Terminate, offboard or reactivate an employee

When an employee leaves your business, the first step is to terminate the employee's profile. The Termination Date can be set as a future date to assist with this. If you have set the Termination Date for a future date, the employee can still be rostered until that date.

The termination process will only be available in the employee's profile if and when 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. 
   

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. Select the termination details, and press Continue once complete.

   • 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 date you select.
   • 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. This allows you time to sort out termination payments between the termination date and the archive date. It is best practice to keep the archive date close to the termination date and to review your terminating employees' draft payslips to ensure they are not overpaid.  

4. You can then add internal records for reporting purposes.

   • 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 selection and press 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; these will be ended when the employee is archived. If further action is required for the deduction, i.e. to recoup funds, then an edit to the employee's payslip may be required. 
      
   • 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.  

   

7. Lastly, you will review the termination details. If any details are incorrect, select back and edit them. Once you are happy with the details, select Confirm termination. 

   

  Please note: Once the employee's profile has been archived their position details are automatically concluded and recorded in the employee's position history. 
 

Viewing your terminated employees

Once terminated, the Employee's profile will display a Terminated 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 this point, they can be found in the Archived People section. 

In the example below, you can see that Luke is both Terminated and Archived. He was terminated by foundU Holdings on 22 September and was archived the next day. 

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 reason, comment, and operation. This may be helpful if you are considering rehiring an employee in the future.

Before your employee's archive date, you can edit the termination details or revoke the termination entirely.

This may be relevant if:

• You have made an incorrect selection in the termination modal
• You would like to enter an internal termination comment, but skipped past this option
• An employee had previously resigned but changed their mind and stayed with your business
• An employee was dismissed, and this dismissal is not proceeding for some reason
   

Edit a termination

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 cancel a termination, you can do so before the archive date you selected for the employee. If an employee has returned to your business and they have been archived, please see the process below for Rehiring a former employee.
 

To revoke/cancel your employee's termination:

1. Select Manage > Revoke Termination.

   

2. If you would like to proceed, mark the checkbox to confirm you understand that this will delete the termination. Then select Confirm and Revoke.

   

The employee's termination details and future archive date will be erased, and no entitlement payouts will occur. 

After terminating an employee's profile, you will want to process their final pay. Please be aware of the following information when terminating employees and processing their final pay. 

• Filtering - From the pay page, you can filter to employees who are terminated. This will allow you to action any termination payments separately to your normal pay run if you choose to. 
• Entitlement 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. 
• Blocked payslip - A payslip with a termination payout may not be processed if there are other draft payslips for the same employee. In this case, the termination payslip will be blocked, and you should process or delete the other payslips before generating. 
• Pay archived employee - You can still generate and process payslips for employees who are archived. However, it is best practice to finalise all termination payments before the archive date. 
   

Resources

• Standard termination payments - To process standard termination payments or to pay out any remaining leave entitlements see our helpful guide here.
• Employment Termination Payment (ETP) - If the termination is an ETP, the process is slightly different.  Please see our helpful guide on ETPs here.

There may be a time when you want to rehire a former employee or allow former employees to reapply for a job. This can easily be managed through our reactivation workflow by reinstating their archived profile.

An employee's profile can be reactivated in 1 of 2 ways, either by:

• An admin user initiates the reactivation process from the individual employee's archived profile.
• The archived employee reactivates their profile in the Employee App. 
   

To reactivate an archived profile, the following process should be followed:

• Reactivate the Employee Profile, using either method listed above
• Employee completes their onboarding
• Approve the Employee Profile
• Update the employee's position details
   

Employee self-reactivation 

Depending on your business's processes and how you manage your workforce, you may find it valuable to allow former employees to reactivate their own archived profiles. 

• Seasonal workforces - Employees return for recurring peak periods, such as in hospitality and tourism.
• Project-based roles - Businesses that regularly engage temporary or contract workers for short-term projects.
• Labour hire and healthcare - Industries where skill shortages and high demand mean employees frequently move between organisations.

  Please note: An employee reactivating their profile will not automatically push them back to your Approved People list. The employees will still be required to complete onboarding, confirm and update their details in their profiles, and have their profiles reviewed and approved by an admin user. 

  You can learn more about this feature and how to enable it in our dedicated guide. Additionally, you can view how the employee self-reactivation process works from the employee's perspective in this employee guide. 

Reactivate an employee (undo archive)

If you would prefer to have complete control over which employee profiles get reactivated, you can instead manage this by individually reactivating select employees from the Manage button on the Employee's Profile.

This method is preferred if you don't wish to allow all past employees the option to reactivate their profiles, and 

To reactivate an employee: 

1. Navigate to People > Archived People and find and select the employee you are looking for.  

2. From the top right of the employee's profile, select Manage > Reactivate person. 

   

3. You will have the option to select whether the employee should complete their onboarding or not.
   • If the employee has been terminated and archived, completing the onboarding process again is the best practice, as this is their opportunity to update any personal and financial details that may have changed and to submit an updated tax file declaration.
4. If your employee is to complete onboarding, you'll be prompted to choose if you'd like to 'Send a notification to the employee'.
   • If you select Yes, this will then send an email to the employee to notify them that their Employee Profile has been reactivated. 
   • You will also be advised that the Onboarding status will be reset. The employee's onboarding will be reset and will move the employee to Pending People and require them to complete onboarding before they can commence work.
5. Select Reactivate.
   • If you selected 'no' for your employee to complete onboarding, they will now be found in Approved People and no further action is required. 
   • If you selected 'yes' for your employee to complete onboarding, they will now be found in Pending People and the below instructions should be followed. 

  Hot tip: You can now see the employee's reactivation date and their previous termination history in the employee's Employment History. 
 

Employee completes their onboarding

Once the Employee Profile is reactivated, the employee is no longer terminated, and their onboarding status is set to either 0% complete or 100% complete, depending on whether you selected to repeat the onboarding process for them.

The employee is then moved to People > Pending People and will either be required to complete their onboarding or be ready for an admin to re-approve. 

  Hot tip: The employee's details from their initial onboarding will be retained in the onboarding process. However, the employee is then given the opportunity to update any details if needed. 
 

Approve the Employee Profile

Once the employee has completed their onboarding process, the employee will then be 'Ready to Approve' and will need to be 'Approved'.

To Approve an employee select Manage > Approve person.

The employee will now move from Pending People to Approved People. 
 

Update positional details

When an employee is terminated, their employee profile is archived, which means that all their position details are automatically concluded and recorded in the employee's position history. It is essential to remember that once an employee is re-hired, they must be assigned a new position in their employee profile.

This ensures that there is no confusion with previous role details and that the rehire is correctly documented in the system under the new job title and responsibilities. It is a good idea to double-check the employee's new position before proceeding with their reemployment process to maintain accurate records.

  See our helpful changing or editing a Permanent position step-by-step guide here, or for a Casual position refer to the guide here.

Once the relevant details have been updated, the employee will be available to commence work.

The Terminations Report is an invaluable tool for human resources personnel and management to gain insights into employees' termination dates and reasons, which 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).

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 archival in the 2 weeks coming. reminds the admin to complete termination payouts and complete offboarding.

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

The below workflow should be followed when Offboarding an employee:

1. Process and pay any final worked hours.
2. Terminate the employee and set an archival date. 
3. Process any final pay for the employee and outstanding Leave balances for the employee.
4. Action any future rostered shifts for the employee.

When an employee Offboards, do they still have access to their payslips?

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

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

During the termination process the platform will prompt you to make a decision about any future shifts attached to this employee. These options include:

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

We terminated an employee and paid out entitlements, but later realised that we need to pay them for an additional week. They have been archived. What should I do?

You can still process pays for terminated employees but not archived ones. Ensure to reactivate their employee profile if they are archived so you can process their missed pay.

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'.