Bulk importing members

For organizations with more than a handful of members, importing a CSV is much faster than inviting people one at a time.

When to use it

• Initial setup — migrating from a spreadsheet or another leave system.
• Annual intake — onboarding a cohort of new hires in one sitting.

For day-to-day additions of a single joiner, the Add member form is usually quicker.

Preparing the CSV

Go to Settings → Team → Import. Download the template to see the exact column order and example rows. At a minimum you’ll need:

Column	Required	Notes
name	yes	Full name.
email	yes	Must be unique across the organization.
role	yes	admin, manager, or employee.
department	no	Must match an existing department name. Leave blank for no department.
job_title	no	Free text.
employee_id	no	Your HR system’s internal identifier, for matching later.
start_date	no	YYYY-MM-DD. Used for anniversary-based leave year calculations.
allowance	yes	Numeric. Days or hours, see next column.
allowance_unit	yes	days or hours.
approver_email	no	Must match another row in the same import or an existing member.

Save as UTF-8 CSV (Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers all handle this).

Running the import

1. Click Upload CSV.
2. Deckchair shows a preview table with the rows it parsed. Any problems — malformed emails, unknown departments, approvers that can’t be resolved — are highlighted in red with the specific error.
3. Fix issues in your CSV and re-upload, or tick Skip rows with errors to import just the valid ones.
4. Confirm. Deckchair creates the accounts and sends invitation emails to every new member.

Each invited member gets a 7-day link to set their password, exactly like the single-member invite flow.

Approver ordering

The import resolves approvers in two passes:

1. First pass creates all accounts with no approver set.
2. Second pass matches approver_email values to the newly-created members and links them.

This means you don’t need to order your CSV with managers first — just make sure every referenced approver email is either already a member or present somewhere in the same CSV.

What the import doesn’t set

To keep the CSV manageable, bulk import uses org defaults for:

• Work schedule — everyone inherits the org default. Adjust part-time schedules individually after import.
• Leave year start — everyone inherits the org default.
• Public holidays off — defaults to the org setting.

If you have a lot of part-time or unusual schedules, do the bulk import first, then edit those members individually.

Undoing a bad import

If you realise an import was wrong, you can’t undo it in one click. Options:

1. Deactivate every affected member (if they haven’t accepted invites yet, they’re just dormant invites — no harm done).
2. Re-import with a corrected CSV.

Alternatively, reach out to support before anyone accepts their invite — we can roll back unused invitations.