Feature Spotlight: Employee Custom Fields

Feature Spotlight: Employee Custom Fields

The next topic in the Community Learning Series focuses on custom fields and how to use them in various scenarios.
 
Think about what happens when a new employee joins your organization. Their information is immediately fed into the HR and payroll system, which is set up to collect certain types of employee information automatically. Here's how a typical employee profile looks in Zoho Payroll. The system automatically collects certain types of information, organized into Basic, Personal, and Payment categories.

Employee information

What are custom fields?

Employee custom fields can help collect any additional information about the employees that is not mandated in the payroll system. There are various instances where it's helpful to collect additional PII on top of the data collected automatically with Zoho Payroll (such as emergency contact info or blood group). Once the custom fields are created, the information they collect will be automatically available under Personal Information > Other Details in the employee’s profile.

How to create custom fields

Here's an example. Follow the steps below to create a new custom field

  • In Zoho Payroll, go to Settings -> Preferences -> Employee Custom field 
  • Click Create New
  • Create a new field called Blood Group
  • Choose the data type called Number 
  • Provide Help Text for referen
  • Choose whether to encrypt the information 
    (This ensures only users with access can view this information) 
  • Choose whether to make the field mandatory and whether it will be available within the ESS portal 
  • Click Save

The data collected by this field will be available within the Employee module, under Personal information. A new section called Other information will be created where all the custom fields you create will appear automatically. 

You can refer to our help docs for a detailed explanation of how to create and set up your custom fields.

Adding custom field information with a large employee count

Entering custom field data manually when there are hundreds of employees on your payroll can get hectic. This is where Zoho Payroll's import functionality helps, by letting you add details for all of your employees in one go. 

Here's how to add the Blood Group information for a payroll process with many employees: 

  • In the employee import file, add a new column called Blood Group
Note: In the absence of an employee import file, the file can be exported by going to Employee Module -> Export data -> Employee Personal Details, choosing Active employees and the file type of .xls or .csv, and clicking on Export. In the exported file, add the new column.

  • Add the Blood group information of all the employees under the column you created 
(Ensure that the employee data is mapped to the right employee ID in the import file)
  • Save the file and go to the employee module inside Zoho Payroll
  • Click Import Data and select Employee Personal Details 
  • Upload the import file
  • Map the custom field no to the column in the import file 
  • Tick the checkbox below to save the preferences for the future 
  • Click Next to import the custom field data

Under the employee module, choose any employee. The details will automatically appear under the employee's personal details. 

Adding custom fields from Zoho People to Zoho Payroll

How do you add custom fields when the payroll system is integrated with the HR management tool Zoho People? It's pretty simple. 

Before going ahead, ensure that the integration between Zoho Payroll and Zoho People  is active. You can check by navigating to Integrations. The status of the Zoho People integration with Payroll should be Active.

Zoho People integration

Next, ensure that the custom field to be added to Zoho Payroll already exists in Zoho People. 

To add the Blood Group information of all the employees within Zoho People to Zoho Payroll: 

  • Create a custom field called Blood Group inside Zoho Payroll using the steps in the first section of this post. 
    (Once that's complete, the data can be synced within the two platforms)
  • Go to Settings -> Integrations and click Zoho Apps 
  • Choose View details in Zoho People
  • Select Edit field mapping. The custom field created will appear under the section Other information
  • Now map the right field name within Zoho People with the corresponding custom field
  • Click Save
  • Once complete, select the Instant sync option on top of the window

A notification that the sync is complete will appear within a few seconds, showing that the custom fields have been mapped from Zoho People to Zoho Payroll successfully. As in the previous case, this information can be viewed for all the employees within the employee module.

Hope you found this post useful! If you have any questions about custom fields and their uses, let us know in the comment section below, or email us at support@zohopayroll.com and we will get back to you.

Until next time! 





      • Recent Topics

      • Deletion Workflows

        Hello, Unless I missed it, we can't create deletion workflows. My usecase is to auto-delete junk leads. We have field called lead status, and an agent qualify all our new leads. When it's a junk lead she chose the correspondant value in the picklist. My goal is that the system delete them automatically. Is that possible? Planed ?

      • URGENTImpossible to book an appointement

        J'essaie plusieurs fois mais aucun créneau n''est disponible Message d'erreur lorsque j'essaie de sélectionner une date

      • Sendpulse SMTP/IMAP Issues

        It’s possible Zoho made some changes on their side. Sometimes, even if your regular password works, Zoho requires an app-specific password for external apps like SendPulse to connect via IMAP. You can create this in Zoho’s security settings and use it

      • Insane mail security

        I cannot access my email... anywhere. For some reason the password for the Mail app on my Mac is being rejected, it worked yesterday but now it doesn't? Ok let's try the web interface. I can access my general Zoho login with the password but if I want

      • Task list flag Internal/External for all phases

        Phases are commonly used in projects to note milestones in the progression of a project, while task lists can be used to group different types of tasks together. It makes sense to be able to define a task list as either internal or external however the

      • HAVING PROBLEM WITH SENDING EMAIL

        Hi all, I'm unable to receive emails on info@germanforgirls.eu. I'm getting an error code 550. 5.1.1. invalid email recipients. Moreso, I would like info@germanforgirls.eu to be the default "send from" email and not solomon@germanforgirls.eu. Kindly see

      • Sharing my portal URL with clients outside the project

        Hi I need help making my project public for anyone to check on my task. I'm a freelance artist and I use trello to keep track on my client's projects however I wanted to do an upgrade. Went on here and so far I'm loving it. However, I'm having an issue sharing my url to those to see progress. They said they needed an account to access my project. How do I fix this? Without them needing an account.

      • Different Task Layouts for Subtasks

        I was wondering how it would be possible for a subtask to have a different task layout to the parent task.

      • Subscription went to default (@zoho.com) address instead for custom domain

        Hello! So I bought a lite sub to test things out, wanting to use my own domain. However, after passing through all the verification steps (completed now), it seems that the sub I bought was assigned to the default email that I already had with Zoho and

      • Canvas templates and font-family

        i dont understant why its always the smallest things that waste all of my time! why in some videos i see they have tamplates in the Canvas editor and i cant seem to fint it? and why oih why cant i cange the font? i just want simple Arial! help meeeeeeeeee

      • Re: Ca.gory groups and not all email addresses being added to a group emails

        Hi, I have added emails under 'Contacts' into categories but when sending a group email and putting the category name in not all email addresses go onto the email. I have refreshed the page, deleted and redone the info etc with no luck. I only found out

      • IMPORTANT

        Dear Zoho Support Team, I am currently experiencing an issue when trying to send emails from my Zoho Mail account. Each time I attempt to send a message, I receive the following error: "Unable to send message; Reason: 554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked."

      • Able to Send Emails from Zoho but Not Receiving Emails from Gmail

        Hello, I am experiencing an issue with my shopify domain email setup and would appreciate your help. Current situation: I can successfully send emails using Zoho. I can receive emails from some services (for example, Facebook). However, I cannot receive

      • Announcing new features in Trident for Windows (v.1.38.5.0)

        Hello Community! Trident for Windows just received a major update, with a range of capabilities that focuses on strengthening and enhancing communication. Let’s dive into what’s new! View complete technical email details. For those who need deeper visibility

      • Accounting of Amazon

        I have recently started selling on Amazon.in and I am facing issues with different types of transactions: What entry to do in case of return? If I had sent two products and customer returned both the products but I had received only one and got the claim

      • Compose Emails Faster Using Templates and Snippet

        Hello everyone, We have made an enhancement to the Send as Email option in Tickets. Agents can use templates and snippets to draft their response, which helps save time and maintain consistency. The Send as Email page will display the available templates

      • Customize Colors used on graphs and charts according to users desire.

        It would be great if we could customize the graph's colors as we see fit. I hate that yellow is always the default color!

      • Emails not integrating

        My emails from Hubspot did not integrtate over. How do I fix that?

      • Creating meetings from an email

        Hi. Similar to Outlook, it would be helpful if a meeting can be scheduled from an email so that the attendees need not be manually entered every time it's created.

      • Zoho Social API for generating draft posts from a third-party app ?

        Hello everyone, I hope you are all well. I have a question regarding Zoho Social. I am developing an application that generates social media posts, and I would like to be able to incorporate a feature that allows saving these posts as drafts in Zoho Social.

      • RouteIQ for Zoho FSM

        Beste, Zou wel top zijn dat we een RouteIQ hebben voor FSM aangezien we constant moeten zien wat de beste route is voor onze monteurs. Nu moeten we een speciale aparte programma hebben om de beste route te berrekenen voor onze monteurs aangezien de planning

      • Let us view and export the full price books data from CRM

        I quote out of CRM, some of my clients have specialised pricing for specific products - therefore we use Price Books to manage these special prices. I can only see the breakdown of the products listed in the price book and the specialised pricing for

      • Changes to the send mail Deluge task in Zoho CRM

        Hello everyone, At Zoho, we continuously enhance our security measures to ensure a safer experience for all users. As part of our ongoing security enhancements, we're making an important update on using the send mail Deluge task in Zoho CRM. What's changing?

      • How to Invoice Based on Timesheet Hours Logged on a Zoho FSM Work Order

        Hi everyone, We’re working on optimizing our invoicing process in Zoho FSM, and we’ve run into a bit of a roadblock. Here’s our goal: We want to invoice based on the actual number of hours logged by our technicians on a job, specifically using the timesheets

      • Inclusion is the new engagement

        When in a very challenging situation, it helps to have peers or friends around you saying, “Everything will be okay.” They speak to you in common or shared language. But your inner voice comes to you in a truly uplifting language that stays close to your

      • DKIM verification for Squarespace website - Corrections to instructions

        Zoho Campaigns DKIM TXT record instructions for Squarespace show that Host field should show: 22111._domainkey.[domain name, e.g. mywebsite.com] However, after 72hrs, I had to reach out to Squarespace tech support, and they confirmed that the domain name

      • My client requires me to have custom pdf file names to except payment for invoices, how can I customize this before emailing.

        Hello! I love the program so far but there are a few things that are standing in the way. I hope you guys can code them in so I can keep the program for years to come. My client requires I customize the pdf file names I send in for billing. Can you please

      • Disable All

        I want to disable all the fields on the form when it loads.  I know there is a way to do this by listing all the fields as follows: disable Name; disable Address; disable City;  ... I have over 50 fields on my form and i am wondering if there is a single command or way to just disable all fields on load.   On load = disable All Thank you for any help.  

      • Migrating my email from GMAIL to ZOHO MAIL..........

        I am a long time GMAIL user and I really only understand how they operate, but after reviewing your tutorials and forums online, it is quite unbelievable how much more and how much more streamlined ZOHO mail is, not to mention ZOHO's wonderful, more advanced capabilities. I do have several questions about transitioning over to ZOHO.  Primarily, where is the best place to start, what do I do first? And how hard is it actually to move all my business and personal accounts over here?  When I sign up

      • iOS Zoho Mail App Crashesruni

        Whenever I trying to search emails via the Zoho Mail app on my iPhone the app crashes, I am running the latest version of the app and the latest iOS version. I have all set reset the app and deleted the app and still have the same issue. Thank you in

      • Assessment Answered - Automation (Related List)

        Hello everyone, We have linked a candidate assessment to our job posting. When someone applies, they are required to answer all the assessment questions. However, some candidates submit their applications without completing the questions. In such cases,

      • Paid Support Plans with Automated Billing

        We (like many others, I'm sure) are designing or have paid support plans. Our design involves a given number of support hours in each plan. Here are my questions: 1) Are there any plans to add time-based plans in the Zoho Desk Support Plans feature? The

      • Can't change form's original name in URL

        Hi all, I have been duplicating + editing forms for jobs regarding the same department to maintain formatting + styling. The issue I've not run into is because I've duplicated it from an existing form, the URL doesn't seem to want to update with the new

      • Shared Views

        Hello, is there a way to prevent an agent from changing a shared table view? I have no issues with agents being able to create and customize their own view, but when I create a view and share it to my team -- the expectation is that they are viewing it

      • Using Zoho answer bot across departments (help center articles from another department)

        Hi Zoho Community, I’ve run into a major issue and hope someone here has experience with this setup. We currently have a Help Center in the department A where all of our knowledge base articles are maintained. However, we would like to use a Zoho Answer

      • Zoho Mail will not set up in Thunderbird

        I am using Thunderbird 13.0.1 in Linux Mint 13 64-bit. I cannot set up my Zoho IMAP email in this client. This is evidently a common problem as evidenced by these postings in the Thunderbird forum: thunderbird can't seem to "find the settings" I cannot

      • Zoho Desk Partners with Microsoft's M365 Copilot for seamless customer service experiences

        Hello Zoho Desk users, We are happy to announce that Zoho Desk has partnered with Microsoft's M365 to empower customer service teams with enhanced capabilities and seamless experiences for agents. Microsoft announced their partnership during their keynote

      • The Social Wall: January 2026

        Hello everyone, We’re back with the first edition of The Social Wall of 2026. There’s a lot planned for the year ahead, and we’re starting with a few useful features and improvements released in January to help you get started. Create a GBP in Social

      • Pipeline: Copying rulesets from one data source to another

        When creating and editing data pipelines, it would be really helpful to be able to copy the ruleset from one data source and 'paste' it to another. This would save time and reduce manual mistakes.

      • Doubt about maximum email reach

        Good morning, greetings. This is Bramdon García from EDULABS S.A.S ESP, located in Colombia. I'm writing to inquire about the possibility of sending an email to 35,000 people simultaneously. Our company has a Zoho account, but we'd like to know if there's

      • Next Page