Contracts

This guide covers the wage agreement every employee is paid against.

Purpose

Before pay can be calculated, the system needs to know the terms. This answers: "What is this person actually being paid, and how?"

The Contract

A contract defines:

• Wage type — daily, monthly, or (if Attendance is in use) hourly.
• Wage — the base amount, per the wage type.
• Pay frequency — weekly, monthly, or semi-monthly, as a label for reference.
• Filing status — which tax rules apply, see Tax.
• Notice period — feeds into the Offboarding module when this employee eventually resigns. New contracts are pre-filled with a company-wide default notice period, editable per contract — see Settings: Company & Organization.
• Department, job position, job role, shift, and work type — recorded on the contract itself, separately from the employee's own work information.
• Whether unpaid leave reduces basic pay directly, and how that reduction is calculated — a flat amount per day, or a computed daily rate.

A contract is automatically created the moment an employee is set up, using their starting salary — one less thing to remember to do manually.

Contract Status

A contract moves through draft, active, expired, and terminated. Only one active and one draft contract can exist for an employee at a time. A contract automatically expires once its end date passes.

What Each User Sees

Action	Employee	Reporting Manager	HR / Payroll Administrator
View their own contract	✅	✅	✅
View a direct report's contract	—	✅	✅
View every contract company-wide	—	—	✅
Create or edit a contract	—	—	✅

How Visibility Is Decided

1. Ownership. Everyone can view their own contract.
2. The direct reporting line. A specific employee's own reporting manager can view their contract — this doesn't extend further down an org chart, and doesn't apply to contracts outside that direct relationship.
3. Permissions. Creating, editing, and company-wide visibility require the relevant permission.

Customization Options

• Wage type and rate are set per employee, per contract.
• How unpaid leave affects pay — whether it reduces the displayed basic pay directly, and by how much per day — is configurable per contract.
• The default notice period used to pre-fill new contracts is set once, company-wide, from Settings.

Good to Know

• A contract is auto-created on hire, using the starting salary already on the employee's record — payroll setup for a new employee starts from a working default, not a blank form.
• Only one active contract at a time. A raise or a change in terms means updating the existing contract or replacing it, not stacking a second active one alongside it.
• A contract keeps its own snapshot of department, job position, job role, shift, and work type, separate from the employee's live work information — so a contract's recorded context doesn't silently shift if the employee is later transferred or promoted.

The terms, always on file.