Employees and contractors

Every person in your workspace carries an employment classification of either employee or contractor. It is a label that helps you group and report on your team by how they are engaged, and nothing more. This article explains where to set it and, just as importantly, what it does not change.

Setting the classification

The classification lives on each person's page in Team, in their Basic info, under Employment type. An administrator selects either Employee or Contractor.

Setting it is an admin-only action. Managers and members cannot change their own or anyone else's employment type. When you invite or import someone, they start with a classification you can adjust at any time from their page.

What it affects

The classification is a reporting label. Its job is to let you distinguish permanent staff from external help when you look at your team and your numbers.

Where the label surfaces, a contractor is marked in the roster — for example, their row reads "· Contractor" after their name and role. This makes it easy to scan the team list and see at a glance who is internal and who is engaged as a contractor, and it lets reports group and count people by how they are engaged.

What it does not affect

This is the part that trips people up, so it is worth being explicit: employment type does not change permissions, access, or visibility in any way.

• It does not change what a person can see. A contractor sees exactly what their role allows — no more, no less.
• It does not change what a person can do. Tracking time, submitting weeks, and every other action are governed by the person's role, not their classification.
• It does not hide or reveal money. Whether someone sees rates and costs depends solely on their role, as described in roles and permissions.

In short, permissions come from the role (member, manager, admin, or owner); the employee-versus-contractor label sits alongside the role purely for reporting. Changing someone from employee to contractor, or back, is safe and has no effect on their day-to-day use of Time Trakkr.

How it syncs from Harvest

If you bring your team across from Harvest, the classification comes with them. Harvest's own employee-versus-contractor setting is treated as the authoritative source, so imported people arrive with the right label, and re-running the import keeps it current — even for people who were imported before this field existed. That means you generally do not have to set the classification by hand for migrated team members. For the full migration process, see migrating from Harvest.

Putting it to use

Set the classification once for each person and let it inform your reporting. Because it never touches permissions, you can classify freely to match how you actually engage people, confident that the only thing changing is how they are labelled and counted. To bring new people in and give them the right role, see inviting people.