Contingent Worker & Contractor Management

Available from: v1.0.88

The platform supports full lifecycle management of non-employee workers — contractors, freelancers, and temporary staff — with dedicated workflows, compliance tooling, and financial tracking that runs alongside, but separately from, your permanent employee processes.

Worker Types

When adding a new worker record you can select from the following worker types:

Type	Description
Full-Time Employee (FTE)	Standard permanent or fixed-term employee on payroll
Contractor	Self-employed individual or limited-company contractor
Freelancer	Project- or task-based independent worker
Temporary / Agency Staff	Workers supplied through a staffing agency

Contingent worker types (Contractor, Freelancer, Temp) share a dedicated set of fields and workflows distinct from FTE onboarding.

Onboarding

Contingent workers go through a separate onboarding flow from employees. Key differences:

Engagement details — Capture engagement start and end dates, contracting entity, and agency (if applicable).
Tax classification — Record IR35 status (UK), independent-contractor classification (US), or equivalent local classification.
Document collection — Request and store contractor-specific documents: signed contracts, proof of insurance, right-to-work documentation, and bank/payment details.
Compliance gates — Onboarding steps can be gated on compliance checks passing before a worker is marked active.

Compliance Management

The compliance module tracks ongoing requirements for each contingent worker:

Right-to-work — Expiry-dated document tracking with automated alerts before documents lapse.
Worker classification — Record and audit IR35/SDS determinations or equivalent classifications.
Insurance certificates — Track professional indemnity, public liability, and other required insurance, including renewal dates.
Custom requirements — Define organisation-specific compliance checklist items per worker type.

Statements of Work (SOWs)

Each contingent worker record can have one or more SOWs attached.

SOW Fields

Field	Description
Title	Name or reference number for the SOW
Start date / End date	Engagement period covered by this SOW
Deliverables	Description of work and expected outputs
Value	Total contracted value
Approval status	Draft → Pending Approval → Approved → Closed
Attached document	Upload the signed SOW PDF

SOWs move through an approval workflow before a worker can be activated against them.

Rate Cards

Rate cards define how a contingent worker is compensated. Supported billing models:

Hourly — Rate per hour worked.
Daily — Day rate (typically used for contractors).
Milestone — Fixed payments tied to SOW deliverable completion.

Multiple rate cards can be stored per worker to accommodate different engagements or rate changes over time. Each rate card records currency, effective date range, and the associated SOW (if applicable).

Utilisation Tracking

For time-bounded engagements, utilisation is calculated against the contracted hours or days defined on the SOW or rate card.

Planned vs. actual — Compare contracted time against logged or submitted time.
Over-utilisation alerts — Flag workers who are tracking above their contracted commitment.
Under-utilisation alerts — Identify engagements at risk of not meeting contracted commitments.
Utilisation dashboard — Aggregate view across all active contingent workers.

Payment Workflows

Contingent worker payments are processed separately from employee payroll:

Independent payment runs — Contractor payment runs are decoupled from the payroll cycle and can be run on any schedule (weekly, monthly, upon invoice approval, etc.).
Invoice matching — Match contractor invoices against approved SOWs and rate cards before authorising payment.
Tax treatment — Payments are processed without PAYE deductions (subject to local classification rules); tax status is recorded per worker for reporting purposes.
Payment terms — Per-worker net payment terms (e.g. Net 30, Net 60) are respected during payment run scheduling.

Unified Workforce View

The main workforce roster displays FTEs and contingent workers in a single, filterable list.

Filter by worker type — Narrow the roster to employees only, contingent workers only, or all worker types.
Headcount reporting — Headcount metrics can be broken down by worker type, department, or location.
Resource planning — Capacity and resource planning views include contingent workers so you can model blended-team scenarios.
Search — Search across all worker types by name, role, department, or engagement status.

Permissions

Access to contingent worker records and workflows is governed by the standard role-based access control (RBAC) model. The following roles have contingent-worker-specific permissions:

Role	Access
HR Admin	Full read/write access to all contingent worker records, SOWs, and rate cards
HR Manager	Read/write for their department's contingent workers
Finance	Read access to rate cards and payment workflows; write access to payment runs
Procurement	Read/write access to SOWs; read access to worker profiles
Line Manager	Read access to contingent workers in their team

Getting Started

Navigate to Workforce → Workers and click Add Worker.
Select a contingent worker type (Contractor, Freelancer, or Temp/Agency).
Complete the contingent onboarding flow — fill in engagement details, tax classification, and upload required documents.
Create or attach a Statement of Work and define the Rate Card.
Submit the SOW for approval. Once approved, the worker's status is set to Active.
Monitor utilisation via Workforce → Utilisation Dashboard.
Process payments via Finance → Payment Runs → Contractor Payments.