How to Hire Employees Individually With PickTrace Onboarding

About this article: This article walks you through collecting personal information, tax details, work authorization, and document signatures in one guided flow. It's the standard path for onboarding one person at a time.

How to Get Started Onboarding an Employee

1. Open the Onboarding page and select Hire.
2. Select Non-H-2A or H-2A, then choose the Employer, Messaging Number (optional if not currently utilizing Ping), Employee Group, and optionally an H-2A Contract and Crew.
3. Select a Job Category (EEOC code).
4. Confirm which documents the employee must sign — I-9, W-4, and applicable state forms are included by default.
5. Set optional Compensation. If left blank, the employee earns the job rate or piece rate; the system always applies the higher of the two.
6. Confirm the Hire Date and Start Date (both default to today).

7. Enter the Employee's Skill Level and Housing Adjustment (H-2A employers only; both fields are optional)

   • Skill Level — Select Level 1 (Entry) or Level 2 (Experienced). This reflects the employee's occupational classification under the Department of Labor's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data, which ties the employee's job type to the applicable AEWR tier. Employers should consult federal guidelines or their legal/finance team to determine the correct level. This field is for recording and government reporting purposes only — it does not automatically affect the employee's calculated pay rate.
   • Housing Adjustment — Enter the dollar-per-hour offset that accounts for any employer-provided housing deduction or credit required under the H-2A contract. Like Skill Level, this field is for recording and reporting purposes only and does not automatically alter the employee's pay calculation.

   When to use: These fields apply to H-2A employees. They are not required to complete onboarding, but should be filled in whenever the employer needs to track and report AEWR compliance data to the Department of Labor. They can also be set or updated in bulk from the Employees list page via bulk compensation editing.

8. Enter the employee's personal information: photo, SSN, contact info, tax withholding, and work authorization status.
9. Review and sign documents.
10. Add ethnicity and Alt ID (external payroll number), then submit.

💡  PickTrace uses biometric (facial recognition) data and SSN duplicate detection to automatically flag potential rehires during the hire flow. If a match is found, select Rehire — not New Hire — to preserve the employee's history.

All signed onboarding documents are stored under the Documents tab in the employee profile. From there you can view, edit, download, track versions, and upload supplemental files. Reference the article: Document Management: How to View, Edit, Download, and Track Employee Documents for a detailed walkthrough of this.