At a glance
| Unit to report | Employees, current and terminated, counted together. The intake also asks for current headcount by role. |
| Where the count lives | Reports menu, then the People tab, then Headcount Report, with the date set to today for current staff. For everyone who has ever been on the platform, People, then Import Employees, download a template with existing and terminated users included. |
| Typical years retained | Employee records stay on the platform while the subscription runs. The earliest start date on the employee list is your start year; staff who began before you joined keep their original start dates. |
| What usually makes it valuable | Tenure, role progression and turnover patterns; onboarding and offboarding workflows with their timings; leave patterns; policy acknowledgements; certification cycles; performance review structure. |
| What stays private | Every employee identity. Tax file numbers, superannuation, bank details, pay. Health and medical information, leave reasons, and anything else in the sensitive categories. |
Paths checked against the Employment Hero help centre: Create and download personnel headcount reports and How do I download or export our current data. Report availability depends on your HR plan, so check in your version.
Where the count lives
Nothing needs exporting for the intake. Two reads, both from the HR platform rather than payroll.
- Sign in as an Owner or Admin.
- For current headcount: open Reports, click the People tab, then Headcount Report. Set Active Headcount On to today, leave the other filters open, and click Filter. Note the total and the split by employment type if it is shown.
- For everyone who has ever been on the platform: open People, then Import Employees. Choose any sample template, tick Include existing user information and Include terminated users, and click Download. The row count is your lifetime employee number. This route is available on all HR plans.
- Sort that download by start date. The earliest date is the start of your people record, which may be older than your Employment Hero subscription.
- On Premium plans and above, the Workforce Snapshot, Tenure Report and Turnover Report under the same People tab give the same answers without a download.
What to put in the intake
| Field | What to enter | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | Lifetime employees (current plus terminated), and current headcount. | About 340 employees ever, 85 current |
| Years covered | Year you joined Employment Hero, and the earliest start date if staff records go back further. | On platform since 2020, records back to 2012 |
| Estimate | Tick it if you rounded or skipped the download. | Ticked |
Estimates are fine. Headcount by role, even roughly, is more useful on the intake than an exact total.
Why buyers value it
A people platform records how a business hires, grows, keeps and loses its staff, as a sequence rather than a snapshot. Onboarding workflows show which steps every new starter goes through and how long each takes. Role and contract changes trace progression and restructures. Leave requests and approvals, across years and teams, show how time off is actually managed. Policy acknowledgements and certification renewals record compliance as it happened. Performance review cycles, with their structure intact and their content de-identified, show how feedback is organised. Employment Hero's value to a buyer sits in those patterns and timings, which is also why identities are not needed to realise it. Payroll is not part of this and never leaves the platform.
What stays private
- Every employee identity is irreversibly removed before any buyer sees anything: names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, emails, emergency contacts and photos, with each removal written to the audit ledger. People become stable role labels.
- Tax file numbers, superannuation, bank details and pay are excluded at extraction, along with health and medical information, leave reasons and any other sensitive category. These are never in the prepared dataset.
- Documents an employee uploaded about themselves (identification, visas, qualifications) are excluded; the fact that a certification exists and when it expires can stay, the document cannot.
- Buyers receive a prepared, de-identified copy under licence, never a login and never the raw export. The Trust and Security pages cover the full process.
If you want to export the full history
Only after an offer is accepted. Until then the intake runs on the counts you type in. In most engagements we connect read-only with your signature and you export nothing. These are Employment Hero's documented routes if you would rather hand over files.
- All plans. People, then Import Employees. Choose the Advanced Import Employees (Including pay details) template for the fullest field set, tick Include existing user information and Include terminated users, and click Download. We strip the pay columns at extraction.
- Premium plans and above. Build a report in Report Builder with the modules you need, then use the three-dots menu and Download CSV. Exports fail above 100 fields or across more than five modules, so split large reports.
- The Employee Details Report under Reports downloads as Excel, CSV or PDF. Leave, certifications and other modules have their own reports in the same area; check in your version for which your plan includes.
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