How do I create employees and maintain their file?
People enter the business by email invitation or as an import. After that four things hang on every person: the master data, the dated employment contract, the employment period and the document store. From the contract, the working-time model and the employment period together comes everything the time account, holiday and planning calculate.
As at:September 2026
A person joins the business
Two routes lead in. The normal case is the email invitation, with a role and assignment. When moving from another system, the import is the faster route.
The invitation does not yet create an account. It creates an entry with a token, and the person only comes into being on acceptance. There is no invitation without an email address.
- Several addresses can be invited in one operation.
- Open invitations can be resent or deleted, individually and as a selection.
- Anyone who can no longer find their link requests it again themselves.
- On import an existing person is recognised first by the personnel number and failing that by the email address.
- If somebody already belongs to another business, that is recognised so that the invitation takes the right route.
What the master data contains
The personnel file is a detail page with tabs that only load their data when opened: personal data, contract, holiday, documents and development goals.
A ring shows per person how complete the master data is. The assistant beside it walks through the missing details step by step and also says when a contract has to be created first.
- Personal data: name, date of birth, address.
- Contact details: phone, work and private.
- Social security and tax: insurance number, tax class, tax identification number.
- Bank details and several emergency contacts with the relationship and how to reach them.
- Role, department and supervisor, plus a profile picture.
- Optionally a different public holiday calendar where somebody works in a different federal state from the business.
The contract is a data record
Contracts are kept with dates. A person can have several consecutive contracts, and a report draws on the one valid at the reference date.
Important for expectations: the contract is a data record and not a document. No contract PDF is generated and no signature is obtained. A contract document that has been uploaded sits in the personnel file and has no connection to these fields.
What the contract contains and what it affects.
| Field | What it sets | What depends on it |
|---|---|---|
| Scope of working time | A number of hours with a reference unit, per week or per month for example. | The target hours of the time account. |
| Holiday entitlement and carry-over rule | Annual entitlement, remaining days from the joining year, the cut-off date and the carry-over cap. | The holiday account. These entries override the business-wide default. |
| Overtime arrangement | The type of compensation, the premium rate, hours covered by a flat rate and the monthly cap. | Whether payout and time off in lieu are possible at all. |
| Overtime opening balance | A starting value from the previous system. | So that the time account does not start at zero when switching. |
| Contract type, fixed term, probation | Type, end of the fixed term with a reason, end of probation. | Deadlines and reports. |
| Notice periods | Either the statutory periods or separate periods for both sides. | The entry in the file, not an automatic termination. |
| Pay and benefits | Base salary with type, currency and payment interval, Christmas and holiday bonuses, a company car, occupational pension. | The file. Nothing is calculated with it; payroll happens elsewhere. |
| Place of work and location-independent work | Place of work, the type of location-independent work, a flag for a required work permit. | The file. |
Scope of working time
- What it sets
- A number of hours with a reference unit, per week or per month for example.
- What depends on it
- The target hours of the time account.
Holiday entitlement and carry-over rule
- What it sets
- Annual entitlement, remaining days from the joining year, the cut-off date and the carry-over cap.
- What depends on it
- The holiday account. These entries override the business-wide default.
Overtime arrangement
- What it sets
- The type of compensation, the premium rate, hours covered by a flat rate and the monthly cap.
- What depends on it
- Whether payout and time off in lieu are possible at all.
Overtime opening balance
- What it sets
- A starting value from the previous system.
- What depends on it
- So that the time account does not start at zero when switching.
Contract type, fixed term, probation
- What it sets
- Type, end of the fixed term with a reason, end of probation.
- What depends on it
- Deadlines and reports.
Notice periods
- What it sets
- Either the statutory periods or separate periods for both sides.
- What depends on it
- The entry in the file, not an automatic termination.
Pay and benefits
- What it sets
- Base salary with type, currency and payment interval, Christmas and holiday bonuses, a company car, occupational pension.
- What depends on it
- The file. Nothing is calculated with it; payroll happens elsewhere.
Place of work and location-independent work
- What it sets
- Place of work, the type of location-independent work, a flag for a required work permit.
- What depends on it
- The file.
Employment period and working-time model
Joining and leaving are kept as periods, including repeated employment of the same person. The period is not a contract term: contracts run separately and can change within a period.
The period is the basis of all calculations. The time account, holiday entitlement, planability and reports take into account whether the person was employed at all. Pro rata entitlements follow from it.
The working-time model is assigned with a date. A change is kept in history, so a retrospective report uses the model that applied at the time. Models no longer needed are archived rather than deleted, so that old reports stay correct.
- Models come in three structures: day, week or month based.
- A model describes the target, not the timing. Core hours, flexitime windows and shift sequences cannot be represented in it.
- Per model there is a maximum working time per day and per week and a maximum working time without a break. These limits warn; they do not block.
- One model is the default model for newly created people.
The steps here describe a running system. Anyone who does not have one yet sets it up during the trial and keeps everything created along the way.
The document store
Folders can be created, renamed and deleted freely per person. A folder can be made visible to the person concerned, so that they can view their own documents.
Documents are stored individually or as a multiple upload, renamed, moved, deleted and restored. Searching runs across a person's documents.
Downloading runs through a checked route with a time-limited address. There is no permanent share link to the outside: anyone wanting to share a document downloads it and sends it themselves.
- No virus scan, no text recognition, no automatic assignment to a document type.
- No versioning. A file uploaded again is a second document and not a new version.
- The recycle bin has no retention period and no size limit. Deleted documents continue to count against the storage allowance until they are removed permanently.
Development goals
Goals with a description, status and time frame can be kept per person. A goal consists of sub-goals that are ticked off individually, and the progress follows from that.
Status and deletion can be set for several goals at once.
When somebody leaves
On leaving, the position of holiday and the time account is recorded and confirmed. After that it is frozen and no longer calculated.
The person is set to inactive, individually or as a selection. Inactive people no longer occupy a licence but remain with their history.
Inactive is not deletion. Times, absences and documents remain in full and stay visible in reports. There is no deletion route for an individual person.
Follow-up questions
- Can we delete a person completely?
- No. There is deactivation, and with it times, absences and documents remain. That is intended: a report on a past month would otherwise show gaps. The person no longer occupies a licence afterwards.
- Does MetronHR generate our employment contracts?
- No. The contract is a data record with fields such as the number of hours, holiday entitlement and notice period. No PDF is created and no signature is obtained. You store the signed document in the personnel file, and it has no connection to the fields.
- What happens if somebody changes working-time model mid-year?
- The change is kept with a start date and in history. A retrospective report therefore takes the model that applied on each day and delivers the same value as at the time.
- Can employees see their own documents?
- Only where the folder has been released for it. That is decided per folder. There is no permanent share link to the outside; downloading runs through a checked address with limited validity.
- Why does a deleted document still count against our storage?
- Because deleting first moves it to the recycle bin and is reversible. Only permanent removal frees the space. There is no automatic period after which the recycle bin is emptied.
Describes the state of the application onSeptember 2026. What changes in the product is in the product updates.
Published by: AMNAU GmbH
Editorial responsibility: Ugur Aydogan, Product development.
Last reviewed: September 2026
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