How to onboard a new employee

A new teacher, driver or office assistant needs more than an employee record before FEMS works for them. This guide is the order to do it in: the reference lists you check first, the record itself, the salary structure, the attendance link, and the access that gets them signed in on day one.

Each step links to the module page that covers that screen in full. Read this page for the sequence, and the module page for the detail.

Prerequisites

You need an HR admin role that can add employees. The salary step needs payroll access, which is often a different person. Giving the new starter their access is a third job again, usually done by a Super Admin.

The guide moves through four places in the sidebar:

• Human Resources > Settings > Basic Settings for the reference lists.
• Human Resources > Employees for the record.
• Human Resources > Payroll for the salary structure.
• Role & Permission for their access.

Before you start

Check these exist before you open the new-hire form. Every one of them is a dropdown you will be asked for, and stopping halfway to create a missing department is how half-finished records happen.

Two naming points save confusion. The list is called Employment Type in settings and Employee Type on the employee form. And Designation is cascaded from Department everywhere in HR, so a designation attached to the wrong department will not appear when you pick the right one.

If you add a missing entry, reload the settings screen and confirm it is really in the list. Several HR settings screens report success for a save that did nothing. See HR settings reference.

Step 1: Create the employee record

Go to Human Resources > Employees and click Add New. The form runs over four steps: personal details, employment details, qualifications and past jobs, then documents and handover items.

You can finish in two ways.

• Submit on step 4 checks the whole form and creates the person as Active.
• Save Draft, from any step, skips every required-field check and creates the person as Draft. Use it while you are waiting on a National ID or a joining letter.

A draft is not lost, but it is hidden. The Employees list shows active employees only until you set Status to Draft in Filter. Check there before you conclude the record was never saved and create the person twice.

Three things on step 2 shape everything later:

• Department, Designation and Campus/Branch decide which filters, reports and pay periods reach this person.
• Reporting Manager decides who sees and recommends their leave and attendance requests. Leave it blank and their requests have no first reviewer.
• The Leave Balance card takes opening balances in days for casual, sick, maternity or paternity, and annual leave.

Field-by-field detail, including the nationality and address cascades and the official email uniqueness rule, is on Maintaining employee records.

Step 2: Activate the record

Skip this step if you used Submit, because the person is already Active.

For a draft:

1. On Human Resources > Employees, click Filter and set Status to Draft.
2. Click the row to open the record.
3. Open the tabs and fill in anything you skipped. Activation does not check for missing fields, so a half-empty draft activates just as cleanly as a complete one.
4. Click Activate Employee at the bottom of the left profile card.

The status chip changes to Active and the person appears in the default list.

Step 3: Assign a salary structure

An active employee is not yet on payroll. That is a separate assignment, one person at a time.

1. Go to Human Resources > Payroll and open the Payroll Assign tab.
2. Find the person. The Filter panel cascades: Branch, then Department, then Designation.
3. Click Assign on their row.
4. Pick the Payroll Group and type the Gross Amount.
5. Click Calculate and read the breakdown. Total Earnings has to equal the gross exactly, or the save is refused.
6. Click Save.

You land back on the Payroll Assign tab with a group and a gross showing on the row.

If you skip this step, the person quietly gets nothing. Payroll generation passes over an employee with no salary structure. There is no error, no warning row, and no entry on the payslip list. The only sign is a blank GROUP and GROSS on the Payroll Assign tab, which is why scanning that column is part of every monthly run.

The heads, groups and calculation rules behind that screen are on Setting up payroll.

Step 4: Link them to the attendance devices

Staff attendance comes from the card and biometric terminals. Nobody in HR types a staff member's daily in and out times.

Two things have to line up before the first punch counts:

• The number programmed on the device must match the employee ID on the FEMS record. That single number is the whole link. If they differ, the punch is received and kept, no attendance day is created, and the person looks absent on every report.
• Attendance Device UID on the employee record. It is not in the new-hire form, so set it from the record after the person exists.

The Work Schedule you set on step 2 is what late arrival and early departure are measured against. Someone with no scheduled start time for a weekday cannot be marked late on it.

Get this right in the first week. An unlinked employee is counted absent for every working day, and absent days come off pay at one day's gross for each. See Tracking staff attendance.

Step 5: Give them access

An employee record is the HR side of the person. What they can open in FEMS comes from their role.

From the Employees list, the key icon on the row opens that person's access screen, if your own role can assign access. Roles, direct grants and data scope are explained in Understanding roles and permissions. Give the smallest role that covers the job: a teacher does not need the payroll screens.

Step 6: What the new employee sees on day one

Every employee gets Self Care without any extra access being granted. Point the new starter at three pages and most first-week questions answer themselves.

Tell them two things at the same time. Corrections are filed by them, not by HR, so a wrong day is theirs to raise. And a payslip appears only after payroll has been generated for that month, so a new starter mid-month sees nothing until the month is run.

What happens if you skip a step

FAQ

Can I create the record and the salary structure in one go? No. They are two screens and two jobs. The employee record is created under Human Resources > Employees, and the salary structure is assigned under Human Resources > Payroll on the Payroll Assign tab.

We hired 30 people at once. Is there a bulk path? Not for payroll. There is no bulk assign and no multi-select on the Payroll Assign tab, so 30 people is 30 passes through the assign form. Plan the time.

I saved the new hire and cannot find them anywhere. They are almost certainly a draft. Click Filter on the Employees list and set Status to Draft. Searching alone will not find them, because the default active-only rule still applies to a search.

The new teacher joined on the 20th. What does their first payslip look like? Payroll counts working days across the whole pay period and treats days with no approved attendance as absent, so a mid-month starter can show a large absent count for the days before they arrived. Check that payslip by hand before it goes out. See Generating monthly payslips.

Do I have to fill in every starred field before I can save? Not to save. Save Draft skips every check. The stars are enforced when you click Next or Submit, so use a draft while documents are outstanding, then complete the record before you activate it.

Related pages

• Maintaining employee records
• Searching the employee directory and printing a profile
• Setting up payroll
• Tracking staff attendance
• HR settings reference
• Understanding roles and permissions
• Logging in for the first time
• Run monthly payroll