Customize Your BambooHR Account

Purpose: This help guide includes information about the standard fields library and can help you understand some customizations our support heroes can do for you on the back end to customize your account for maximum efficiency. 


Standard fields library

In your BambooHR account, you will find a list of standard fields you can add to a specific tab on the employee profile. Click Edit Fields in the top right corner of a tab. This will open a new modal showing the fields you can add through Add Fields.* To learn more about how to do this, click here

If the field you need is not in the standard fields library, you can add a custom field. Click here to learn how to do that.

*The Add Fields option will not show if you have already added all of the available fields to that specific tab.


Customize your account

Not all accounts are created in the same way, and this is on purpose. Each HR department manages its employees and data based on their specific business needs. 

Perhaps you need to track injury reports for your employees or no longer need a previously added field. Our support heroes can take care of those things for you. We suggest reviewing what you are currently tracking in a spreadsheet. Can we create a field that will be just as easy to report on and be kept updated as you update the information in BambooHR? Here are a few more tips and tricks that can help you make sure you get the most out of your account.

As you start, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

  1. Custom tables or fields do not sync with integrations. Integrations built by our partners are based on our standard fields in the system.
  2. Extensive or complicated tables can become cumbersome. Our research has shown that customers rarely use those tables. BambooHR is clean and user-friendly, and therefore, custom fields should follow that same pattern of ease of use.
  3. Stored data is specific in employee profiles, but you can pull stored data for a custom report for all applicable employees.

Our support heroes can make adjustments to fields in your account to help you track information that matters most to you. The example below shows you the capabilities and options available to you, but it does not stop there!

Jennifer Caldwell - Custom Tab

Track standard and historical data in tables
Jennifer Caldwell - Job

Including the fields shown above, you can use tables to track and store your data historically. Do you need to track employee skills? This type of table can store more than one assigned item and sort the items by a field in ascending or descending order.

Or, do you need to track when employees submit expenses for reimbursement? This historical data would be a great addition to your account, and you can filter data to show the most recent data line or by oldest to newest in descending order.


Required or optional fields
Jennifer Caldwell - Personal

In your account, our support heroes can mark specific fields as required. Or, if you are using the custom field builder, you can mark a field as required or optional.

When an employee fills out their information, they cannot proceed until they complete all the required fields. Required fields have an asterisk shown next to their field names. This feature helps remind the employee to complete the required fields during onboarding.


Table summarizations
Jennifer Caldwell - Job

Do you have any custom tables that track numbers, percentages, or currencies? If yes, do you find yourself needing to see the total or average of all amounts from each row? This is a situation where our table summarizations* feature comes in handy! For example, our support heroes created an expense table for you. With table summarizations, you can see the total amount of all expenses at the bottom of the table (see example below).

*Table summarizations are not reportable.


Auto-numbering

All employees are required to have an employee number in BambooHR. An employee number is the employee's unique identifier and used for importing information into BambooHR.

If your company does not currently have employee numbers, we can enable auto-numbering in your account. With this feature enabled, each new employee added to BambooHR will automatically receive an employee number. When using auto-numbering, you can select what number you would like to start with, and the system will auto-generate numbers from there. You cannot use alphanumeric values when using the auto-numbering feature.

If you would like to set up auto-numbering in your account, please reach out to a support hero.

Please note that you cannot update employee numbers through importing. You can only import a new employee number if you import the employee into BambooHR for the first time. If you update employee data, you cannot update the employee numbers through importing.

If you would like to change an employee's employee number, you can do this manually by selecting the Employee # field on their employee profile. If you would like to use auto-numbering, first use power edit to delete all your employee numbers and then reach out to a support hero to initiate auto-numbering.


Custom calculations
Shannon Anderson - Job

We can create custom calculations that will calculate currency, dates, or numbers in custom fields. For example, you need to track an employee’s probationary date, which is always 90 days after their hire date. Instead of adding the date manually, we can create a field for you that will automatically show the probationary date based on the hire date entered. Or, maybe you would like to calculate an employee’s projected salary. We can create a custom calculation that will add the current pay rate and the bonus amount for the total compensation the employee receives. 

If you need a custom calculation, please contact a support hero to see if we can create it for you!


Custom approvals
Asset Request

You can create a custom approval workflow based on the available fields in BambooHR. It is a seamless approval process that saves time and eliminates tedious and time-consuming paperwork.

Perhaps you would like a manager to submit a request for an employee to receive a bonus or an employee to request the opportunity to participate in training courses. Custom approvals can manage this for you!

You can create advanced approval paths for a specific division, department, or location. This ability will help you to manage approvals within your company (Advantage, Core, and Pro customers only).

We hope this guide will help you make the most of your BambooHR account. Be sure to reach out to one of our support heroes to find out more.

Happy Bamboo-ing!