Terminated Employees - Payroll Onboarding

What is the Terminated Employee report and the Terminated Employee wizard?

Purpose: This guide is to help payroll admin users who are in the process of payroll onboarding understand how to manage terminated employee information to ensure an accurate payroll record. The guide also includes details about the Terminated Employee report and the Terminated Employee wizard.


It is crucial to capture your company's terminated employee data for the current year to ensure all employees (active or inactive) receive the correct tax documentation at the end of the year. We have made it really easy for you to identify who your terminated employees are and what data they are missing with the Terminated Employee wizard and Terminated Employee report found under the Employee Data section of the Payroll Onboarding checklist.

Terminated Employee report 

To show up in the list of terminated employees, an employee must have a termination date in the current calendar year or December of the prior year (Dec 1st of prior year - today) AND have a home or work location that meets at least one of the following criteria:

  • Have a US home address and US work location
  • Have a US home address and no work location
  • Have no home address and a US work location
  • Have no home address or work location filled out
  1. Terminated Employees - Missing Information: This section includes terminated employees who are missing information needed for their W-2s. You can see how many fields an employee is missing highlighted in the Employee Info and Tax Info columns. Hover over the row for each employee to click Update Missing Info and enter the missing information (see below).
  2. Update Missing Info: Clicking Update Missing Info in the Terminated Employees report will open a pop-up box where you can quickly enter the essential information that a terminated employee is missing in BambooHR. Once you enter the information in the fields listed, the employee will move from the Terminated Employees - Missing Information section to the Terminated Employees section.
  3. Terminated Employees: This section includes all terminated employees who have the information needed for their W-2s entered in BambooHR. If you need to update the current information, click on an employee's name to go to their employee profile.
  4. Add a Terminated Employee Record: If you do not see an employee in the list, you can add them here. If the employee is already in BambooHR but does not show in this list, you will need to update the information listed on their employee profile.
  5.  Employee Info: If any of the following fields are not complete, the system will count them as missing information in this column:
    1. Employee Number
    2. Employee First Name
    3. Employee Last Name
    4. Street 1
    5. State
    6. City
    7. ZIP
    8. Pay Schedule
    9. SSN
    10. Birth Date
    11. Gender
    12. Hire Date
    13. Termination Date
    14. Job Location
  6.  Tax Info: If any of the following fields are not complete, the system will count them as missing information in this column:
    1. Employee Tax Type
    2. Federal Filing Status: If this information is missing, you will see the FICA and FUTA exemption checkboxes. Exemptions are not required, but if an employee is exempt, you can indicate that by checking the box.
    3. State Tax Withholding Location*
    4. State UI Location*: If this information is missing, you will see the State UI Tax exemption checkbox. State UI tax exemption is not required, but if the employee is exempt, you can indicate that by checking the box.

*The system uses the location listed on the employee's Job Information table under their Job tab for the state withholding and state UI location.

Once the information is complete for all of your terminated employees, click Looks Good, I'm Done Reviewing. You will not be able to click this button until you have added in the information for all employees. Clicking this button redirect you to your Payroll Onboarding checklist, where you can mark this step as complete. If you are a multi-EIN customer, you can complete this step again for any additional EINs.

You must also have benefit deductions updated for terminated employees. Be sure to include any benefit deductions for terminated employees who have gotten paid in the current calendar year.

Paid service options: BambooHR offers additional services like importing and training at an additional cost. Please reach out to our payroll coordinators at [email protected] to learn more.

Default terminated data 

There are certain employee fields BambooHR uses to calculate payroll data and generate an employee's W-2 at the end of the year. If you have terminated employees, these fields are still necessary, but the data does not need to be accurate as BambooHR will not need to calculate these employees' taxes, wages, and deductions moving forward. Instead, we will enter the terminated employee's historical payroll record for the past year based on the data your company provides from your previous payroll provider. If you have the following information available for your terminated employees, you can still fill that out on your own, but as a courtesy, it will default to the following information:

  • Marital Status: Use Single.
  • Division: Use None.
  • Department: Use None.
  • Employment Status: Use Terminated.
  • Final pay date: Same as Termination Date.
  • Compensation Start Date: Use Jan 1 of the current year.
  • Compensation End Date: Use Jan 2 of the current year.
  • Pay Type: Salary
  • Pay Rate: $1,000
  • Overtime Status: Exempt
  • State Filing Status: If filing status is required, use Single.
  • State filing status exemptions and allowances: Use "0" for all exemptions and allowances.

Using the Terminated Employee wizard

If there are no terminated employees, you will see the following view instead of an option to view the Terminated Employees report.

Clicking No One Was Terminated in 20XX will open your Payroll Onboarding checklist in a new tab if you are a single EIN customer. If you are a multi-EIN customer, clicking on that button will take you to the Getting Started tab in Settings > Payroll, so you can select the Payroll Onboarding checklist you would like to view.

Clicking Actually, we did have terminations in 20XX will take you to a page to create a newly terminated employee (see below).

When adding a terminated employee, you will see all of the fields you will need to fill out for the employee. There are a few required fields you must fill out in order to add the terminated employee. These fields have an asterisk next to them and include the following: 

Personal tab

  • Employee Number
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Email 
  • Country
  • Marital Status

Job tab

  • Job Title (Job Information table)
  • Hire Date 
  • Termination Date 
  • Job Location (Job Information table)
  • Final Pay Date (Employment Status table)
  • Pay Type (Compensation table)
  • Pay Rate (Compensation table)
  • Overtime Status (Compensation table)

Pay Info tab

  • State Filing Status