Borderless reads employee data straight from your HR system, so you never have to keep two records in sync by hand. This article covers how a standard HRIS integration connects, what gets synced, and exactly which permissions we request and why.

You can connect your HR system yourself, with no setup call required. Go to Settings, then Integrations, to browse the marketplace, search for your provider, and start a connection. We support HiBob, Workday, BambooHR and Sage HR, and the list is growing. We also support Sona, which connects with an API key rather than through the marketplace flow: see Sona Integration: API Keys for how to request your key, and What's new: Sona integration for what it does. If your provider is not listed yet, you can register your interest from the marketplace so we know to prioritise it. Integrations are available on the Pro and Expert plans and can be managed by account admins.

Standard integrations run through Kombo, our HRIS integration provider. Kombo handles the connection to each supported HR system on our behalf, which is what lets us support a wide range of providers from a single setup flow.

When you start a connection, you'll see a guide written for your specific HRIS. The steps for connecting differ slightly between systems, so the in-flow guide walks you through what to click in your provider, where to find the credentials we need, and how to authorise the connection.

Sona is the exception to this flow. It is a direct integration, so instead of the marketplace steps you connect it by pasting a Sona API key. Everything after connection, drafts, the sync log and document checks, works the same way as a standard integration.

Once connected, Borderless pulls your employees' information from your HRIS. This is the core of the integration: your people, kept up to date, without manual entry. New sponsored employees come across as draft records for an admin to review and confirm before the individual is created, and duplicate detection stops the same person being added twice. If someone should not be onboarded, such as a leaver, a contractor or a duplicate, a reviewer can skip them from the review list; skipped people move to a Skipped tab and can be restored to the review list at any time.

Every connected integration has a sync log showing what happened on each sync, so you can see exactly what was created, updated, or flagged.

During connection you'll be given options for filtering which employees are brought across. Use these if you only want a subset of your workforce in Borderless rather than everyone on the books.

As part of the connection flow, you'll be asked to provide a mapping for the is_sponsored field. This tells us which field in your HRIS indicates whether a person is sponsored.

We strongly recommend setting this up. With it in place, we can determine sponsorship status directly from your system, and we'll only bring sponsored employees into Borderless. That keeps your Borderless workspace focused on the people whose compliance you're actually managing, rather than your whole headcount.

When syncing, Borderless pulls each employee's documents alongside their record and runs them through our verification checks. You don't have to chase or re-upload anything: the paperwork arrives with the person. Documents that pass are attached to the record automatically.

Documents that need a second look appear in a Documents review queue, where you can accept the document, dismiss it, or request a fresh upload from the employee. A document that fails never blocks the rest of your sync, and the employee is only contacted if you choose to request a re-upload.

Document syncing can be turned off or adjusted in the settings for each integration, so you stay in control of what comes across and what doesn't. For Sona, document syncing currently covers right to work documents.

When you connect, you'll only be asked to grant the permissions an integration actually uses. The list below covers what a standard integration reads from and writes to your HRIS.

These let Borderless read data from your system. All of the following are requested as part of a standard connection.

These let Borderless make changes back in your system. A standard integration requests one write permission, and only when it's needed for your setup.

If your integration's data scope is later changed, you're responsible for letting your team know about any change to the data Borderless reads from or writes to your system. Increasing the scope can cause a connection to fail if the new permissions haven't been granted, so reconnect after any scope change.

For a full summary of what is new in integrations, see What's new: HRIS integrations marketplace.

If you'd like help setting up an integration or adjusting what's synced, get in touch and we'll walk you through it.