🔓 Access level in Planday: Administrator or HR Manager with access to all departments in Planday.

⏱️ Set up time: 10 min.

⏱️Reading time: 5 min.

Overview of the HiBob integration

The HiBob integration syncs your employee data from HiBob to Planday. Data flows one way only — from HiBob to Planday and HiBob is the single source of truth. Changes made directly in Planday to synced fields will be overwritten on the next sync. Planday checks for changes in HiBob automatically every 3 hours.

Key functionalities of the HiBob integration:

Syncs new employees
Updates employee profiles
Creates employee Groups
Creates or maps departments
Deactivates terminated employees
Imports approved leave

Step 1: Setting up the integration in HiBob

The HiBob integration uses a service user — a dedicated integration account in HiBob — rather than a personal login. You must create this service user and configure its permissions before connecting in Planday.

Create a service user in HiBob

Log into HiBob and click the products icon in the top-left corner.
Go to System Settings > Integration Tools > Service users.
Click Create Service User.
Enter a display name — for example, "Planday Integration Service User" — and click Create.
Copy the Service User ID and token that appear. You will need these when connecting in Planday.

Create a permission group and assign the service user

From the same dialog, click Go to permissions group (or navigate directly to permission settings in HiBob).
Click Create permission group, then select Service user.
Enter a group name — for example, "Integration service users".
In the Select service users section, search for and select the service user you created above.
Click Create, then Confirm.

Configure permissions for the service user

1. In the permission group, click the People's data tab.

2. Under the people this group can access, click Select people by condition → Edit. Select all employment statuses: Hired, Employed, Terminated, Garden leave.

3. Enable Read access for the following:

Category	Permission
Employees	Read
Attendance	Read
Time Off	Read
Compensations	Read
Org Units	Read
Webhooks	Read + Write
Employee Attributes	Select All
Legal Entities	Select All

4. Click Save in the top-right corner, then Apply on the confirmation screen.

5. Wait approximately 10 seconds before proceeding. HiBob takes a moment to fully apply permission changes.

A more detailed guide on the prerequisites in HiBob can be found here: Integration between Planday and HiBob

Step 2: Complete the setup in Planday

You can connect an HR integration from any of these pages in Planday:

Planday Web > Settings > Integrations > Overview > HiBob > Set up
Planday Web > People > Employees > Create employees > Connect with HR system

Authenticate: Enter the Service User ID and token you generated in HiBob.
Configure Filter: Select any filters to apply to manage which employees are imported from HiBob to Planday.
Review and confirm: Review the data to be synced and confirm.

Once confirmed, Planday will run an initial sync. Depending on the size of your employee directory, this may take a few minutes.

Step 3: Onboarding wizard: flexible entity mapping

After connecting and filtering, a guided wizard walks you through how your HiBob data maps into Planday. This gives you direct control over your data structure rather than relying on automatic-only mapping.

Wizard step 1 — Configure entity mapping

Choose how each HiBob entity type maps to Planday:

HiBob entity	Can map to
Departments	Planday Departments, Planday Employee Groups, or skip
Teams	Planday Departments, Planday Employee Groups, or skip
Work locations	Planday Departments, or skip
Positions / job titles	Planday Employee Groups, or skip

Note: If all entity mappings are skipped, the integration will create one default department and one default employee group automatically. Teams in HiBob are stored as a custom field and cannot be mapped automatically. Contact Planday Support to configure team mapping for your account.

Wizard step 2 — Map departments

Review which HiBob entities will create or update departments in Planday. Confirm or adjust the assignments before continuing.

Wizard step 3 — Map employee groups

Review which HiBob entities will be used to assign employees to groups in Planday. Confirm or adjust the assignments.

Wizard step 4 — Configure absence and employee settings

Choose which absence policies from HiBob to sync to Planday.
Choose whether new employees added through the integration should automatically receive an invite email to Planday.

Wizard step 5 — Review and confirm

Review all your configuration choices. Once you confirm, the integration status moves to pending and the first full sync begins. The integration is marked as complete once the initial sync finishes.

Data mapping between HiBob and Planday

Standard fields are mapped automatically. The table below shows the default field-to-field mapping.

HiBob fields that Planday map

HiBob Field	Planday
First name (legal)	First Name
Last name (legal)	Surname
Email	Email (username)
Date of birth	Birthday
Hire date	Hire date
Termination Date	Termination date
Profile Picture	Profile Picture
Department	User choice
Team	User choice
Position	User choice
Address	Address
City	City
Postcode	Postcode
Employee ID (internal)	Salary ID

Note: Teams in HiBob are a custom field and are not mapped automatically. Custom field mapping is not supported in this integration without contacting Planday Support. Salary will only sync if the currency in HiBob exactly matches the currency in your Planday portal — the integration does not convert between currencies.

1) Mapping Logic — Department mapping

Planday maps Departments from HiBob based on the entity assignments you configured in the wizard. Standard matching applies: if a department in Planday has the exact same name as the corresponding department in HiBob, they are mapped together. If there is no match, a new department is created. Name matching is case-sensitive and sensitive to trailing spaces.

When HiBob contains multiple groups with the same name across different contexts, the integration distinguishes them by prefixing the parent name. If a naming conflict still exists, the group type is appended (e.g., "Location X - Service (Team)").

Note: Planday Departments are only created for groups that contain employees currently being imported.

2) Mapping Logic — Employee group mapping

Departments are additive only. When an employee's department changes in HiBob, the integration adds them to the new department in Planday but does not remove them from existing departments. Manual department assignments in Planday are preserved across every subsequent sync. Removals must be done manually.

Employee groups follow the same additive logic. When a position changes in HiBob, the employee is added to the new group but not removed from any existing ones. All group removals must be done manually in Planday.

The integration always creates new Employee Groups rather than modifying existing ones. If a group named "Bartenders" already exists, a new group is created with a suffix (e.g., "Bartenders-HiBob"). This suffix rule is applied only once to prevent endless duplicates.

Key Functionality & Data Sync

How to import employees from HiBob to Planday

The HiBob integration is designed to be a "single source of truth" system, where HiBob manages all employee data, which is then synced to Planday.

Prevents Data Duplication

The integration uses persistent external IDs to link profiles between HiBob and Planday, which prevents the creation of duplicate employees if data is changed in Planday — but not in HiBob. An employee is matched on email when the sync first runs, but even if the email changes afterwards, the persistent ID is retained and the email in Planday will be overwritten to match HiBob.

One-Way Data Sync

Data flows one-way from HiBob to Planday. Any manual changes made to synced employee fields within Planday will be overwritten during the next sync to maintain data integrity.

Note: There’s one exception to this which is the email (username) in Planday. Email changes must be made directly in Planday.

Sync Frequency

The integration automatically syncs data every three hours. A manual "Sync now" button is also available in the integration settings.

Note: The manual sync is a partial sync (only syncs changes), whereas the “sync now” option is a full sync.

Filtering

You can select specific departments, locations, employment types, etc. from HiBob to sync. Filtering is configured when the integration is set up. To change filters, you need to disable the integration and re-enable it. You can also reach out to Support, who can share a link with you that will re-open the filter page. In this way, this will avoid potentially creating duplicates (data link loss).

Reconnecting the Integration (Data Link Loss)

If you deactivate and then reactivate the integration, all prior user links between HiBob and Planday are permanently removed. The system treats the reconnection as a new integration setup.

Note: When the integration is deactivated, existing links are preserved for up to 1 month before being permanently removed. Reconnecting within this window reduces the risk of data loss. After the 1-month period, all prior links are permanently deleted.

Why does this cause duplicates?

This loss of links becomes critical when the primary identifier (e.g. Email/Username) has been changed in HiBob but has not yet been updated in Planday. Since the Email in Planday is an exception to the One-Way Data Sync rule, the email change in HiBob will not automatically update the corresponding Planday profile. If the integration is deactivated and reactivated in this state, the system will not recognise the profiles as the same user and will re-create the user as a duplicate in Planday.

How to import leave data from HiBob to Planday

When Absence Sync is enabled for your HiBob integration, approved leave recorded in HiBob is automatically imported into Planday. HiBob remains the single source of truth for all absence data; Planday simply reflects what has been approved in HiBob.

How leave is displayed in the schedule

Visual leave indicators: Approved absences from HiBob are shown on the schedule as a leave bar (blue bar) so managers can quickly see when an employee is unavailable.
Existing shifts are left as is: If an employee already has a shift in Planday on a day where HiBob reports approved leave, that shift is either not automatically converted to an Open Shift or left as is, depending on the integration setting. The setting can be updated by going to Planday Web > Settings > Overview > HiBob > Set up.
Approved leave only: Only approved absences from HiBob are synced into Planday; pending absences are ignored.

Handling of partial leave days

A note will be added to the leave in Planday clarifying that the employee is off for only part of the day.

HiBob leave configuration

Direction of sync: Leave sync is one-way (HiBob to Planday). All accruals, approvals and policy checks happen in HiBob.
Enable/disable: Leave Sync is controlled via a toggle in the integration settings, and each imported absence event is logged in the Integration Sync Log for traceability. Leave sync is on by default.

Why are some HiBob absence policies not synced even though the policy has units in HiBoB?

If an absence policy doesn’t have a unit we can’t create it Planday. But in cases where the policy does have a unit in HiBoB but it is still not created in Planday. This is usually caused by a permission gap on the customer's HiBob service user/integration account, specifically regarding how HiBob handles policies with "Custom names."

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HiBob integration - Setup guide with Planday