Adding and importing employees

Adding one person

An employee needs a first name, a last name, and a pay rate. Everything else can follow.

You cannot enter their phone number. Employees supply that themselves when they accept their invitation, because a number typed in by an administrator proves nothing about consent to be texted.

Importing a roster

Employees → Import employees takes a CSV or Excel file. It is built around the Employee Codes report that ADP RUN produces — Employee, Clock ID, Employee Code, PayFrequency Code, Employee Status — but any file with names will work.

Four things worth knowing:

Choose the heading row. Real payroll exports often put a report title above the column headings, sometimes with blank rows between. Paidsley shows you the first eight rows and asks which one holds the headings, defaulting to the first row with two or more filled cells.

Names in "Last, First" form are handled. You do not need to split them.

Nothing is written until you confirm. The preview shows every row and what will happen to it: created, linked, skipped, or an error. Only then do you commit.

Importing twice is safe. Employees are matched on payroll code first, then email, then name. Re-importing the same file creates no duplicates, and importing over an existing roster attaches payroll codes to the people already there.

If a row carries a payroll code that already belongs to someone with a different name, Paidsley refuses that row and names both people. A mistyped code silently attaching to the wrong person is how someone ends up with another employee's paycheque.

Roles

Administrator — full access, including pay rates, reports, payroll and settings.

Assistant — can see the roster, approvals, requests and time off, and can help run the day. Cannot see pay rates, reports, payroll or settings. Premium amounts are hidden from them. Use this for an office manager who schedules and approves but has no business seeing wages.

Employee — their own time card, hours, time off and receipts.

Pay

Hourly — an hourly rate. Overtime is calculated from it and from anything else earned that week.

Salary — a weekly salary. Paidsley shows the weekly figure and the annualised equivalent. A salaried employee is not automatically exempt from overtime; that is a separate setting, and getting it wrong is expensive.

A second rate can apply either by day of week or by task. When someone works two rates in a week, overtime is paid at the weighted average of the two — not at whichever rate they happened to be on. This is one of the calculations most often got wrong by hand.

Overtime exemptions

Marking someone exempt requires choosing why: executive, administrative, professional, computer professional, outside sales, or inside sales commission. Paidsley will not let you set exempt without a reason, because "salaried" is not one.

Most exemptions require both a duties test and a salary at least twice the state minimum wage for full-time work. Check the current threshold before relying on an exemption — it moves when the minimum wage does.

Inside sales commission is different, and Paidsley treats it differently. That exemption has to be met in each pay period: the employee must earn more than one and a half times the minimum wage, and more than half their compensation must come from commission. Because it can fail in a bad month, it cannot be set as a permanent flag. Paidsley tests it each period and, when it fails, pays overtime normally and tells you which test was missed.

Payroll identifiers

Each employee needs the identifier your payroll provider knows them by — for ADP RUN that is the employee ID from their Employee Codes report — plus a department number if you export those.

Without it, the payroll export is blocked for that person. Paidsley will not send a file with a blank identifier, because the provider would drop those lines silently and the employee simply would not be paid.

Alternate sign-in contacts

People have more than one number. A personal mobile, a work phone, a Google Voice line, an email address.

Sign-in works from whichever contact is on their profile. If someone signs in with a different number, add it as an alternate contact on their record and that number will work too. Each contact can belong to only one employee, so a shared number has to be sorted out rather than quietly attached to two people.

Invitations

Each employee gets a link or QR code. It expires after fourteen days, and it can only be used once.

Treat the link like a password. Whoever opens it first claims that account — send it to the person directly rather than to a shared inbox.

Status

Active — normal. Leave — still employed, still able to sign in, retains balances. Terminated — no longer able to claim an account.

Remember that final pay in California is due immediately on discharge, or within 72 hours when someone quits without notice, and that unpaid break premiums count toward what was owed. Resolve outstanding premiums before someone's last day, not after.