Before you integrate Sage HR with Sage 50cloud Payroll, there are some checks you must do to prevent avoidable issues going forward, such as employees not getting welcome emails because their email address is incorrect.
📎NOTE: Check you have your Sage account (formerly Sage ID) login details. If you don't have a Sage account, you can create one when you set up Online Services. If you've logged in to the My Sage website before, use these details to sign in.
1. Get your employee data ready
Employee Record
Sage 50cloud Payroll pushes through four critical fields for the employee into Sage HR. These include:
First name
Last name
Email address
Start date
For any additional information that you need to enter into the employee's record in Sage HR, you can run a report from Sage 50cloud Payroll and manually enter it into Sage HR later.
2. Employee work email addresses
It is essential that you check the following:
Ensure all email addresses in the employee record in Sage 50cloud Payroll are accurate and up to date.
Email addresses are unique for each employee. Don’t use duplicate or shared email addresses.
Email addresses are case sensitive in Sage HR, so ensure they are all lower case.
📌TIP: You can send out the Employee Details Verification Letter to your employees to confirm or update any details you hold about them, including their email address.
⚠️CAUTION: The email address is permanently set so we strongly recommend you use the email address the employee wants to use long term, ideally their work email address if they have one. This is because this email address may be visible depending on user levels and permissions.
If an employee only has a personal email address and it is considered unsuitable, or they don't want it to be visible in the Payroll portal, we advise that they create a new formal email address and use this instead.
3. Admin user email address
The person who first sets up Sage HR through Sage 50cloud Payroll is known as the Admin User, and has full access. The admin user also has a profile in Sage HR alongside your employees and can be viewed in the company directory.
⚠️Important
Make sure you get the admin email right first time, as it can’t be swapped with another email, or recreated.
Don’t delete the admin user. You can only have one admin user and it is the only profile that can view all payslips.
The email address you use for the admin profile must not be used in an employee record in payroll. The email used needs to be unique to the admin user and must not used elsewhere in Payroll.
We recommend you have a means to ensure you can access this profile in the event of the admin user leaving the company or being unavailable.
4. Best practice: Starters and Leavers
New Employees
Once Sage 50cloud Payroll and Sage HR are connected any new starters still need to be processed in Payroll, in the same way you would normally. Whenever you add any new employees into Payroll and upload their payslip their data will be 'transferred' across to Sage HR, which creates a new employee record.
⚠️CAUTION: If you create an employee record directly in Sage HR, instead of Payroll, this results in the employee record not being linked so remember to add new starters into Payroll first.
Any additional new starter tasks can then be performed in Sage HR, including automated tasks using Recipes.
Leavers need to be processed in both Payroll and Sage HR as currently leaver information is not pushed through to Sage HR.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
1. Enable Online Services
Enable online services in Payroll to connect payroll to Sage HR, and when you upload payslips (current or historical) this will create your Sage HR company online, ready for you to login.
2. Set up Sage HR
Once you have Payroll and Sage HR connected, it's time to log into Sage HR for the first time, explore what it looks like, and set up the basics that you need to start using Sage HR.
3. Set up additional Core HR features.
Once you have set up the basics, there are other useful functions in the Core HR module that you can set up, such as assets, announcements and more.
4. Check out the additional modules
Find out more about the additional modules available in Sage HR and set them up if you have them.
5. Send guides to employees
Once you have set up Sage HR, for your employees to set up their access and learn more about how to use Sage HR.