Sync your people with a CSV

Keep your people up to date in one step. A sync lets you add new people, update existing ones, and deactivate leavers, all from a single CSV upload and with a full preview before anything changes.

🎬 Watch this as a short narrated video

Steps shown in this video

1. Open People & Teams → People in the admin area
2. Choose Bulk invite / Update people by CSV
3. Download the template so your columns match what the sync expects
4. Export your current people as a backup before making changes
5. Upload your CSV: every row is validated, you preview all changes, then click Process users to apply

What a sync can do

Each row in your CSV maps to one person. In a single sync you can:

• Add new people to your organisation.
• Update details on existing people, such as their team, region, manager, start date, role, and custom fields.
• Deactivate people who have left. They lose access, but their learning history is kept.
• Reactivate someone who was previously deactivated.

You can include up to 5,000 rows in one sync.

Before you start

Go to People and select Bulk invite / Update people by CSV. You'll see a short warning first, because a sync can overwrite existing details. From here you can:

• Download CSV template so your columns match what the sync expects.
• Download Available Roles to see the exact role names you can use in the role column.
• Export Current Users as a backup before you make changes.

Preparing your CSV

The template includes these columns:

A few rules to know

• Blank means unchanged. If you leave a cell empty for someone who already exists, their current value stays as it is.
• You can't add a new person as INACTIVE. New people must be active. To deactivate someone, set their status to INACTIVE on a row that matches an existing person.
• Managers must exist. The email in reports_to has to belong to someone already in 5Mins or in the same file. Circular reporting lines, where two people are set as each other's manager, are rejected.

Previewing and confirming

5Mins checks your file before anything changes, then shows you exactly what will happen:

1. Validation. If any row has a problem, those rows are grouped under an Errors tab that tells you which row to fix and why. You can filter the list by error type, and use Download Error File to export every issue (with the fix for each) so you can correct your CSV and re-upload. Nothing is applied until every row is valid.
2. Preview. You'll see a summary of the changes, including how many people will be added, updated, deactivated, reactivated, or left unchanged, along with the field-level changes for each person. If the sync will deactivate anyone, a warning shows how many people will lose access, with a Review Deactivations link to check them first.
3. Confirm. Click Process N Users (the button shows how many people the sync covers) to apply the sync.

Once it runs, you'll get a summary of what changed.

Good to know

• Validation is all-or-nothing. If one row fails, no changes are made, so you can fix the file and try again without leaving things half-done.
• Set up custom fields and roles first. Create any custom fields and roles before you reference them in the file.
• Check start dates before you sync. Bringing a pending person's start date forward to today or earlier sends their invite email as soon as the sync runs, so make sure the dates in your file are the ones you intend.
• Sync deactivations are set to Terminated. People deactivated by a sync appear under People & Teams → People → Deactivated with the Terminated status, which means their account and data are permanently deleted 3 years after deactivation. If someone is only on temporary leave, open their row's menu on the Deactivated tab and choose Change to Long Leave so their data is kept. See User Deactivation & Data Retention FAQs.
• Syncs are manual. Run a sync whenever you need to. If your people come from an HR system, those updates flow in automatically through your HRIS integration instead.