (Workday, BambooHR, ADP, Rippling)
CSV file exports
Legacy system migrations
Batch processing for new hire groups

Import Process

Data validation (automatic) -- field types, formats, email uniqueness, manager references
Manager review -- summary of validation results before execution

Import Options

Option	Description	Default
On duplicate	Skip, update existing, or raise error	Skip
Batch size	Records per batch (1-1000)	100
Stop on error	Halt on first error vs. continue	Continue
Validate only	Dry run without creating records	No

Duplicate Detection

Employees are considered duplicates if their work email matches an existing record (case-insensitive).

Approval Workflows

All employee operations go through risk-based approval routing:

Operation	Approval Steps	Typical Lane
Create employee	HR Manager, then Controller	Yellow
Update employee	HR Manager, then Controller	Yellow
Terminate (soft)	HR Manager, then Controller	Yellow
Delete (hard)	HR Manager, Controller, then CFO	Red
Bulk import	Validation, then Manager review	Yellow

Employment Types

Type	Description	Payroll	Vendor Mapping
full_time	Standard full-time employee	Yes	No
part_time	Part-time employee	Yes	No
contractor	Independent contractor	No (via vendor)	Yes
intern	Temporary intern position	Optional	No

Contractor Payment Flow

Contractors can be linked to vendor records through vendor mappings. This enables:

Payment processing through accounts payable (vendor bills)
1099 reporting for tax compliance
Separation of employment tracking from payment processing

Manager Hierarchy

The system maintains a reporting hierarchy that supports:

Direct reporting: each employee has one manager per entity assignment
Automatic rebuilding: hierarchy updates when managers change
Circular reference prevention: the system validates that manager assignments don't create loops
Cross-entity visibility: view the full organizational tree across entities

When a manager change occurs, the reporting hierarchy is automatically recalculated.

Key Validation Rules

Field	Rule
First/last name	1-100 characters, cannot be empty
Work email	Valid email format, must be unique
Hire date	Valid date (YYYY-MM-DD)
Employment status	One of: active, terminated, on_leave
Employment type	One of: full_time, part_time, contractor, intern
Manager	Must exist, cannot create circular references
Termination reason	Maximum 500 characters
Bank account type	One of: checking, savings
Address	Requires at least address line 1 and country

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