Kronos / workforce management

    Kronos Data Archival and Decommissioning

    Preserve timecard and workforce history. Retire Kronos. Keep answering pay queries.

    Workforce management systems are retired more often than they are replaced cleanly. The new platform starts from a go-live date; every timecard, schedule, accrual and pay-affecting adjustment before that date stays in Kronos — and payroll disputes, tribunal evidence and pay-audit requests all reach back into it.

    TimecardsSchedulesAccrualsPay rulesAttendanceLeaveEmployee recordsPayroll interfacesReports
    UK Public SectorSyntraETL data migration, archival and legacy application retirement services are available to UK public-sector buyers through the G-Cloud 15 framework.Explore G-Cloud 15 services →

    Where this normally starts

    An NHS trust, healthcare provider or large employer moves from Kronos to UKG, Workday or Oracle. The new system starts clean. Historical timecards, edited punches, retrospective adjustments, accrual balances over time and schedule history do not come across.

    Kronos therefore stays up, because a pay query, a grievance, a tribunal, a working-time audit or a retrospective pay correction can reach back years — and the only place the evidence exists is the system nobody wanted to keep.

    A Legacy Exit extracts timecard, schedule, accrual and employee history into DataVault, reconciles it against source, gives payroll, HR and ER teams searchable access through DataLens, and lets the Kronos environment be decommissioned.

    Architecture

    Two flows, run by the same platform. What the new application needs is migrated. Everything else is preserved and made accessible, which is what allows the old environment to be switched off.

    Migration path

    KronosWorkforce Central, Workforce Ready, Dimensions
    DataMoveExtract, map, transform, validate, load
    UKG, Workday or OracleCurrent employees, current schedules, go-live-forward data

    Retention path

    Kronos historical dataHistorical timecards, schedules, accruals, adjustments
    DataVaultPreserve with retention, lineage and reconciliation
    DataLensSearch, report and export under role-based access
    Kronos retiredLicences, hosting and support withdrawn

    Data in scope

    Workforce data is granular and high-volume, so scope is defined by data area and by retention period rather than by module alone.

    Historical timecards

    Punches, edits, exceptions, approvals and the audit of who changed what — the core evidence in any pay dispute.

    Schedules

    Planned and actual schedules, shift patterns, swaps and coverage history.

    Accruals

    Leave and time-off balances, accrual grants, takes and adjustments over time.

    Pay rules and configuration

    The pay rule, work rule and pay-code configuration that historical timecards were calculated under.

    Employee records

    Employment records, job assignments, badge and person data as held in the workforce system.

    Attendance and leave

    Absence occurrences, attendance points and leave case history where in use.

    Payroll interface history

    The extracts and totals passed to payroll, which are what reconciliation is normally performed against.

    Reports in genuine use

    The workforce and pay reports people actually run, reproduced against archived data.

    Audit trail

    Change history on timecards and schedules, without which archived workforce records lose their evidential value.

    What makes Kronos different

    The parts of this platform that decide whether a retirement succeeds or stalls.

    Volume is the defining characteristicTimecard data is generated per employee per day, sometimes per punch. Even a mid-sized employer accumulates hundreds of millions of rows, so the archive is designed for retrieval at that volume rather than for bulk storage alone.
    Edits matter more than the original punchIn a dispute, what matters is who changed a timecard, when, and under what authority. The edit trail is archived with the record, not summarised away.
    Configuration gives the data meaningA historical timecard is uninterpretable without the pay and work rules that applied at the time. That configuration history is archived alongside the transactions.
    Payroll is the reconciliation anchorWorkforce history reconciles most usefully against what was actually passed to and paid by payroll, so the payroll interface totals are the control totals.
    Product spreadWorkforce Central, Workforce Ready and Dimensions have different data models. Extraction is designed against the actual product and release.

    How completeness is proven

    Nobody signs off a decommissioning on the basis that the archive looks right. Each extract is reconciled back to Kronos and the evidence is retained as part of the decommissioning pack.

    Source-to-target reconciliationReconciled
    Source records identified14,829,321
    Records archived14,829,321
    Rejected / exception records0
    Reconciled100%

    Illustrative figures shown to explain how reconciliation evidence is presented. They are not drawn from a specific customer engagement.

    Duration and commercial model

    A Kronos archive scoped to a defined retention period is typically weeks after discovery. Very large multi-site estates with long retention periods and heavy edit history run longer; discovery establishes the duration.

    Work is delivered as fixed-scope packages priced against the scope established in a Legacy Exit Discovery. Projects typically start from £25K. UK public-sector buyers can call the work off through G-Cloud 15.

    Common questions

    Why not just keep a database copy of Kronos?
    A database copy is not an archive. Nobody outside IT can query it, it has no retention or disposal behaviour, it has no access control or audit trail suited to HR data, and it still needs a licensed database. It also gives an information asset owner nothing to sign against.
    Can payroll answer a historical pay query from the archive?
    Yes — that is the primary use case. DataLens returns the timecard, its edits, the rules that applied and the payroll totals it contributed to.
    Does this cover UKG Workforce Central and Dimensions?
    Yes. Extraction is designed against the specific product and release you run.
    How long should we retain workforce data?
    That is your retention decision, driven by employment, working-time and pay obligations. The archive applies the retention period you set and evidences disposal at the end of it.
    Can NHS organisations buy this on a framework?
    Yes, through Firstcron Services UK Ltd under G-Cloud 15.

    Assess Your Kronos Retirement

    Tell us which Kronos product and version you run, how many years of timecard history you hold and what you have moved to, and we will scope the archive.

    UK Public SectorSyntraETL data migration, archival and legacy application retirement services are available to UK public-sector buyers through the G-Cloud 15 framework.Explore G-Cloud 15 services →