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Change someone's work status
Mark an employee active, on leave, or inactive — and know which of the three stops them being paid.
- Steps
- 4 · About 2 min
- Who can do this
- Owner · Manager
- Needs the module
- People
Before you start
Every employee carries a work status, set from the directory in People. There are three, and the difference between them is worth ten seconds because two of them look similar and behave differently.
The three statuses
Active — working. The normal state.
On leave — away, and coming back. Maternity, long sick leave, an unpaid break. The person is still yours; they are simply not here.
Inactive — gone. Someone who has left the business.
What status does, and does not, do
Status describes the person's relationship with the business. It is a label you and your managers read, and it is what makes the directory tell you who is actually available this week rather than who has ever worked here.
What it does not do is take somebody off the payroll. That is a separate tick — include in payroll on their salary profile — and it is deliberate that the two are separate. Somebody on paid leave is on leave and still paid; somebody on unpaid leave is on leave and not. One status cannot express both, so it does not try.
When somebody leaves, change both: set them inactive, and untick include in payroll. Doing only the first leaves them in next month's run.
Do not delete people
There is no delete, and that is the right answer.
The months an employee was paid in still have to make sense, their payslips still have to be readable, and every leave request they made is part of a record somebody may need. A former employee is a record with a status on it — not an absence where a person used to be.
Three separate things
It is worth holding these apart, because they get confused:
Work status — are they working here? (this screen)
In payroll — do we pay them? (their salary profile)
Access — can they sign in? (the access screen)
A departing employee usually needs all three changed. Most employees never have the third at all.
Status is per company. Somebody working across two entities in a group has a record and a status in each, and setting one inactive says nothing about the other.