Terminate and offboard an employee

When an employee leaves your business, the first step is to terminate their profile using the Termination workflow. This workflow streamlines the offboarding process by automating key processes and ensuring all required details are captured in one place, including:

• Setting termination and archive dates

• Selecting a termination reason for ATO reporting

• Managing payouts for any unused leave

• Adding internal termination reasons and comments (helpful when rehiring employees)

• Automatically cancelling upcoming shifts, leave, ending positions, and reimbursements once the profile is archived

  Hot tip: The best practice is to initiate termination as soon as you’re informed. You can set the termination for a future date if needed; employees can continue to be rostered and work as usual until that date.
 

Who can be terminated?

The termination process will only be available in the employee's profile once they have generated payslips on the platform. This is especially important when you have terminated and reactivated former employees.

Below advises of the process you will need to follow for your employee when they have:

• Never been paid in the platform  - The employee's profile can only be declined. 
• Payslips for the current or previous financial year - The employee's profile will need to go through the termination process. 
• Payslips for any other previous financial years - The employee's profile can only be archived. 

  Please note: When you terminate an employee in foundU, the cessation reason and date of termination will be included in the next STP packet submitted to the ATO. This information is passed to Services Australia, which reduces the need for Separation certificates. For this reason, only a current employee can be terminated using the Termination workflow. 
 

Termination and archive dates

Setting the termination and archive dates is a key part of the termination process. These dates record the employee’s final day of employment and provide a window to complete any payroll actions. 

Each date has a specific purpose within your platform, as outlined below:

• Termination date

  • This date marks the cessation date for your employee. 

  • This is the date reported to the ATO as their final day of employment.

  • Once set, the employee will show a status of ‘Termination in xx days’ if the date is in the future, or ‘Terminated’ if the date has passed.

  • Terminating employees remain part of the Approved People menu and function like any other approved employee, so you can still roster, approve leave, and process payments.

• Archive date

  • The date the employee’s profile automatically moves to the Archived People menu.

  • Must be set after the termination date.

  • All payroll actions, including final leave payments, must be completed before this date.

  • Archiving cancels any upcoming leave applications, deductions, and positions.

  • Archived employees cannot be rostered or paid. Any additional payments will require reactivation of the profile.

Correctly setting termination and archive dates ensures accurate record-keeping and smooth processing of final payments.
 

Viewing your terminated employees

Once terminated, the Employee's profile will display a "Terminated" or "Termination in xx days" badge, along with the termination date and the user who actioned the termination. 

The employee will remain in Approved People until their archived date. At that point, they can be found in the Archived People section.

During this window, your payroll team will need to complete all necessary final payments, including final pay, any unused leave payments, and ETPs. Once the profile is archived, the employee can no longer be paid on the platform. 

In the example below, you can see that Luke is both Terminated and Archived. He was terminated by foundU Holdings on 15th February and was archived the next week after the payroll. 

You can also view a list of your terminated employees by using the Terminations Report. See the Termination reporting section below for more information on running this report. 

The Employment history will also show a record of the Termination details, including the reason reported to the ATO, and any internal comments left by the admin who actioned the termination. This may be helpful if you are considering rehiring an employee in the future.

You can also filter for terminated employees from the Approve People menu, or by selecting the 'Terminating soon', 'Terminating today' cards from the Dashboard. 

When an employee notifies you of their intent to leave, it’s best practice to initiate the termination on their profile as early as possible. 

This allows you to prepare and review all required details in advance, helping keep things smooth and stress-free, and gives you the option to update or revoke the termination if plans change.
 

To terminate and archive an employee:

1. Navigate to the Employee Profile via People > Approved People or from the search menu.
2. In the top-right of the Employee Profile, select Manage > Terminate employment.

3. You will be prompted to enter the details below for termination. Once done, select Continue.

   • Termination Date - This will be the last day of the employee's employment. 
   • Archive date - Select a date that gives you enough time to complete all necessary offboarding and payouts. The employee's profile will move to the Archived People menu on the selected date.
   • Cessation reason - Select from the ATO-specified cessation reasons. This reason will be included in the STP packet sent to the ATO. 

     Please note: Salaried employee payslips will be automatically generated until the archive date, allowing time to finalise termination payments between the termination and archive dates. For best practice, keep the archive date close to the termination date, and review draft payslips for terminating employees to prevent overpayments.  

4. You can then add internal records for reporting purposes. These details are not reported to the ATO. 
   • Select a Termination reason. These can be customised in your platform.
   • Add a Comment (optional). Comments will be visible in the termination report and in the employment history on the employee profile. 
   • Select an Operation (optional). Assigns the termination to the selected operation, making it visible in the termination report. 
5. If the employee has any shifts, leave, or deductions after the termination date, you will be asked how you would like to handle these. Make your selections and select Continue.
   • For post-termination shifts: 
     • Delete shifts attached to the employee - The shifts will be deleted from the roster.
     • Keep the shifts and remove the employee from the shift - The shifts will appear in an unassigned state at the top of the roster, so you can reassign them.
     • Do nothing - The shifts remain assigned to the employee.
   • For active deductions:
     • You will be informed of the employee's active deductions; they will end when the employee is archived. If further action is required for the deduction, e.g., to recoup funds, an edit to the employee's payslip may be needed. 
   • For leave applications:
     • You will be informed if the employee has any leave applications for dates after the employee's termination date. These will automatically be cancelled when the employee is archived.  
       
       

6. Next, select how you would like to handle the employee's outstanding leave balances.

   • If you are paying the entitlement, select the ATO category from the drop-down menu.
   • If you are not paying the entitlement, select the Do not pay checkbox.
   • If your employee has a negative leave balance, you will be notified at this stage. To reclaim this balance, a deduction will need to be applied to the employee's final payslip, and the leave balance be updated to 0. 

   

7. Lastly, you will review the termination details. If any details are incorrect, you can select Back and edit them. Once you are happy with the details, select Confirm termination. The employee's profile will reload and now show the termination dates highlighted on their overview. 

  Please note: Once the employee's profile has been archived, their position details are automatically ended and recorded in the employee's position history. 

Edit a termination

• You have made an incorrect selection in the termination modal
• You would like to enter an internal termination comment, but skipped past this option
• You want to provide your payroll team with more time and change the archive date

To edit the details of your employee's termination:

1. Navigate to the Employee Profile and select Manage > View Termination.

   

2. Select Edit termination to make changes. You will be taken through the steps from the beginning, allowing you to make your amendments where necessary. 

   

Revoke a termination

If you need to stop a termination from proceeding, you can cancel it at any time before the archive date set on the employee’s profile. This is useful in situations such as:

• An employee had previously resigned but changed their mind and stayed with your business

• An employee was dismissed, and this dismissal is no longer proceeding for any reason

  If an employee has returned to your business, or the archive date has passed, and they have been archived, please see the article on Rehiring a former employee.
 

To revoke/cancel your employee's termination:

1. Select Manage > Revoke Termination.

   

2. If you would like to proceed, select Confirm and Revoke. This will delete the termination and archive dates and remove any previously entered details. If leave entitlements were to be paid out, this will be cancelled.

   

  Please note: Review any deductions that you have updated, or roster any shifts that may have been deleted as part of the termination workflow. 

After terminating an employee's profile, you will want to process their final pay. This will need to be done before the employee's archive date. The second part of the termination process is completed from the pay page, usually by someone in the Payroll team. 

  Warning: If you don’t have permission to process payroll, reach out to your payroll team so they can action any final payments.

Key steps in this part of the termination process include:

• Unused leave payout - When you choose to pay out entitlements during the termination process described above, the value will be added to an existing payslip on the termination date. 
  • If no draft payslip exists on that date, one will be created for you. 
  • If there is a leave redemption on the draft payslip, a new payslip will be created with the termination payout. 
    • This will result in the termination payslip being blocked to ensure it is the final payslip generated. 
• Employment Termination Payment (ETP) - If the termination requires an ETP, this needs to be processed separately from unused leave payments.
• Single touch payroll - Submit STP packets to notify the ATO of the employee’s termination, including key details such as termination date, type, and final payments.

  Hot tip: The next stage is Part 2 of the termination process, paying out unused leave in the platform. Refer to our Part 2 guide here.

• Offboarding email – Send a dynamic offboarding email via Manage > Send Offboarding email to notify other admin users involved in the process. 
  • This is useful for including other admin users in your platform, such as IT, Finance, or the employee’s manager.
  • Content can be customised with role-specific checks or reminders to keep everyone aligned during offboarding.
  • To learn about other offboarding and termination emails, refer to the section below. 

• Termination codes – Create and use custom termination codes to be applied during the termination workflow, which then flow through to the Terminations report. 
  • This allows you to capture clear and consistent reasons for termination beyond the defaults, supporting better reporting, auditing, and future rehiring decisions.
  • There are defaults for Resigned, Dismissed and Termination, but some additional examples include:
    • Redundancy
    • Unsuccessful probation
    • Terminated with cause/ not suitable for rehire
    • Transfer
    • Job abandoned
    • Death
    • End of contract
    • Seasonal worker
    • Failed sobriety test 

• Tags – Tags are a useful feature that act as digital post-it notes and can be applied to an employee's profile. 
  • You can create and apply tag groups to capture rehire preferences, such as suitable for rehire, not suitable, or seasonal worker. 
  • Once applied, these tags can be used to filter employees in the Archived People menu, making it easy to perform bulk actions such as sending rehire emails or reactivating profiles.

• Compliance Checklist – Every employee profile includes two checklists: the Onboarding Checklist and the Compliance Checklist. Both are fully customisable, with the same checklists appearing on every employee profile. 
  • While the onboarding checklist is typically used when setting up an employee, the Compliance Checklist can be repurposed to track offboarding tasks as you work through the termination workflow. 
  • This is helpful for managing both platform and external checks, such as:
    • Checking and updating instalment deductions
    • Adding deposit refund to payslips
    • Removing IT access
    • Ensuring company property or uniforms are returned

• Custom email and SMS templates – Create tailored email or SMS templates to communicate with terminating or archived employees. 
  • These can be used to share next steps and promote future rehire opportunities for seasonal staff.
  • Link to external resources such as offboarding surveys, Microsoft Forms, or other key resources.

There are numerous communications that can be sent to admins during the termination and archival process. These communications can be sent via email or SMS if you wish.

They can be enabled, disabled, or edited to suit your needs. You can also add more admin users as recipients of any communications that are marked as dynamic. 

Below you will find the actions that trigger the communication, the communication content ID, and an overview of the communication's default purpose. 

  The communications can be edited by navigating to Communication > Communication Content. You can read more about customising communications here. 

• Manually triggered from an employee profile (Manage > Send Offboarding Emails)

• Notifies designated people that an employee has begun the offboarding process and the manager/ IT person etc. can begin collecting assets or performing other specified offboarding duties.
• Learn how to initiate this message template here.

• An employee could not be archived due to a pending payslip

• Employees who were scheduled to be archived will appear in a table. You'll need to either disregard the final payslips and proceed to archive them or generate the pending payslip at which the employee will be automatically archived.

• Termination and archive reminder email

• Provides a table list of scheduled terminations and archiving in the 2 weeks coming. reminds the admin to complete termination payouts and complete offboarding.

• Manually triggered employee notification that their profile has been reactivated

• This is manually triggered by the reactivation process; admins can choose whether or not this communication is sent. 

The Terminations Report is an invaluable tool for human resources personnel and management to gain insights into employees' termination dates and reasons, and it can be customised for your platform at the end of their employment.

Additionally, as employees with different visas and visa subclasses are terminated more regularly, you'll be able to use this report to see who has recently been terminated with a specific visa type or subclass by filtering it.

The Terminations Report provides a detailed breakdown of the following information:

• Employee ID
• Employee
• Office Code Name
• Operation
• Termination Date
• Reason for Termination 
• Comment (free text comment added during termination)
• Employment Type
• Gender
• Visa Class (if applicable)
• Visa Subclass
• Authoriser (person who performed the termination)
• Position
• Rate

This data comes from the Employee Profile and from the data entered into the Termination workflow during the termination process. 
 

To generate the Terminations Report: 

1. Navigate to Reports > Workforce reports, and in the People Management section, select Terminations.
2. In the Duration, select your desired date range.
3. You can further filter data by Visa Subclass, Operation, or Office code filters, or leave blank for all.
4. Select Submit to generate your report results. You can also Export to CSV, Export to PDF or Print if you wish.

  You can also access financial details from a termination within your Payroll Activity Report (Financial Report Centre > Payroll Activity Report).

What is the correct process I should follow when an employee leaves my business?

The workflow below should be followed when offboarding an employee:

1. Terminate the employee profile and set an archive date.
2. Roster, approve shifts and leave as per usual until their termination date.
3. Process any final pay for the employee and outstanding leave balances for the employee.
4. Submit STP packet. 

When an employee has been archived, do they still have access to their payslips?

After an employee has been terminated and archived, they will still be able to access their Employee App. However, the employee will only be able to see their Payslips and Documents. 

How do I report and check on why an employee was terminated?

If you’re thinking about rehiring an employee, it’s best practice to carefully review their termination details before reactivating their profile. A few key areas to check include:

• The employee’s Employment History

• The Terminations report

• Any comments left on the employee’s profile

  For more guidance on pre-rehiring checks, refer to our article on Rehiring your employees.

What happens to shifts attached to an employee when I terminate them?

During the termination workflow, the platform will prompt you to decide whether to approve any future shifts for this employee. These options include:

• Delete the attached shifts
• Keep the shifts and remove the employee
• Do nothing (no action)

How do I report my termination leave payouts?

The best report for this is the Standard Payroll Activity Report. Ensure to use the additional filter 'Payslips with Leave Terminations'.

Why does my employee have 2 payslips and one is blocked?

When processing an employee’s final payments, leave redemption and unused leave payouts cannot be included on the same payslip.

If this occurs where you 2 payslips, the payslip with the unused leave payment will be blocked to ensure it is processed last. First, process the payslip that includes the leave redemption, then process the blocked payslip with the termination leave payout. 

  For more information, see our article on Paying unused leave upon termination.