How to Build a BambooHR Org Chart in 5 Minutes (No Add-Ons)

Q: Where is the BambooHR org chart export?

The built-in chart is at Employees → Org Chart and downloads as PDF or PNG. For data-shaped exports that drive an external chart tool, use Reports → Add Report → Custom Report with the Supervisor email calculated field. The Company Directory page has a CSV download but doesn't include manager relationships, so it isn't useful for org chart building.

Q: Why does BambooHR have a Supervisor field and a Supervisor email field?

The Supervisor field is the manager's name as a string. It's readable but not unique — two employees named John Smith produce identical Supervisor values for their reports. The Supervisor email calculated field looks up the actual employee behind Reports To and returns their work email, which is unique. For an org chart import, use Supervisor email.

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

Add a filter on Employment Status set to Active. By default, custom reports include past-dated terminations as Inactive and exclude them from most aggregates, but the filter is the explicit way. For tenants using a custom End Date field for future-dated transitions, add that field to the filter too.

Q: What if I can't find the Supervisor email field in my field picker?

Search for 'supervisor' — the calculated email variant should appear next to the plain Supervisor and Supervisor ID fields. If it doesn't, you may be on BambooHR Essentials, which has a smaller field catalog than Advantage / Core / Pro. Workarounds: use Supervisor ID instead (Org Chart Studio's column mapper accepts numeric manager IDs as parent references), or build a quick formula column in Excel that looks up the manager's email from the rest of the file before importing.

Five minutes from your BambooHR 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 BambooHR org chart at Employees → Org Chart is fine for browsing inside BambooHR. The moment you need a chart you can actually share, branded, in your layout, in any document, you need a chart you control. Org Chart Studio reads your BambooHR export and gives you that.

Same workflow whether you're charting the whole company, a department, or just your team.

Key Takeaways

Use Reports → Add Report → Custom Report, not the Company Directory download (no manager column there).

Add the calculated Supervisor email field. Manager-by-name breaks on duplicate names; email doesn't.

Five fields are enough: First Name, Last Name, Job Title, Work Email, Supervisor Email. Filter to Active.

In Org Chart Studio's column mapper, point at Supervisor email as the Manager column.

Watermarked PNG free; clean export passes start at $1, no subscription.

Build the BambooHR org chart report

You need the Reports permission. Most HR admins and people-ops leads have it.

1. Reports → Add Report → Custom Report

In the BambooHR left nav, open Reports. Click Add Report (some tenants show + New Report, they renamed it in the 2024–2025 builder refresh). Choose Custom Report.

2. Add five fields

In the field picker, search and add:

First Name
Last Name
Job Title
Work Email
Supervisor email, a calculated field, not the default "Supervisor" one. Search "supervisor" and pick the email variant. (Full reference: BambooHR's official field-names doc.) This is the field that gives you a unique parent reference for every employee.

Optional: Department for color-coded charts.

3. Filter to Active

Add a filter: Employment Status = Active. Without it, recently-terminated employees come through with manager references and create ghost cards on the chart.

Charting a single department or team? Add a Department filter too. Same report, different filter, different chart.

4. Run and Export CSV

Click Run. The Supervisor email column should be populated for almost everyone (the CEO is the typical exception). If it's mostly empty, you added the wrong supervisor field, go back to the field picker and pick the email variant.

Click Export → CSV.

5. Save the report

Save it as Org Chart Source. Next quarter, click Run and Export. No rebuild.

The exported CSV looks like this:

First Name	Last Name	Job Title	Work Email	Supervisor email	Employment Status
Sarah	Chen	CEO	sarah.chen@acme.com		Active
Marcus	Johnson	VP Engineering	marcus.j@acme.com	sarah.chen@acme.com	Active
Priya	Patel	VP Operations	priya@acme.com	sarah.chen@acme.com	Active
Ana	Rodriguez	Engineer	ana@acme.com	marcus.j@acme.com	Active

The CEO row has an empty Supervisor email, that's how the chart knows where the tree starts. Every other person's Supervisor email points to a Work Email in the file above them.

Why the Supervisor email field matters

BambooHR exposes three manager-related fields. Only one of them works for an external chart:

Supervisor, the manager's name as a string. Breaks the moment you have two John Smiths.
Supervisor ID, BambooHR's internal employee number. Unique, but only meaningful inside BambooHR.
Supervisor email, looks up the manager and returns their work email. Unique, stable, readable by every tool.

Every BambooHR integration vendor guide we reviewed recommends the email variant for the same reason. It's calculated and not on by default, which is why first-time exports usually miss it. (The same hierarchical pattern, with parent references resolved by a unique key, 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 BambooHR CSV onto the import dropzone. The column mapper recognizes BambooHR's column names and pre-fills the mapping:

First Name + Last Name combine into the Name field on each card
Job Title appears under the name
Work Email identifies each employee
Supervisor email 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 buy a $1 export pass for a clean PNG you can put in a deck. See pricing →

Ready to try it? Drop your BambooHR CSV into the studio →

BambooHR org chart gotchas

A few things that bite real exports.

"Reports To" and "Supervisor" are the same field. The UI calls it Reports To on the employee profile. The report builder calls it Supervisor. Don't search for "Reports To" in the field picker, it isn't there.

Multi-EIN tenants export everyone in one file. No built-in Company filter. Use a Division filter if your tenant uses divisions, or filter in Excel after the export.

Contractors live in the employee table. Distinguished by Employment Status (Contractor, Intern, etc.). Filter them in or out depending on whether the chart should show them.

Future-dated terminations stay Active. BambooHR's default termination-date field doesn't accept future dates. Someone leaving next month shows as Active. If your tenant uses a custom End Date field, add it as a filter.

Your tenant may have renamed fields. BambooHR lets admins rename standard fields and add custom ones. If "Reports To" on the employee profile is labeled something else in your tenant, "Manager", "People Leader", "Lead", the underlying field is still supervisor in the report builder. When in doubt, look at what your employee profiles call the manager field, then search the field picker for both that label and "supervisor".

Using a different HR system?

Same shape of workflow, different menu paths:

ADP Workforce Now, the Custom Report path that skips ADP's paid Marketplace add-ons.
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 BambooHR?

Build a Custom Report in BambooHR (Reports → Add Report → Custom Report) with First Name, Last Name, Job Title, Work Email, and the calculated Supervisor email field. Filter to Active employees and export as CSV. Drop the CSV into Org Chart Studio; the column mapper recognizes BambooHR's naming and points Supervisor email at the Manager column automatically. Click Import, the chart appears, ready to brand and export.

Where is the BambooHR org chart export?

The built-in chart is at Employees → Org Chart and downloads as PDF or PNG. For data-shaped exports that drive an external chart tool, use Reports → Add Report → Custom Report with the Supervisor email calculated field. The Company Directory page has a CSV download but doesn't include manager relationships, so it isn't useful for org chart building.

What's the difference between Reports To and Supervisor in BambooHR?

Same field, two different labels. In the employee profile UI, BambooHR calls it Reports To. In the report builder and the API, it's Supervisor. There are three related fields in the report builder: Supervisor (name), Supervisor ID (internal), and Supervisor email (calculated). Use Supervisor email for org chart imports.

Can I export the BambooHR org chart directly to Excel or CSV?

The built-in BambooHR org chart exports as PDF, PNG, or CSV, but the CSV is a flat list, not a structured org-chart data file. For a chart you can rebuild externally, build a Custom Report with First Name, Last Name, Job Title, Work Email, and Supervisor email, then export that as CSV.

Why does BambooHR have a Supervisor field and a Supervisor email field?

The Supervisor field is the manager's name as a string. It's readable but not unique, two employees named "John Smith" produce identical Supervisor values for their reports. The Supervisor email calculated field looks up the actual employee behind Reports To and returns their work email, which is unique. For an org chart import, use Supervisor email.

How do I exclude terminated employees from the BambooHR export?

Add a filter on Employment Status set to Active. By default, custom reports include past-dated terminations as Inactive and exclude them from most aggregates, but the filter is the explicit way. For tenants using a custom End Date field for future-dated transitions, add that field to the filter too.

Can I include contractors in the org chart?

Yes. 1099 contractors are in the same employee table, distinguished by Employment Status values like Contractor. Leave them in if your chart should show them; filter them out if it shouldn't. Some orgs run two versions, full headcount with contractors, and "employees only" without.

My BambooHR export has First Name and Last Name as separate columns. How does the import handle that?

Org Chart Studio combines them automatically. The column mapper sees the two BambooHR-shaped columns and stitches them into a single Name field on each chart card. You don't need to merge them in Excel before importing.

Does Org Chart Studio sync with BambooHR automatically?

Not today. The current flow is export-then-import: build the BambooHR custom report once, save it, re-export when you need an updated chart. For most board-deck and onboarding cases that's quarterly or less, and the re-export takes under a minute. If you specifically need live sync against BambooHR, paid integrations exist for that.

How long does this take for a BambooHR with 500+ employees?

The export and import are essentially constant-time, a 500-person BambooHR custom report runs in seconds, the CSV is under a megabyte, and Org Chart Studio's import handles thousands of rows in under a few seconds. The variable is the deduplication step: a 500-person org with messy names (typos, "Sarah C" vs "Sarah Chen" duplicates) might take a few minutes to walk through the import-preview confirmations. A clean BambooHR export with unique work emails skips that entirely.

What if I can't find the Supervisor email field in my field picker?

Search for "supervisor", the calculated email variant should appear next to the plain Supervisor and Supervisor ID fields. If it doesn't, you may be on BambooHR Essentials, which has a smaller field catalog than Advantage / Core / Pro. Workarounds: use Supervisor ID instead (Org Chart Studio's column mapper accepts numeric manager IDs as parent references), or build a quick formula column in Excel that looks up the manager's email from the rest of the file before importing.

What if my BambooHR tenant has been customized heavily?

Heavily customized BambooHR tenants, renamed fields, dotted-line relationships stored in custom fields, multi-EIN segmentation, custom "Team Lead" hierarchies layered on top of Reports To, still produce a usable organizational chart. Add the custom fields to your Custom Report, then in Org Chart Studio's column mapper, point at the right columns. The mapper accepts any column you point at; BambooHR's defaults are just the easy case.

Can I chart dotted-line or matrix reporting from BambooHR?

The solid line (Reports To) is what the BambooHR export gives you cleanly. For dotted-line relationships, some tenants store them in a custom field, add that field to your Custom Report and include it in the export. Org Chart Studio doesn't render dotted lines automatically from a column today, but you can add them manually in the editor after the solid-line BambooHR org chart is built. Most use cases, team wikis, onboarding decks, reorg conversations, work fine with solid-line only.

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

The hard part of building a BambooHR org chart is the calculated field. Everything after that is a column dropdown and a click.