Who it’s for: Administrators

Platform: Sense HR

Available on: All plans

Before you begin

Make sure you’ve:

☑️ Logged in to the Sense Workplace web app

☑️ Been assigned administrator permissions

☑️ Employee profiles already exist in Sense HR

(If you’re uploading documents during implementation, this means you’ve uploaded the Employee Data template. If your system is live, employee profiles are already in place.)

☑️ Prepared all documents you want to upload

☑️ Checked that employee names and IDs contain no unsupported characters

⚠️ Important:

Document bulk upload is available at any time, including after your system has gone live.

Overview

The Document Bulk Upload feature lets you upload employee documents in bulk — such as contracts, passports, and licences — and link them automatically to the correct employee profiles.

You can use this feature to:

Upload documents in bulk
Replace existing documents in bulk

Documents are matched to employees using a system-generated folder structure, so correct naming and placement are essential.

Navigation path

Sense HR dashboard › Settings › Bulk upload

Supported file formats

Each file must be 10 MB or less and use one of the formats below.

Document files:

.pdf
.doc
.docx

Image files:

.jpg, .jpeg
.png

Spreadsheet files:

.xls
.xlsx

Presentation files:

.ppt
.pptx

Forbidden file extensions

The following file extensions will prevent upload entirely.

.exe
.dll
.dat
.zip
.7z
.bat
.msi
.bin
.rar
.run
.sh
.cmd

🖊️ Note: Files with extensions that are not in the accepted list and are not explicitly forbidden will be skipped, and the upload will continue.

File naming rules

To avoid upload errors, file names must follow these rules:

The following characters are not allowed in file names:
\ / : * ? " < > |
File names must not contain multiple dots (.)
Only one dot is permitted, used to separate the file name and extension (e.g. filename.pdf).

Steps to bulk upload employee documents

Step 1: Download the document folder structure

Before uploading documents, download the folder structure generated by Sense HR.

🖊️ Prerequisite:

If using the document bulk upload before Go Live, you must have already uploaded the completed Employee Data template, as employee names and IDs are taken from that template.

How to download

1. Go to Settings › Bulk upload

2. Click Download (top right)

3. Select Download document structure

4. Extract the downloaded zip file before editing

The structure includes:

• One folder per active employee (not including Leavers)

Folder name format:
• Employee Name – Employee ID

• A Personal subfolder for documents

Who is excluded from the folder structure

Employees will not appear — and cannot have documents bulk uploaded — if:

They do not have an Employee ID, or
Their Employee ID, First Name, or Last Name contains any of these characters:
< > : “ / \ | ? *

To include them:

Add a unique Employee ID under People > [Select profile] > Employment details, and/or
Remove unsupported characters from:

• Employee ID (Employment details)

• First Name / Last Name (People > [Select profile] > Personal details)

Then download the document structure again.

Step 2: Prepare your documents

Name documents correctly

Document names should reflect how they will appear in Sense and follow the file naming rules.

Examples:

Employment Contract.pdf
Passport.jpg
Driving Licence.png

Using document categories (optional)

You can include a document category in the file name using the following format:

[Category] - [Document name].[file type]

Examples:

Contracts - Employment Contract.pdf
Right to Work - Passport.jpg

Everything before the hyphen (-) is treated as the category name.

Everything after the hyphen is the document name.

If the category matches an existing category in Sense, the document will be assigned to it
If no match is found, a new category will be created automatically
If you do not want to use categories, simply name the file as normal (e.g. Employment Contract.pdf)

🖊️ Note: Only use one hyphen (-) per file name. Additional hyphens may cause import issues.

🔁 Updating an existing document

To update an existing document, the file name must match the original exactly, including:

Document name
Category (if used)
File extension

This ensures the document is updated rather than duplicated.

Place documents in the correct folder

Each document must be placed in the correct employee’s Personal folder.

Example:
ConsumerDocs

└── John Smith – EMP378

└── Personal

└── Passport.jpg

⚠️ Caution:

Placing documents in the wrong employee folder may result in employees seeing documents that do not belong to them.

Step 3: Zip the folder

• Zip the entire ConsumerDocs folder

• Do not zip individual employee folders

Example:

ConsumerDocs.zip

Step 4: Upload documents

1. Go to Settings › Bulk upload

2. Click New upload

3. Select Upload documents

4. Enter a session name

5. Upload the .zip file (either browse or drag and drop)

6. Click Next

If duplicate document names are found, choose whether to:

Overwrite the existing document
Append to the existing document (import as a new document in addition to the original)
Skip that file

7. Click Import

8. Click Done

After upload

Documents are validated and imported immediately
Any issues are shown in Settings › Bulk upload
All uploads appear in Bulk Upload History, including timestamps and user details