Employment terms

Employment terms group the policies and defaults that apply to employees: time-off policies, allowance policies, work time policies, holiday calendar, and work time norm.

Overview

When you assign an employee to an employment term, they inherit all the policies and defaults configured on that term. This lets you manage rules for groups of employees in one place instead of configuring each employee individually.

An employment term controls:

• Time-off policies — which leave types are available and how balances accrue, are used, and expire
• Allowance policies — allowance entitlements
• Work time policies — constraints on working hours, automatic registrations, and flex balance settlement
• Holiday calendar — which public holidays apply
• Work time norm — the expected weekly working hours

Manage employment terms

1. Go to Settings › Employment Terms
2. Use Add Employment Term to create a new term
3. Use row actions to Edit , Copy , view history, or Delete an existing term

Configure an employment term

Click Add Employment Term or Edit on an existing row to open the term editor.

Basic info

• Name — identify the term (for example, “Full-time” or “Part-time 30h”)
• Description — optional details about the term

Working time

• Work Time Norm — the default expected weekly hours for employees on this term
• Holiday calendar — the calendar used for employees who do not have one set at employment level

Policies

Use the policy sections to assign policies to the term:

Click Save when you are done.

Flex account

The Flex account setting names the time account that holds an employee’s flex balance — the running difference between worked and expected hours. It is the single answer to “which account is this employee’s flex saldo”, independent of how that account is fed.

• Choose any time account measured in hours.
• Once set, the flex balance appears on the employee’s timesheet period card and dashboard, and on the account movements report.
• With just a flex account and no settlement policy, each period’s flex is carried forward automatically. Add a settlement policy only when you need premiums, caps, or payouts.

Hourly pay activity

The Hourly pay activity setting is for hourly paid employees: it names the allowance activity that represents their payable worked time.

• Choose any activity of type allowance (create one first under Settings › Activities, e.g. “Hourly work”).
• Selecting it runs the Worked hours counter for that activity automatically — each day’s worked hours (absence excluded) appear on the activity’s row in the timesheet, on the open statement’s allowances, and on the dashboard, so employees watch their payable hours accumulate through the period.
• Selecting it here is exactly equivalent to creating a Worked hours allowance policy targeting the activity — one logic, two ways to switch it on.
• At statement approval the activity’s total is frozen on the approved period, and — when the activity carries a payroll integration’s salary code — reported as the employee’s salary. Re-approving a changed period reports only the signed difference; reopening alone reports nothing.
• Don’t also target the same activity with a manual Worked hours policy: policies stack, so the hours would be counted twice. The editor shows a warning when that happens.

Timesheet approval

Configure whether employees must submit their timesheet for approval at the end of each period.

1. In the term editor, find the Timesheet approval section
2. Choose an approval mode:
   • None — no approval workflow
   • Employee only — employee submits, and the period auto-approves
   • Manager required — employee submits, then a manager must approve or reject
3. Choose the Approval period: weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly
4. Click Save

See Timesheet statements for the full workflow (submit, reopen, multi-approver projects, admin overrides) and Approvals for the manager’s inbox.

Work time norm

The work time norm determines how many hours per week an employee is expected to work and how those hours are distributed over the days of the week. You can also define norms that span several weeks, for example to handle alternating schedules. The system resolves the norm using three layers, checked in this order:

1. Employment override — a value set directly on an individual employment (highest priority)
2. Employment terms default — the value configured on the term assigned to the employment
3. Workspace standard weekly hours — the organization-wide baseline

The system uses the first value it finds. This means most employees use the terms default, and you only set an employment override for exceptions like part-time contracts.

Entering norm values

You can type the weekly value as decimal hours (for example, 20 or 29,6) or as hours and minutes (for example, 20:00 or 29h36), matching your time-format preference — the other format is shown greyed beside it, and on the week and total lines.

Contract hours are always stored to the minute, which is why the day-by-day cells show hours and minutes only: a per-day decimal is usually a rounded view of the stored minutes, so a day of 7h40 would read 7,67 even though it is really 7,666… hours. See Hours & minutes vs decimal hours for why we recommend defining norms in whole minutes.

Set workspace standard weekly hours

This is the full-time baseline for your organization and is used for FTE calculations.

1. Go to Admin › Workspace
2. In the General section, find Standard Weekly Hours
3. Enter the full-time weekly hours (for example, 37:00)

Set terms default norm

1. Go to Settings › Employment Terms
2. Open an existing term or create a new one
3. In Working time, select Custom under Work Time Norm, then enter the weekly hours under Hours per Week
4. To vary the hours by day, turn on Split across days . The weekly total is spread evenly across the working days. From there you can:
   • Click a day name to include or exclude it — the total re-spreads across the remaining working days (excluded days appear struck through)
   • Type directly into a day to set uneven hours
   • Use Distribute evenly to reset to an even split
5. Click Save

All employees assigned to this term will use this value unless they have an employment-level override.

Override norm on an individual employment

Use this only when an employee’s weekly hours differ from the terms default.

1. Go to Organization › Employees
2. Open the employee profile
3. In Employments, edit the relevant employment
4. Select the correct Employment Terms
5. Under Work Time Norm, choose Custom (rather than Standard norm , which keeps the inherited default) and enter the override value. Turn on Split across days if the hours vary by day.
6. Click Done , then Save on the employee profile

Troubleshooting