Lesson 4 - Staffers’ Contracts in Foresight Connect

Table of Contents

Adding New Contract
Editing Existing Contract’s Non-Financial Data
Editing Existing Contract’s Financial Data
How to Configure a Part-Time Work Contract
Setting Up Contracts of Freelancers
Setting Up a Staffer’s Cost Rate

Adding New Contract

To add a contract to your staffer, follow this path:

After pressing the Add New Contract button, a pop-up modal with contract settings will appear.

There, you will be able to configure the following information:

• Type of Contract
• Duration of the Contract - Contract Start Date and Contract End Date
• Capacity, or the number of hours per day and working days a staffer is assigned. Skipping public holidays means that Foresight will not take these holidays into account when calculating capacity
• Contract Title
• Cost Rate (the rate we charge the client for the work of a given employee)

Editing Existing Contract’s Non-Financial Data

If the contract details you want to edit only concern the contract's duration or name, go to the Contracts section and click the Edit button. Edit the details as needed by following the path below:

To edit the Capacity or Cost Rate, go to the Editing Existing Contract’s Financial Data section to check the recommended workflow.

Editing Existing Contract’s Financial Data

When editing Capacity or Rates, we recommend terminating the current contract and starting a new one with the updated financial information to maintain the clarity and reliability of historical financial data: 

Editing Contracts’ Financial Data consists of two steps: 

1. Terminating Current Contract
2. Adding a New Contract

To terminate a staffer’s current contract, follow this path:

To start a new contract, follow the instructions in the Adding New Contract section.

How to Configure a Part-Time Work Contract

The challenge with part-time contractors is that it is difficult to predict when the part-time job will be completed. To avoid calculation errors in the system, follow good practices:

• Set your staffer's capacity for four hours per weekday.
• Set rules with the staffers so that they work the appropriate number of hours each week. Reports showing those hours will not be affected regardless of how many days it takes them to work those hours.
• When generating reports, use at least weekly granularity. We do not recommend daily report granularity for two reasons. Firstly, in the case of contractors, the financial data on the report will have a large margin of error. Secondly, the perspective must be more comprehensive for your report to be helpful.
• If you're unsure which days the staffer will work, average the hours.

Setting Up Contracts of Freelancers

When you hire part-time contracted staffers, you’ll need to know precisely how many hours they’ll work. Their hours aren’t regular like those of a full-time staffer.  We recommend using BigTime Foresight to settle freelancers for the number of hours they worked. 

On the other hand, when measuring the utilization of our employees in the Utilization Report, we often do not consider contractors at all. Again, this is because they work on an as-needed basis, and we don’t need to plan their hours the same way we would with full-time staffers. 

When setting up contractor staffer profiles in Foresight, label your new staffer as a freelance contractor. Doing so will allow you to exclude them from the Utilization Report using appropriate filters.

Setting Up a Staffer’s Cost Rate

When setting up the cost rate for a staffer, you should enter the rate that reflects that staffer’s total actual costs for your company. If your company incurs any tax expenses in connection with this staffer’s work, you’ll need to include this tax in the staffer's Cost Rate to calculate the total cost of their work.