Contracts
A contract is the employment agreement between a member and your organization. It defines the working hours, salary, leave entitlement, and overtime rules that Timesheet uses to calculate targets, balances, and compliance across the rest of the app.
Contracts require a Business plan subscription.
Why contracts matter
The contract is the single source of truth for a member's employment terms. Other features read from it automatically:
- Absence Management uses vacation and sick leave days to calculate the member's leave balance
- Overtime compares tracked hours against the contract's weekly and daily targets
- Compliance uses break rules, the holiday calendar, and the employment model to detect rest period violations and substitute rest days
- Reports and exports use the salary and currency for financial summaries
Without an active contract, these features cannot produce results for the member.
Managing contracts
Contracts are managed by organization administrators under Organizations > your organization > Contracts.
The contracts list shows every contract in the organization with its member, validity dates, weekly hours, and status. Use the status filter at the top to narrow the list to a specific state.
Creating a contract
- Go to Organizations > your organization > Contracts
- Click New Contract
- Select the member the contract applies to
- Fill in the contract sections (see below)
- Click Save
New contracts start in Draft status. Activate the contract once it is ready to take effect.
Contract sections
The contract form is organized into five sections.
General
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | A descriptive label for the contract (e.g. "Full-Time 2026"). |
| Valid From | The date the contract takes effect. |
| Valid To | The end date. Leave blank for an open-ended contract. |
| Country | The country of employment. Used for holiday rules and regulations. |
| Region | Optional state or regional code. |
| Timezone | The member's working timezone. Used when calculating daily hours and rest periods. |
Working time
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Work Days | Which weekdays the member is scheduled to work. |
| Weekly Hours | Total target hours per week. |
| Daily Hours | Standard target hours per working day. |
| Break Minutes | Minimum break required once the threshold is reached. |
| Break Threshold | Minutes of work after which the break becomes mandatory (e.g. 360 = a break is required after 6 hours). |
| Workweek Start Day | Which day begins the work week. Affects how weekly totals are grouped. |
Salary
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Salary Type | Monthly, annual, or hourly. |
| Salary Amount | The amount paid per period or per hour. |
| Currency | Three-letter currency code (e.g. EUR, USD). |
Leave
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Vacation Days Annual | Vacation days granted for the year. Drives the member's leave balance. |
| Vacation Days Carried Over | Days carried over from the previous year. |
| Sick Leave Paid Days | Paid sick leave days available per year. |
Overtime and compliance
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Overtime Enabled | Turns overtime tracking on or off for this contract. |
| Employment Model | Reusable set of advanced rules for overtime, flex time, surcharges, rest periods, and approvals. See Employment Models. |
| Holiday Collection | The public holiday calendar that applies to this contract. Public holidays affect target hours, rest periods, and substitute rest days. |
| Exempt Status | For US contracts only. Marks whether the member is exempt or non-exempt under FLSA rules. |
Contract lifecycle
Each contract moves through the following states. Use the action buttons in the contracts list to change state.
| Status | Meaning | Available actions |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Created but not yet in effect. Edit freely. | Activate |
| Active | Currently in effect. Absences, overtime, and compliance are calculated against it. | Suspend, Terminate |
| Suspended | Temporarily paused (e.g. unpaid leave). Calculations pause while in this state. | Reactivate, Terminate |
| Terminated | Permanently ended. Kept as a historical record. | None |
Only one active contract per member is in effect at a time. When an employment relationship changes (new working hours, role change, new salary), create a new contract and terminate the old one rather than editing active terms in place.
Holiday collections
A holiday collection is the set of public holidays that apply to a contract. Timesheet ships with holiday collections for common countries and regions, and organizations can create their own.
Public holidays defined in the collection:
- Reduce the target hours on the holiday
- Trigger substitute rest day entitlement when the member works on them
- Are highlighted in the calendar
Holiday collections are managed under Organizations > your organization > Holiday Collections.
Viewing a contract
Click any contract in the list to open its detail view. The detail page shows every section of the contract in read-only form, plus the current status and linked employment model and holiday collection.
Use Edit to change contract fields. Which fields can be edited depends on the contract's status (see below).
Editing a contract
Draft contracts can be edited freely. Until you activate them, nothing in the system depends on their values.
Once a contract is Active, Suspended, or Terminated, editing is intentionally restricted. Only fields that don't affect leave balances, overtime, or pay can still be changed directly:
| Always editable | Requires a new contract |
|---|---|
| Name | Valid From / Valid To |
| Country / Region | Work Days, Weekly Hours, Daily Hours |
| Timezone | Break rules and workweek start day |
| Holiday Collection | Salary type, amount, and currency |
| Vacation Days Annual / Carried Over | |
| Sick Leave Paid Days | |
| Overtime Enabled | |
| Employment Model | |
| Exempt Status |
The reason for the split is auditability. Leave balances, overtime totals, and pay reports are computed against the contract in effect. Silently overwriting a past value would make historical calculations impossible to reproduce. A contract is a frozen snapshot of employment terms for a date range. When the terms change, you terminate the old one and create a new one with the new terms.
If you spot a typo in an active contract that doesn't affect calculations (e.g. the contract name), edit it directly. For any change that would shift a number (hours, salary, leave entitlement), create a new contract instead.
Changing terms: duplicate and replace
When an employee's terms need to change mid-employment (a raise, reduced hours, a new employment model), the workflow is:
- Open the current contract
- Click Duplicate
- A new draft contract opens, pre-filled with every field from the source. The Valid From date is blank: set it to the date the new terms take effect
- Adjust the fields that changed (hours, salary, employment model, etc.)
- Save the draft
- Go back to the old contract and Terminate it
- Activate the new contract
Two active or suspended contracts cannot overlap for the same member. If you try to activate a new contract while another one is still covering the same date range, activation is blocked until you terminate the old one.
The system preserves the old contract as a terminated record. Its values are locked in for any balance, overtime, or report that references that period. Nothing retroactively changes.