Managing custom employee fields
Add, edit, and remove your own custom fields on an employee, and understand the "in use" and duplicate-field warnings.
Custom fields let you store extra information on an employee that the built-in fields do not cover, such as a cost center, a pension policy, or a reporting manager. You manage them from the Employee Data section of an employee, alongside the standard details, and they save as you go. This article explains how to add, edit, and remove them, and what the warnings you may see along the way mean.
Open the Employee Data section
From the Employees page, select an employee to open their card. The Employee Data section lists the standard fields (name, email, role, salary, and more). Any custom fields already saved on this employee appear in the same section, each as a label with its value.
Edit an existing field
To change a custom field's value, type into its input and click away (the field saves on blur). You will see a short confirmation when it is saved. For a field that points to another employee, such as Manager, you get a searchable picker instead of a free-text box: start typing a name and choose the right person.
Add a custom field
Select Add Custom Field at the bottom of the Employee Data section.
In Key, type the field name or pick one from the suggestions. Suggestions are the custom fields other employees in your company already use, so reusing an existing name keeps your data consistent.
In Value, enter the information for this employee.
Select Add. The field appears immediately in the Employee Data section.
Remove a custom field
Each custom field has a red trash icon next to it. Select it to remove that field from this employee. It is removed for this employee only and does not affect anyone else.
Warnings you may see
A couple of small markers can appear next to a custom field, and both are there to keep your data clean:
- (in use) next to a field name means a CLVR feature relies on that field. Hover over it to see which feature and why. For example, Manager is used by approval flows, and a cost center field can feed payroll reporting. Editing these is fine; just be aware that changing or removing them can affect that feature.
- A yellow warning triangle means the field name overlaps a built-in field (for example a custom field called Email when there is already a built-in email field). Hover for the details. To avoid two versions of the same information, prefer the built-in field and remove the custom one.
Reuse an existing field name from the suggestions rather than inventing a new spelling. "Cost center" and "Cost Center" become two separate columns, which makes filtering and reporting harder.
Where custom fields show up
A custom field is not limited to one employee. Once any employee has it, it becomes available across the Employees area:
- As a column in the employee table, which you can show, hide, and reorder like any other column.
- As an optional field when you add a single employee, under Custom Fields.
- During bulk upload, where any extra columns in your file beyond the standard ones are saved as custom fields automatically.
Troubleshooting
- A field I expected is not there. Custom fields are per company and only appear once at least one employee has a value for them. Add it on an employee first.
- I see two similar columns. They are two different field names (for example a difference in spelling or capitalisation). Decide on one name, move the values over, and delete the other.
- System fields are not listed. Internal fields that CLVR uses behind the scenes (such as sign-in and preference data) are hidden on purpose and cannot be edited here.