This article covers bringing people into KAMI from the admin side: adding them (one at a time or in bulk) and getting them invited and activated. It's written for HR admins and managers who manage people in My Team.
Offboarding — deactivating, terminating, and rehiring — is a process of its own and lives in Deactivating, terminating and rehiring employees.
If you're an employee trying to set up your own account, see Get started with KAMI instead.
Before you start
- You reach all of this from the left menu under My Team.
- Adding employees needs the Add Employee right (
EMPLOYEE_CENTRAL_CREATE). Deactivating needs the Terminate Employee right (EMPLOYEE_DEACTIVATE); running termination pay needs Termination Pay (EMPLOYEE_TERMINATION_PAY). If you can't see a button described here, you're missing that right — ask an admin. See User rights and access control. - What you can do to whom is also scoped: unless you have All Employees access, you can only add or edit people inside your own access scope (your departments, branches, etc.) or people you directly manage.
How to add one employee
- Go to My Team.
- Click + Add Employee (top right). The Add Employee wizard opens.
- The wizard has 9 steps, but only two things are actually required: a First Name and a Hire Date. Every other step is optional and can be filled in later — nothing in the wizard is a dead end.
The steps are:
| Step | What it's for | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Personal details | Name, contact, hire date | First name + hire date only |
| 2. Clone profile | Copy an existing employee's setup | Optional shortcut |
| 3. Employment details | Department, position, branch, probation, contract | Optional |
| 4. Groups | Role/profile groups | Optional (often auto-set) |
| 5. Approval Matrix | Who approves this person's requests | Optional (often auto-set) |
| 6. Standard Schedule | Working schedule | Optional (often auto-set) |
| 7. Payroll details | Wage, batch cycle, payment method | Optional |
| 8. Activation | Role, modules, send invite | — |
| 9. Review & create | Confirm and add | — |
- Fill in what you know and click Next through the steps. On the last step click Add employee — or Save & add another, which saves this person and immediately starts a fresh one.
Steps 4, 5 and 6 may fill themselves in
Where a Profile Automation matches the placement you gave in step 3, KAMI applies the groups, approval matrix and schedule for you and shows them as Auto-assigned — locked, so nobody can override the rule by accident. You can still add extra groups on top.
Where no automation matches, the step says so and asks you to choose. That message is worth noticing: it usually means a department or branch has no automation set up yet.
Step 8 decides whether they can log in
The Send activation invite now toggle is off by default, and the employee stays Uninvited until you turn it on. Leave it off unless the profile is genuinely finished — someone who logs in to a half-built profile sees the gaps.
You can invite them at any time afterwards from the invites screen, so there is no cost to leaving it off.
💡 Best practice: You don't need every detail on day one. Add the person with just a name and hire date so they exist in the system, then complete employment and payroll details before their first payroll run.
If you don't have their email yet
You can create the employee without an email or mobile number. KAMI generates a placeholder company email automatically so the profile can still be created, and you can add the real address later. The person simply can't be invited to log in until a real email (or mobile) is on file.
Cloning an existing employee (Step 2)
If the new hire is set up like someone who already exists (same department, schedule, payroll setup), use Clone profile in step 2. Search for the existing employee and select them — their employment and pay structure copy across — wage period, payment method, placement — and you just adjust the personal details. This is the fastest way to add someone to an established team.
Actual wage amounts are never cloned. Only the structure copies; you enter the wage yourself in the Payroll step. That is deliberate — it stops one person's salary silently becoming another's.
How to add many employees at once (bulk import)
For more than a handful of people, don't use the wizard — import a spreadsheet:
- In My Team, open Tools (top right) → Bulk Data. (Or click Adding many? Import via spreadsheet at the top of the Add Employee wizard.)
- Download the template, fill it in, and upload it.
- Choose the import mode carefully — Append or Overwrite (see the warning under Rules below).
Bulk import handles far more than basic profiles — you can import employment details, managers and approvers, dependents, education, documents, and more, each of which needs the matching permission. Full detail is in Bulk data import.
Inviting and activating employees
Adding an employee doesn't automatically let them log in. An employee has a status:
- Uninvited — created, but no invite email sent yet.
- Invited — invite sent; waiting for them to activate.
- Active — they've set a password and can log in.
- Deactivated — no longer has access.
To invite people, go to My Team → Tools → Employee Invites, select who to invite, and confirm. You can also copy a generated password to hand over directly. To chase people who haven't activated yet, use the same screen — but note you can only re-send an invite (a "chase") to the same person once every 20 hours.
What happens next
- New employees may need approval. Depending on your setup, adding an employee creates an approval request rather than an instant profile. If so, you'll see a "needs approval" message and the person sits as Unapproved (hidden from the main list) until approved. If you have the right to approve, or you're adding someone within your own scope, it may be auto-approved and appear immediately.
- Invites send an email (and an SMS, if the person has a mobile and your company has SMS enabled) with an activation link.
- Activating an employee triggers a confirmation email to them.
- Adding an employee auto-links them to your company's active announcements, their leave policy start date is set to their hire date, and — if they already exist in another KAMI company — they get a company invitation to join yours.
Offboarding
When someone leaves, you deactivate or terminate them — a process with its own rules (it can clear their schedule, remove them as an approver company-wide, and trigger final pay). That's covered fully in Deactivating, terminating and rehiring employees.
Rules and things to watch
These are the non-obvious rules that trip people up when adding employees:
- Overwrite import deletes data. In bulk import, Overwrite mode treats a blank cell as "delete this value." If a column is empty in your sheet, that data is wiped on the matching employees. Use Append unless you specifically intend to clear fields.
- Employee IDs must be unique within a company. If you don't set one, it defaults to the person's system-generated ID.
- A declined new-employee request deletes the draft profile so its email/phone are freed up for re-use.
- Adding an existing KAMI user is different from creating a new one. If the email/mobile already belongs to someone in another KAMI company, you add them as an existing user (they get a company invitation) rather than creating a fresh profile.
- Country note: For Indonesia companies, new employees default to a fixed-monthly-days wage basis and an Indonesian tax code; other countries default differently. This is automatic.
Troubleshooting / FAQ
Q: I added an employee but I can't find them in the list. They're probably Unapproved (waiting on approval) or Deactivated — both are hidden by the default list view. Open Filters and include those statuses, or check Team Approvals → New Employees.
Q: I don't have the new hire's email yet — can I still add them? Yes. Add them with just a name and hire date; KAMI creates a placeholder email. Add the real email later, then send the invite.
Q: I re-sent an invite but the person says they didn't get a new one. Invites can only be re-sent to the same person once every 20 hours. Wait, or copy the generated password from Employee Invites and hand it over directly.
Q: How do I offboard someone who's leaving? That's a separate process — see Deactivating, terminating and rehiring employees.