Skip to main content

Manage Draft Employment Conditions and Contracts

The Draft Employment Conditions feature allows managers to prepare changes to employee pay or contract details without immediately applying them. Drafts must be reviewed and approved before becoming active.

What this article covers:

Who can use Draft Employment Conditions

Access to Draft Employment Conditions depends on user permissions:

  • Users with draft permissions only can create, edit, and delete draft ECS records.

  • If a user has permission to only edit wages, they must also have Edit Draft permissions to create or save draft employment conditions.

  • By default, the new draft permissions mirror each customer’s existing setup, meaning if a user has Edit Wages permissions, they will also now have Edit Draft Wages permissions turned on. To configure this further, you can edit individual permission levels in the Advanced Permissions Settings.

At minimum, the user will require the ‘Edit Draft Wages’ permission setting to be able to set up draft Pay Conditions:

To customise this further, you can do so under the ‘Pay Conditions and Regular Hours of Work’ permission settings:

How to create a Draft Employment Condition Set

Managers with draft permissions can begin preparing changes directly from the Pay Conditions page. This is the same process as in our help article Employee Pay Conditions, except that to save changes, you click ‘Save as Draft’, rather than ‘Confirm Changes’.

A user with both the Edit Draft Wages and Edit Wages permissions will have both save options as above (’Save as Draft’ and ‘Confirm Changes’). A user with only the Edit Draft Wages permission will only have Save as Draft as an option.

The draft will appear in the employee’s Upcoming Changes section. It will not apply to the employee until approved by another user.

Reviewing and approving

Users with the necessary edit permissions can review and finalise draft ECS records.

To approve a draft ECS:

  1. Go to the employee’s Pay Conditions page.

  2. In the Upcoming Changes list, locate the draft ECS.

  3. Select Edit or Finalise Draft.

  4. Review the details and make any necessary edits.

  5. Click Approve & Finalise to apply the changes.

Once approved, the draft becomes an active ECS, and the employee’s pay conditions are updated accordingly.

Only users with edit wages permissions (those that can edit and save pay conditions normally) can finalise drafts.

To see an overview of all drafts, you can find the Pending Draft Pay Changes page under Workforce > Staff > Tools > Manage Employment Conditions > Pending Draft Pay Changes.

Editing and deleting

Before approval, drafts can be freely updated or removed:

  • Managers with edit draft permissions can open and edit drafts they have created at any time.

  • Admin users can also update any draft ECS records before finalising.

To delete or edit a draft ECS:

  1. Open the employee’s Pay Conditions page.

  2. Find the draft under Upcoming Pay Conditions.

  3. Select Delete Change to delete it, or Edit or Finalise Draft to edit it.

Deleted drafts are permanently removed and cannot be restored.

Notifications and Alerts

When a draft is created, the user creating the pay condition set can choose whether they want to notify everyone with the permission to approve it when saving changes:

If ticked, users will receive an email that a new draft ECS is ready for review as long as they have the capacity to approve it (the Edit Wages permission setting turned on):

By default this is on, however you can turn this off for yourself under Notifications > Notification Settings:

There is also a Pay Check that will appear on the employee’s profile when there are conditions pending approval.

To learn more about pay checks, please see Pay Checks Explained.

Draft Contracts & Documents

When saving a Draft Employment Condition Set (ECS), managers can also attach and save Contracts, Documents and Files within the same workflow.

This functionality also means Admins can save their progress while completing a contract for an employee. The draft can then be reopened later to continue editing or to finalise and post the contract.

Adding Draft Employment Conditions in Bulk

Similar to the bulk actions for managing Regular Hours of Work and Pay Conditions, you can also bulk export and upload Draft Regular Hours of Work and Pay Conditions.

You can also review and action the draft changes all at once. This allows you to send contracts, forms, training, surveys and documents to staff in bulk.

Importing/Exporting Draft Employment Conditions

  1. Navigate to Workforce > Staff > Tools > Manage Employment Conditions and select the Draft Employment Conditions tab.

From there, export the template and make the necessary changes before reimporting it under the Import CSV tab:

After successfully importing, the draft employment conditions can be found on each employee's profile or under the Pending Draft Pay Changes tab.

Reviewing & Finalising Draft Employment Conditions in Bulk

To action draft changes in bulk:

  1. Navigate to Workforce > Staff > Tools > Manage Employment Conditions > Pending Draft Pay Changes and select the employment condition sets that you want to review.
    ​

    Then click Update Conditions in Bulk.
    ​

  2. Choose what should be sent to staff with the employment condition changes. Choose from your contracts, forms, training, surveys and documents and click Continue.
    ​

  3. Review any pay check issues flagged by the import, deselect any employees you no longer want to update, and click Continue.
    ​

  4. Next, review any contracts being sent to employees and fill in any blank fields. Navigate to each employee's contract by clicking Next:
    ​


    Once all contracts are ready, click Continue.
    ​

  5. Finally, review all changes and click Send Changes.
    ​


    ​

Using pay details in contract templates

When you send a contract with a draft, these fields show the employee’s pay before and after the change:

Field

Shows

{{salary}}

The new annual salary from the draft

{{previous_salary}}

The employee’s annual salary before the change

{{hourly_rate}}

The new hourly rate

{{previous_hourly_rate}}

The hourly rate before the change

There’s no separate “new salary” field, because {{salary}} already shows the new amount.

Moving an employee from hourly to salaried? {{previous_salary}} will show N/A, because they didn’t have a salary before. Use {{previous_hourly_rate}} to show their old pay instead.

Tip: before sending to a large group, send to one or two employees first and check the letter looks right.

FAQs

Why can't I create a draft ECS for an employee?

Ensure the appropriate permissions are turned on for your permission level. Check that ‘Edit Draft Wages’ is turned on, as well as ‘View Draft’ and ‘Create Draft’.

Can multiple draft ECS records exist for one employee?

No. Each employee can only have one draft ECS at a time to avoid overlapping changes.

Why does the salary in my contract look different from what I imported?

{{salary}} always shows the annual salary. If you imported a weekly or monthly amount, it’s converted to a yearly figure in the contract.

Update Employee Pay Conditions

Did this answer your question?