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How to deactivate or reactivate an employee
How to deactivate or reactivate an employee

Deactivate accounts when employees leave so you can retain essential employment work history and comply with GDPR requirements.

Saad Saeed avatar
Written by Saad Saeed
Updated over a month ago

🎯 For Admins and HR Managers.

  • Deactivated employees don't count toward your total, and you're not billed for them. Read more in our FAQs and troubleshooting.


Deactivate an employee's Planday account

When an employee leaves your company, you can deactivate their account to prevent any further access to Planday. To deactivate an employee, follow these steps:

  • Go to People > Employees.

  • Search for the employee you want to deactivate and click on the ✎ icon to the right

  • In the Personal details tab, click on User Actions to the right and choose Deactivate in the dropdown

  • In the deactivate employee prompt that opens you can either deactivate the employee immediately or set a future automatic deactivation date 1️⃣.

  • You can choose a Reason for deactivation 2️⃣ and add a confidential note visible only to HR managers and Admins to document the reason for deactivating the employee 3️⃣.

    • You can add the reasons for deactivation under Settings > People > General > Termination types. There, you can activate the Termination type required option and create possible reasons for deactivation.

    • When you export an employee details report under People > Tools > Export data, you'll be able to choose the Reason for deactivation field that will show on the export.

  • You will also need to choose what to do with the employee’s future shifts, both in the Schedule and in the templates 4️⃣. Click on the red links and choose between the following options:

    • Delete all (or some shifts)

    • Set the employee’s future shifts (or some shifts) to open

    • Leave all (or some) shifts assigned to the employee if they will work their remaining future assigned shifts in the Schedule

    • Assign all (or some) of the shifts to another employee who works in the same employee group

Note: To be able to assign the shifts to another employee, the shifts must be attached to a position in the Schedule.


How do I cancel a future deactivation?

To cancel a future deactivation, edit the employee's profile > Select User actions > Click Cancel deactivation.


Deactivating an admin who originally authorised an Integration or Open API app

Some integrations, like Square or Lightspeed Retail X-Series and Open API apps, may stop working if they were authorised by an admin who another admin is deactivating. A pop-up will appear to indicate if any of the qualifying apps are affected. In such cases, the other admin must reauthorise the relevant integration.

To re-activate an integration, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings > Integrations > Overview.

  2. Find the relevant integration in the list and activate it.

For reauthorising Open API applications, refer to the article How to use Open API to integrate with Planday for detailed instructions.


Reactivate an employee's Planday account

To reactivate an employee:

  1. Go to the People page.

  2. From the left menu, scroll down to Misc and click Deactivated group.

  3. Search for the employee or press their name from the list.

  4. Press the Reactivate employee button.

When you deactivate an employee, their leave account and Time off in lieu account (if used) are automatically deactivated. Reach out to our Support team so they can help you or assign a new Leave account to the employee.


Set up notifications for deactivation

You can configure a message or SMS notification to be sent to you or your fellow managers when an employee is deactivated from Planday.

Go to Settings > Your organisation > Notifications > Deactivated, then add the required recipients. When selecting Add you will be shown a list of all employees. Only managers with access to deactivate other employees (with access level Admin or HR Managers) will be notified of deactivations.


Inactive employee account deletion

Following the right to be forgotten, under certain circumstances, and only on request and approval from a Planday admin, the Planday support team can act on requests to delete employee accounts permanently.

To delete an employee account, that account must have been inactive for 5+ years at a minimum. This is because data in the Planday is used for HR and payroll regulatory reporting by employers.

If an account is inactive for less than 5+ years, an employee must first contact their admin to see whether data can be removed. If there is agreement from the Planday admin that data can be deleted, then the employee account may be permanently deleted and cannot be retrieved at all. Data related to the account may also be rendered irretrievable.

We recommend that you only take this action when necessary and cautiously, as an employee will lose all payroll and HR history.

As an employee, to request an account deletion, please get in touch with your organisation's Planday admin first and then contact Planday Support team.


Automatically delete deactivated employee accounts

Depending on where your business operates, you may have a legal obligation as an employer to permanently delete information on former employees after their employment has ended.

This is also relevant for staying compliant with your employees’ right to be forgotten, according to GDPR legislation.

To automatically delete deactivated users from your Planday account, go to Settings > People > General > Delete deactivated Employees, to turn on the feature and set how many months after deactivation a user should be permanently deleted from your Planday account.



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