You can archive ex-employees in Leave Dates instead of deleting them and their data, avoiding the cost of inactive users.
When an ex-employee returns, their entire profile and leave history can be reinstated instantly, no onboarding needed.
Archive and restore supports modern, flexible work practices while keeping your records accurate and transparent.
We’ve all been there. Pressed delete in full confidence, then immediately regretted it. Or been a bit too keen to bin and move on when perhaps the door wasn’t entirely closed. While it might be all too easy to resurrect (or unblock) a person we thought we were over in real life, when it comes to employee data, permanent deletion is just that. And returning to square one can be a real headache, not to mention costly.
Designed especially for those ‘just in case’ people and scenarios.
Instead of completely erasing an employee profile and losing all their settings and history, you can just tuck them away out of sight (and off your billable user list). That means you’re not paying for an empty desk, but if that person ever comes back, with a single click it will be like they never left. All their past leave data is available again, saving you from a tedious blank-slate restart and ensuring a seamless transition for their big comeback.
You run a small (but growing) digital marketing agency. The team is close-knit, budgets are tight, and a few people have left for new opportunities. One of your top performers, Alex, left six months ago to join a competitor. Your current HR system only gives you the option to keep or delete staff profiles - not ideal. To keep costs down, you deleted Alex’s employee profile from your HR software, after all, why pay for storage on someone no longer with the team?
This is great news, but then you start the re-onboarding process and realise you now have to re-enter all her historical leave data. The money saved by removing the profile quickly disappears in a puff of admin hours.
When Alex left you chuckle to yourself. “Ha! We’ll see,” you think. Lo and behold, when the phone call comes. Before her lanyard has even been printed, you’ve hit Restore, and she’s back on the system, being welcomed with open arms.
But if she wants her favourite swivel chair back, unfortunately, that ship has sailed for good.
Employees can be deleted entirely from Leave Dates, but the standard approach is to archive them. This keeps their data safe and allows you to restore them if they return, which happens more often than you might think.
Go to the employee’s Settings → Permissions tab and tick the ‘Hidden role’ box so they no longer appear on the wall chart. Then press the Archive button. Once archived, the employee no longer counts as a user under your subscription, but all their historical leave data remains stored securely.
If a former employee returns, go to employee settings → Archived employees, find the person you need, and click Restore. They immediately become an active (and billable) employee again, with all their previous data available for reporting and analysis.
Because they were given a hidden role before archiving, they won’t be visible to others until you choose to make them so, giving you full control over visibility.
The Archive and Restore features mean you can keep your digital desk neat and tidy, instead of cluttered up with people who aren’t ‘gone gone’ but aren’t relevant today, next week or even this year.
There are lots of scenarios where this might apply:
Things aren’t so black and white in the era of flexible work, making a kind of ‘digital filing cabinet’ a safer choice than the bin.
Archive and Restore is available in our Essentials and Plus plans and helps you to keep your plan agile and affordable by removing any non-essential users from your bill.
Archiving an employee removes them from view and does not count them as a user for billing purposes.
If you delete an employee from Leave Dates, you will permanently erase their profile and leave history.
No. Once an employee is archived, they no longer count as an active user, meaning you won’t be charged for them until you restore their profile.
This feature is suitable if your business offers long-term sabbaticals, such as study leave, or for staff members on leave due to long-term illness or injury who are likely to return.
Yes. Simply go to your archived employee list and click “Restore.” All their previous data, settings and history will be reinstated immediately, saving hours of manual admin.