How to Build an ADP Workforce Now Org Chart (Without the Add-On)

Q: Where is the org chart in ADP Workforce Now?

ADP ships a view-only chart at My Team → Organizational Chart. It's fine for internal browsing inside ADP. For a chart you can share, brand, or use in a deck, you build a Custom Report (Reports & Analytics → Custom Reports → Employee Data), export as Excel, and rebuild in an external tool. If you're charting once a quarter or less, the manual export is faster than the procurement cycle for any paid integration.

Q: What's the difference between Associate ID, File Number, and Position ID?

Three IDs that get conflated. Associate ID is the person — globally unique, stable across positions. File Number is the per-Company-Code payroll ID — two employees in two EINs can share one. Position ID is per-role — someone with two jobs has two. For org chart imports, always use Associate ID and Reports To Associate ID.

Q: How do I exclude terminated employees from the ADP export?

On the Who Appears on This Report filter card, set Status = Active. Employee Roster explicitly includes terminated and deceased employees by default; Employee Census's default is less clearly documented, so the explicit filter is the safe move regardless of which report you pick.

Five minutes from your ADP Workforce Now export to a clean, shareable org chart PNG. Put it on your team's wiki. Drop it in an onboarding deck. Walk through a "current state vs proposed" reorg with your boss.

Same path, every time.

The built-in ADP Workforce Now org chart at My Team → Organizational Chart is view-only and fine for browsing. ADP Marketplace also sells paid org chart add-ons, but you don't need one for a chart you'll put in a deck. For a chart you can brand, share, and edit, without paying for an add-on or asking IT to enable one, you build a Custom Report, export to Excel, and rebuild it in Org Chart Studio.

Same workflow whether you're charting the whole company, a department, or just your team. This guide is for charting your organization's reporting hierarchy from ADP data, not ADP Inc.'s executive team. It covers ADP Workforce Now specifically; ADP Run, Vantage HCM, and TotalSource use different export paths, noted at the bottom.

Key Takeaways

Use Reports & Analytics → Custom Reports → Employee Data, not the Employee Census standard report (Census includes benefits and dependents bloat).

Add Reports To Associate ID as the manager column, manager-by-name breaks on duplicate names; Associate ID doesn't.

Click Run As Excel when you export. ADP defaults to PDF; you can't import a PDF.

Six fields are enough: First Name, Last Name, Job Title, Business Email, Associate ID, Reports To Associate ID. Filter to Active.

Multi-EIN orgs: explicitly select all Company Codes on the filter card, or your export will be incomplete.

Build the ADP Workforce Now org chart report

You need the Practitioner role with Reports & Analytics permissions. Most HR and people-ops leads have it.

1. Reports & Analytics → Custom Reports → Create New Report

In ADP Workforce Now, open Reports & Analytics from the top nav. Click Custom Reports → Create New Report, choose Employee Data as the data domain. (HR Data also works; Employee Data is the closer fit.)

2. Add six fields

In the field picker, search and add:

First Name
Last Name
Job Title (or Business Title, pick whichever your org uses on the chart)
Business Email
Associate ID, the unique person identifier
Reports To Associate ID, the manager pointer for the chart

Optional: Home Department for color-coded charts, Location for geographic grouping.

Skip File Number (per-Company-Code, not globally unique across EINs) and Position ID (per-role; matrix-org employees have multiple). For an org chart you want one row per person, keyed by Associate ID.

3. Filter to Active

On the Who Appears on This Report card, set Status = Active. Without this, terminated or deceased employees come through with manager references and show up as ghost cards on the chart.

Multi-EIN organizations: also check the Company Code filter. The default may filter to a single Company Code, if you run multiple EINs, explicitly select all Company Codes you want included or the export will be incomplete.

Charting one department or team? Add a Home Department filter too. Same Custom Report, different filter, different chart.

4. Run As Excel, not PDF

Click Run As Excel. ADP defaults to Run As PDF on many reports, and you can't import a PDF to a chart tool. The Excel button is usually right next to the PDF one.

If your report only shows Run As PDF, ADP's own Standard Reports Guide notes that "the availability of Run As PDF and Run As Excel buttons may vary from one report to another." Custom Reports built on Employee Data domain reliably offer Excel.

5. Save the report

Save the Custom Report as Org Chart Source. Next quarter, open it, click Run As Excel, re-export. No rebuild.

The exported XLSX looks like this:

First Name	Last Name	Job Title	Business Email	Associate ID	Reports To Associate ID
Sarah	Chen	CEO	sarah.chen@acme.com	G3PR8KMT3VFTN2K
Marcus	Johnson	VP Engineering	marcus.j@acme.com	G3PR8L2N4WGUOY7	G3PR8KMT3VFTN2K
Priya	Patel	VP Operations	priya@acme.com	G3PR8M5P9XZNQE1	G3PR8KMT3VFTN2K
Ana	Rodriguez	Engineer	ana@acme.com	G3PR8N9W2BCDOL4	G3PR8L2N4WGUOY7

The CEO row has an empty Reports To Associate ID, that's the root of the chart. Every other person's Reports To Associate ID matches an Associate ID in a row above.

Why Custom Reports beat the Employee Census

Employee Census is the most discoverable choice in ADP, and it works, sort of. Two reasons Custom Reports is better for org charts:

Census includes benefits and dependents. ADP's own description: "This report lists the information on employees' personal, employment, demographics, dependents, enrollments, benefit earnings." For an org chart, you need names and a manager pointer. Everything else is noise that slows the export.
Standard reports render the manager as a name. Reports To shows up as "Marcus Johnson," not as an Associate ID. Two Marcus Johnsons break the chart. Custom Reports lets you add Reports To Associate ID explicitly, unique, unambiguous, stable across renames.

The Reports To Details standard report and Employee Roster work too, with the same naming caveat. If you absolutely can't build a Custom Report (permissions, hurry), use Reports To Details and accept the manager-by-name limitation; rename duplicates manually during import. (The same parent-reference principle, with a unique key resolving the hierarchy, is what the general CSV import method walks through for any data source.)

Import to Org Chart Studio

Open Org Chart Studio. No account needed.

Drop the ADP Excel file onto the import dropzone. The column mapper opens:

First Name + Last Name combine into the Name field on each card
Job Title appears under the name
Business Email identifies each employee
Associate ID is the unique person key
Reports To Associate ID becomes the Manager column, the chart's hierarchy

Click Import. The chart appears, positioned by reporting line. Drag cards to reparent, double-click to edit, use layout presets to switch between dense and roomy spacing.

Export a watermarked PNG free, or a $1 export pass for a clean PNG you can put in a deck. See pricing →

Ready to try it? Drop your ADP export into the studio →

ADP Workforce Now org chart gotchas

Associate ID vs File Number vs Position ID. ADP calls three things "employee ID" depending on context. Associate ID is the person, globally unique. File Number is the per-Company-Code payroll ID, two employees in two EINs can share one. Position ID is per-role, someone with two jobs has two. For an org chart, Associate ID and Reports To Associate ID are the only IDs you need.

Position-based reporting in matrix orgs. ADP supports both person-based and position-based reporting. An employee can hold multiple positions, each with its own manager. The standard Employee Census rolls this up to the primary position; the chart shows the primary line only. True matrix orgs with multiple direct-line managers per person aren't fully captured by the export-and-rebuild path; you'd map the additional lines manually in the editor.

PDF is the default. ADP loves PDF. Readers will click the first download button, get a PDF, and be stuck. Click Run As Excel, it's the option next to Run As PDF.

Custom field names vary by tenant. ADP lets clients rename standard fields and add custom ones. Your tenant may show "Reports To" labeled as "Manager" or "People Leader," or split Job Title into "Business Title" and "Working Title." If you can't find a field in the picker under its expected name, search by both labels and check Custom Reports → Field Library for your tenant's exact catalog.

Large reports time out. ADP Workforce Now Custom Reports can hit a server-side timeout for very large tenants (typically 10,000+ active rows with many columns). If your report fails to run, narrow the column set to the org-chart essentials (the six fields above) and try again. The export should finish in seconds for any practical headcount.

Using a different HR system?

Same shape of workflow, different menu paths:

BambooHR, Custom Report with the calculated Supervisor email field.
Workday, what to ask your admin for, and the workaround when IT won't enable the paid add-on.
Build an org chart from CSV, the general method for Gusto, Rippling, Paychex, an in-house HRIS, or a manually-built spreadsheet.

Frequently asked questions

How do I create an org chart from ADP Workforce Now?

In ADP, open Reports & Analytics → Custom Reports → Create New Report → Employee Data. Add First Name, Last Name, Job Title, Business Email, Associate ID, and Reports To Associate ID. Filter to Active employees, then click Run As Excel (not PDF, ADP defaults to PDF). Drop the Excel file into Org Chart Studio; point Reports To Associate ID at the Manager column. Click Import, the chart appears, ready to brand and export.

Where is the org chart in ADP Workforce Now?

ADP ships a view-only chart at My Team → Organizational Chart. It's fine for internal browsing inside ADP. For a chart you can share, brand, or use in a deck, you build a Custom Report (Reports & Analytics → Custom Reports → Employee Data), export as Excel, and rebuild in an external tool. If you're charting once a quarter or less, the manual export is faster than the procurement cycle for any paid integration.

Should I use Employee Census or Custom Reports?

For org chart purposes: Custom Reports. Employee Census includes benefits, dependents, and enrollment data you don't need, and the standard report renders the manager as a name instead of an Associate ID. Custom Reports lets you pick exactly the columns the importer needs, including Reports To Associate ID, which is unique where the rendered name isn't.

What's the difference between Associate ID, File Number, and Position ID?

Three IDs that get conflated. Associate ID is the person, globally unique, stable across positions. File Number is the per-Company-Code payroll ID, two employees in two EINs can share one. Position ID is per-role, someone with two jobs has two. For org chart imports, always use Associate ID and Reports To Associate ID.

How do I exclude terminated employees from the ADP export?

On the Who Appears on This Report filter card, set Status = Active. Employee Roster explicitly includes terminated and deceased employees by default; Employee Census's default is less clearly documented, so the explicit filter is the safe move regardless of which report you pick.

Why is the export PDF instead of Excel?

ADP's redesigned standard reports default to PDF. Most reports also expose a Run As Excel button, but ADP's Standard Reports Guide notes "the availability of Run As PDF and Run As Excel buttons may vary from one report to another." Custom Reports built on Employee Data reliably offer Excel, if you only see PDF, switch to Custom Reports.

What about multi-EIN companies?

Common in mid-market. A single organization with multiple EINs runs multiple Company Codes in ADP. The Who Appears on This Report filter card lets you pick which Company Codes to include, but the default may be a single Company Code. If your export looks incomplete, check the filter and select every Company Code you want included.

Does Org Chart Studio sync with ADP automatically?

Not today. The current flow is export-then-import: build the Custom Report once, save it, re-export when you need an updated chart. For most use cases, quarterly board deck, onboarding doc, current vs proposed reorg, that's the right rhythm. If you specifically need real-time sync against live ADP data, paid Marketplace integrations exist for that.

What if I'm on ADP Run instead of Workforce Now?

ADP Run (small business, under ~50 employees) is a different product. The closest equivalent is Custom Reports inside the Run payroll module, but Run has shallower HR data, title and manager fields are often missing unless you're on a higher Run tier. The general CSV import method covers what's left.

Free PNG exports include a small orgchartstudio.com watermark. For the clean version, a $1 export pass removes it. No subscription. See pricing →

The hard part is picking Custom Reports over Employee Census, and clicking Excel instead of PDF. Everything after that is a column dropdown and a click.