Human Resources · Daily operations · 9 min read

Assignments and contracts

Place an employee in a position with an assignment, record what was agreed in a contract, and read how pay figures are worked out.

Before you begin

• The employee exists (Draft or later) and you have hr.employee.manage for assignments or hr.contract.manage for contracts.
• A position, working calendar and contract type exist. See Getting started.
• To see salary figures on a contract you also need hr.pay.view. With only hr.contract.view you see the number, dates, type and status, but no pay.

An assignment says where the person sits and for which dates. A contract says what was agreed. They are separate records.

Steps

Create and activate an assignment

1. Open the employee and select the Job & pay tab. Under Assignments, select New assignment. (All assignments of all employees are listed in Employees > Configuration > Organization > Assignments.)
2. Choose the Position. Select the Department it belongs to; it must equal the position's department.
3. Choose the Grade (if the position has a grade, it must be that grade), Manager, Working calendar, Contract type and optionally a Cost centre.
4. Enter Valid from, optionally Valid to (empty means open-ended), and the FTE (more than 0 and up to 1).
5. Select Save, which keeps it as a draft, then select Activate assignment.

Create a contract

1. In Job & pay, under Contracts, select New contract.
2. Enter Starts, optionally Ends (empty means open), and choose Employment type (Full time, Part time, Temporary, Project, Seasonal, Remote, Internship or Contractor) and Worker category (National, GCC national or Expatriate).
3. Choose a Salary structure if you use one. Its lines are copied into the contract, so later edits to the structure do not change this contract.
4. Enter Probation (months). The end is the start plus that many calendar months, minus one day.
5. Select Create. The contract is saved as a draft with a generated number.
6. Open the contract and select Put in force.

Read how a pay figure was worked out

1. Open the contract. Select Why? beside Gross, Net, WPS, Insurable, End-of-service base, Overtime base or Cost to employer. The list shows which components were included and which were left out.

End an assignment

1. Open the active assignment, select End assignment, enter the Last effective date and the Reason for ending assignment, then confirm.

What happens next

• An active assignment shows in the directory, counts in headcount and FTE, and gives the person their manager.
• A contract in force is what activation looks for. A draft contract is not enough.

Worked example. A salary structure has Basic 10,000 (counted for end of service, overtime and WPS), Housing 4,000 (WPS) and Transport 1,000. A contract starts 15 Jan 2026 with probation 6.

The hour value uses 8 hours x 5 days = 40 hours a week, x 52 weeks / 12 = 173.33 hours a month.

Good to know

• An active assignment cannot be edited. Message: 'Active assignments are immutable. End this assignment and create its successor.' To change where someone sits, use Transfer.
• Once the employee is active, a new assignment cannot start in the past: 'An activated employee's new assignment cannot rewrite past dates. Start today or later.'
• FTE rules: an employee's overlapping assignments add up to at most 1.0 ('Concurrent assignments cannot exceed 1.0 employee FTE.'), and a position's occupied FTE cannot exceed its capacity ('The position's FTE capacity is exceeded during this interval.'). Example: 0.6 + 0.5 overlapping is refused; 0.6 + 0.4 is accepted.
• A manager cannot be the employee, cannot be a Draft employee, and cannot create a reporting loop (A reports to B who reports to A).
• Only one contract can be in force for the same dates: 'Contract <no> is already in force for this period. End it first.'
• The screen puts a contract in force without a signature date, so activation will show a warning that the contract has no signature date. You acknowledge the warning when you activate.
• The New contract button follows hr.employee.manage on the screen, but the server needs hr.contract.manage. If you are refused, ask for that permission.