Chapter 18 — Activating new employees

Chapters 16 and 17 created records. None of the people in them is being paid yet, marked present or accruing leave, and that is deliberate. A record is a promise; activation is the moment the promise is kept, when the employment contract has been accepted and the person is handed to payroll, attendance and leave. This chapter is about that moment: what has to be true before it, the three ways it happens, and what it sets in motion.

What this chapter covers

• 18.1 Why new employees start as New, and where the state shows
• 18.2 The activation checklist: salary, contract, acceptance or signed copy
• 18.3 Accepting the contract in the portal
• 18.4 Uploading a signed copy
• 18.5 Activating by hand from the profile
• 18.6 Bulk activation, and reading the result

The concept

Every HR system distinguishes between a person who has been recorded and a person who has started. Between the two sits a gate, and what opens it is evidence: a signed contract, a start date reached, a background check cleared. Payroll in particular must never pay someone whose terms are not agreed, because the figure it pays is the figure the contract states.

Holding new people behind the gate protects three things:

Risk	What the gate prevents
Paying before terms are agreed	A salary paid on a contract the person has not signed is a dispute waiting to happen.
Phantom absences	An attendance system that expects someone who has not started marks them absent every day and docks a salary it should not be computing.
Leave given on wrong terms	Leave balances follow the contract's type and the date the person actually joins. Granting them earlier means correcting them later.

The cost of the gate is that someone has to open it. A person left behind it is recorded, billed for, and invisible to the month's payroll.

How Operentra handles it

Every employee record is created in the status New (Pending Activation), whether it came from the form, an import or a hired candidate. While pending, the person is excluded from payroll runs, attendance views and marking, leave accrual and the dashboard's headcount. They still count as a seat on a paid plan, and they can already sign in to the portal if they were invited.

There is exactly one way to become Active, used by four different hands. The activation itself flips the status, opens the person's leave balance for the current fiscal year, and tells any integration that listens. What triggers it is one of:

1. the employee accepting their employment contract in the portal;
2. HR uploading a signed paper copy of the contract;
3. HR setting the status to Active on the profile;
4. HR activating several people at once from the directory.

The first two are the normal path and leave evidence behind: an acceptance recorded with date, time, address and device, or a scanned signature with its date. The last two exist for contracts handled outside Operentra and for trying a payroll run with imported staff; they record who activated and how, but no signature.

The prerequisites are a chain. A contract cannot be created until a salary is assigned, because the contract states the salary payroll will pay. Acceptance needs a contract. So the checklist on every pending profile reads: assign a salary structure, create the employment contract, have it accepted or signed. Pending employees can be given a salary and a contract; only people who have left are refused.

Activation needs the employees.update permission for the manual paths, which Super Admin, HR Manager and HR Officer hold. Uploading a signed copy needs contracts.update. Accepting needs only to be the employee.

Walkthrough

18.1 Why new employees start as New, and where the state shows

Open the profile of anyone added in Chapters 16 or 17. Under the name the status badge reads New (Pending Activation), and an amber panel titled "This employee is not active yet" explains that they are excluded from payroll, attendance, leave accrual and headcount until their employment contract is accepted, then lists the three steps.

The state follows you around, on purpose, so that nobody stays pending by oversight:

• All Employees shows an amber banner, "7 employees are pending activation", with a Show them button that applies the New filter: the five from Chapters 16 and 17, and Northwind's two recent hires, Lucia Ferrero (NWL-0049) and Clementine Hargrove (NWL-0050).
• Edit Employee shows the badge beside the title and an amber strip with a See what's needed link back to the profile.
• Payroll pre-flight (Chapter 55) lists them as a warning, "7 employee(s) will not be paid — still pending activation", naming each one. It is a warning rather than a blocker because a hire who has genuinely not started is a good reason to leave someone out.

The running example continues from the last two chapters. Harriet Okoro, the Software Engineer from Chapter 16, was invited to the portal and has claimed the login. The four support agents from Chapter 17 have their salaries from the CSV; Kwame Mensah among them has no email address and so no login.

18.2 The activation checklist: salary, contract, acceptance or signed copy

The panel's three steps are live. A done step is ticked and struck through; the next one is highlighted; each open step carries a button that goes where the work is done.

1. Assign a salary structure. Until this is done the detail reads "Required before a contract can be created — the contract states the salary payroll will pay", and the button opens Payroll › Employee Salaries. Done, it reads "Gross 7,500 assigned." The four agents already pass this step from Chapter 17's salary file; Harriet needs one assigned here (Chapter 52 covers the page).
2. Create the employment contract. The button opens Create contract with the employee selected; the form pre-fills the salary from the assignment, and Chapter 31 covers the rest of it. Try to create one without a salary and the refusal says so. Done, the step reads "Contract CON-2026-00049 created." and the button changes to View contract.
3. Contract accepted or signed. Pending, it reads "The employee accepts it from their portal, or you upload the signed copy from the contract page. This is what activates them." Done, it reads "Accepted by the employee in the portal on 2026-11-02." or "Signed copy on file (signed 2026-11-02)."

One distinction to hold onto: the contract has a status of its own, Draft when created and Active once you activate it on its page, which drives expiry tracking and renewals (Chapter 31). The employee's activation does not wait for it. Acceptance or a signed copy on the latest contract, Draft or not, is what activates the person.

18.3 Accepting the contract in the portal

This is the path for anyone with a login, and it is Harriet's. On signing in, Harriet sees that My Employment Agreement (/portal/contract) shows an amber Acceptance Required notice: read the agreement below in full, then accept; the acceptance is recorded with the date, time, IP address and device. Below it is the agreement rendered in full, a Download PDF button, and the Electronic Acceptance box with one checkbox, "I have read, understood, and agree to be legally bound by the terms and conditions of this Employment Agreement…", and the button Accept & Continue.

Harriet ticks, clicks, confirms. The page turns green: Agreement Accepted, "You electronically accepted this agreement on 2 Nov 2026, 09:14". In the same instant Harriet's status is Active, the leave balance for the year exists, the First Day badge lands on the portal home, and on the admin side the checklist's third step is ticked. Where the workspace country has an electronic-transactions statute on file, the acceptance box names it; a US workspace shows the general wording.

An acceptance cannot be given twice, and only the latest contract on the record is offered.

18.4 Uploading a signed copy

Kwame signed on paper at the office and has no login. Open Kwame's contract (the checklist's View contract button, or Contracts) and find the Signed paper copy card: "No signed copy uploaded. Upload the scan once the employee has signed on paper." Click Upload signed copy, choose the scan or photo (PDF, JPG or PNG), set Date signed, and confirm.

The upload does three things at once. The copy is stored and offered back as Download signed copy, behind the contract permission rather than as an open link, because a signed contract carries salary and identity details. The contract is locked: its terms and witnesses can no longer be changed. And Kwame is activated, the checklist reading "Signed copy on file (signed 2026-11-01)." A second upload is refused while one is on file.

If a copy or an acceptance was recorded in error, Revoke acceptance on the contract clears the evidence, with a reason kept for audit, and unlocks the contract. It does not make the person pending again: an activation is never undone by a contract event, and no status change moves a record back to New either.

18.5 Activating by hand from the profile

On a pending employee, the profile's Status button offers one status: Active (Chapter 19 lists what each status offers). Picking it runs the same activation as an acceptance, leave balance included, and the log records that HR set the status manually. There is no confirmation step, so be sure.

Use it when the contract lives outside Operentra, when you are rehearsing a payroll run with imported staff, or when a person has started and the paperwork is lagging and you accept that the record will hold no signature. Do not use it to skip the salary: a person activated with no salary assignment is paid nothing, and the pre-flight will tell you so a different way.

18.6 Bulk activation, and reading the result

For the remaining three agents, whose paper contracts are filed with the contractor's hand-over documents for now, use the directory. Open All Employees, set the status filter to New (Pending Activation), and a blue bar appears: "Activating adds people to payroll, attendance and leave, and opens their leave balance. It normally happens when they accept their contract; activate here when contracts are handled another way, or to try a payroll run."

Tick the three, or tick the header box for everyone on the page, and click Activate selected (3). Activate all 5 takes everyone the filter shows, in batches of a hundred, with no need to page through. The confirmation says what will happen: "They will be included in payroll, attendance and leave from now on, and their leave balances will be opened for this year."

Each person goes through the single activation in turn, and one failure never stops the rest. The result arrives as a notice:

• "3 employees activated", and under it, when it applies,
• "2 were skipped because they are no longer pending." They were already active, had left, or were not in this workspace.
• "Leave balances could not be opened for 1 of them. Check that the current fiscal year is open, then run leave allocation." The person is Active either way.
• "1 employee could not be activated. Try again, or activate them from their profile."

If a batch fails outright the notice says "Activation stopped"; the batches before it went through, and the list refreshes to show who is still pending.

What happens next

Activation is one transaction with a few consequences, the same whichever hand triggered it:

1. The status is Active. From the next payroll run the person is paid; from today the attendance views expect them; the dashboard's headcount counts them.
2. A leave balance is opened for the current fiscal year: every leave type whose policy applies to the person's leave group, gender, employment type and length of service, at the annual quota, or at the share of the year left after the joining date where the policy pro-rates joiners, to a tenth of a day (Chapter 47). With no current fiscal year the person is still Active, with empty balances until one is opened and allocation is run again.
3. Onboarding tasks close themselves. The next time the person's pipeline is opened, the tasks for the salary, the contract and its signature are marked done with a note of what satisfied them (Chapter 32).
4. Integrations hear about it as an employee-updated event, the one most worth listening for, since it is when the person starts counting (Part 17).

Nothing is emailed by activation itself. The person already received their invitation; the onboarding pipeline sends its own messages as it completes.

An activation request for someone already Active does nothing and says so; one for someone who has left is refused rather than reviving them. Only a pending record moves.

What the employee sees

Before activation, an invited employee can sign in and sees their agreement waiting under My Employment Agreement, with the amber notice asking for acceptance. Their attendance and leave pages have nothing to show yet.

After it, the agreement page is green with the date and time of their acceptance, or, for a paper signature, the note that a physical copy was recorded on the date HR entered. Their leave balances appear with this year's allocation, attendance expects them from the next working day, and the First Day badge is on their home page. Nobody imported without an email sees any of this until a login is added for them (Chapter 17).

Common mistakes

• Leaving people pending into payroll. The run excludes them without a word of its own; only the pre-flight warning names them. Read it.
• Activating by hand to save time. The record then holds no signature. Keep the manual paths for contracts handled elsewhere, and say so in the onboarding notes.
• Activating before the salary is assigned. The person is Active and paid nothing. The checklist's order is the order for a reason.
• Expecting the contract's Draft status to block acceptance. It does not. Activate the contract on its page for expiry tracking, but do not wait for it to activate the person.
• Revoking an acceptance to make someone pending again. Revoking clears the evidence and unlocks the contract; the person stays Active, and no status change makes a record New again. Activate only people who have started.
• Bulk-activating the whole New filter. It includes hires who have not started. Tick the people who have.
• Activating with no fiscal year open. The result says the leave balance could not be opened. Open the year, then run allocation (Chapter 47).
• Expecting an activation email. There is none. The invitation went earlier; the onboarding pipeline has its own.

Practice

Work in your own trial workspace, with the people you added in Chapters 16 and 17.

1. Open a pending employee's profile and read the amber panel. Note which step is highlighted and where its button leads.
2. Assign that person a salary from the checklist's button, return, and confirm the first step is ticked.
3. Create their contract from the second step's button, note the number it is given, and return to find the third step highlighted.
4. Sign in to the portal as that person (if you invited yourself) and accept the agreement. Back on the admin side, confirm the status is Active and open their leave balances.
5. For a second pending employee, create the contract and upload any PDF as the signed copy with today's date. Confirm the activation and the locked contract, then try a second upload.
6. Filter All Employees to New, tick the rest, and activate them. Read every line of the notice.
7. Open Payroll's pre-flight for this month and confirm nobody is listed as pending.

Quiz

1. A pending employee's profile shows the second checklist step highlighted. What is done, and what is next?

The salary is assigned (the first step is ticked) and the employment contract has not been created. The highlighted step's button opens the contract form pre-filled from the salary.

2. Name the four hands that can activate an employee, and which of them leave signature evidence.

The employee accepting in the portal; HR uploading a signed copy; HR setting the status to Active on the profile; HR activating in bulk from the directory. Only the first two leave evidence: a recorded electronic acceptance, or a scanned signature with its date.

3. HR revokes a contract acceptance recorded by mistake. Is the employee pending again?

No. Revoking clears the acceptance and unlocks the contract, but an activation is never undone by a contract event, and no status change moves a record back to New.

4. Besides the status, what does activation open, and what can stop that part?

The person's leave balance for the current fiscal year, pro-rated from the joining date where the policy says so. It needs a current, open fiscal year; without one the person is Active with empty balances, and the result says so.

5. Why is "pending activation" a warning in the payroll pre-flight and not a blocker?

Because a hire who has genuinely not started is a valid reason to leave them out of the month. The warning names them so the omission is a decision rather than an accident.