IMPORTING SOLUTION: Spreadsheet Automation Final Project

Executive Summary

In my previous work, I was a HR Generalist at an HR outsourcing firm, G&A Partners. G&A is an employee leasing company-- they are the company of record for their client’s employees.  G&A uses two separate systems: Hourdoc a new hire onboarding and timekeeping system and HR Pyramid (HRP) a payroll and benefits system. Hourdoc was an internally created system and recently divided from G&A as a separate company. G&A still uses Hourdoc at a reduced rate. HRP is an externally licensed HR software. Both products have a client-facing site. Hourdoc has a profile for each employee, clock-in/out capabilities and displays time-worked in real time. HRP’s client facing site allows employees to access check stubs for direct deposited payroll and annual W2 statement.

These systems do not transfer information to each other. When I started working at G&A, most things were entered by hand from Hourdoc to HRP. Only since the beginning of 2013, HRP has had the capability to upload. Unfortunately, the file that could be uploaded had very specific requirements. Manual changes would be made to the excel document prior to uploading. If there were problems and the file was not correct, an error message would appear through the HRP system after uploading. Changes to the uploaded file would need to be made until the upload was successful. This requires a trained eye and can be frustrating for people that only need to upload a few employees. When I asked a G&A employee, she said, “2-4 people in the whole company know how to upload”. Most still hand key. The HR generalist and payroll specialist typically enter 80 to 100 new hires each week. Finding an easy to understand solution that eliminates the short had will benefit each of those employees and reduce time spent on uploading.

Because my personal connection to this problem, I wanted to create a solution. I visited G&A’s closest office in South Jordan, Utah and got examples of the pre- and post- manipulation spreadsheets. I learned about the data, specifically which were required for a successful HRP download and what data was not required for download but would eventually need to be needed. I took notes and created an implementation plan to prepare the data. My solution was to organize the data, prepare if for import, save it with a standardized name, and close the document.

Importing Solution: Project Write Up
Excel Add-In: Modify Excel Ribbon
Final Project: Example Excel for Manipulation