Lifecycle
The fastest way to a classification problem is a convenient one.
Paying a contractor through payroll because it is the system that already exists is how firms end up explaining to a regulator why someone with no employment contract appeared on a salary register for two years.
The constraint that shapes everything
They have no login, and they should not need one.
An external consultant billing you monthly is not going to be onboarded into your HR system, will not remember a password, and should not appear in your employee count.
So the contract holds what they bill, and the invoice arrives through a link that needs no account at all — then joins the same approval queue as everything else you approve.
The contract already says
- EngagementRolling, renewed twice
- Fee componentsMonthly retainer + per-day overage
- Payment terms30 days from approval
- WithholdingApplied by default
A contract must carry at least one fee component, and two active contracts cannot overlap unless one renews the other.
How they bill you
- 1They get a link. No account, no password, no onboarding.
- 2The form already knows the contract and its fee components.
- 3They attach the invoice document and submit.
- 4It lands in your approval queue like anything else you approve.
The contract
It must say what they are paid, and it cannot silently overlap.
A contract carries at least one fee component — a retainer, a day rate, a milestone — because a contract that does not say what somebody is paid is not a contract, it is a note.
Two active contracts cannot overlap on the same contractor unless one explicitly renews the other. That single rule prevents the most common contractor billing error there is: a renewal created alongside the original rather than in place of it, and two months billed twice.
- They are not on the payroll run —
Deliberately. A contractor paid through payroll is a classification risk wearing the costume of convenience.
- Fees in the shapes a services business uses —
A retainer, a day rate, a milestone — and also a placement percentage and a client-onboarding fee, which is what a staffing firm actually pays its associates on.
- Withholding, and the certificate against the payment —
A default per contractor, applied on the invoice, with the certificate number and date recorded against the payment that carried it.
- One invoice can be paid in tranches —
Each with its own method, reference and state — including failed with a reason, and reversed with a reason. Partial payment is the normal case and it is recorded as such.
- They attach the document, and it is fingerprinted —
Their own invoice, submitted with the numbers — not an email attachment somebody re-keys into a payables list. A duplicate invoice number or an arithmetic mismatch is refused, and the link survives the refusal so they can simply fix it.
- The invoice knows its own tax shape —
The tax split, the withholding, and the identifiers of both sides captured on the document as it is issued — so a reprint a year later shows what was actually on it.
- Renewing expires the old one, in the same breath —
Not a back-reference somebody has to notice. The source contract is closed as part of the same act that creates its replacement, which is what actually prevents two live contracts billing the same month.
- A contract ending is a warning, not a surprise —
Anything active and ending soon is flagged with the days remaining.
Straight answers
Mostly about where the line sits.
›Do contractors need accounts?
No. The submission link is the whole mechanism — issued for a stated purpose with a validity you choose, single-use, revocable by a named person with a reason, and recording when and from where it was last used. Issuing a new one kills the live one, so two links can never race.
›Can we just pay them through payroll?
You can pay anybody through anything. The reason not to is that a payroll register is evidence of employment, and the product keeps the two apart on purpose.
›What stops a renewal being billed twice?
Overlapping active contracts are refused unless one is explicitly marked as renewing the other.
›Does the contractor see anything else about us?
No. The link resolves to one submission form for their own engagement, and a link that is guessed, expired or already spent all fail identically.
›Who approves the invoice?
It enters the same approval route as anything else you approve, rather than a parallel process somebody maintains separately.
Book a demo
Send yourself a submission link.
The first and last steps are the two that stop the expensive mistakes.
- Create a contract without a fee component and watch it refuse
- Open the submission link with no session
- Submit an invoice and find it in the approval queue
- Try to create an overlapping contract