Subcontractors

The management side of subcontractor work — approve what subcontractors log, keep their rate cards current, manage the supplier register, and generate the monthly RCTIs that pay them. This is the office view; subcontractors track their own work from My Subcontractor Work.

Who can use it — This is a payroll/office surface, hidden from account-holding subcontractors entirely. You need at least one of: View Subcontractor Work Log, Approve Subcontractor Work, Approve Subcontractor Rate Cards, or Manage Supplier Invoices to see the page at all — which of the five tabs you can actually use depends on which of those (plus Manage Subcontract Claims for the Claims tab) you hold. See Roles & Permissions for how access is set.

Where to find it — Payroll & Billing → Subcontractors in the sidebar. Opening it lands you on the Work Logs tab; the other tabs (Rate Cards, Supplier Invoices / RCTIs, Subcontract Claims, Suppliers) run along the top as sub-navigation. A badge on the sidebar entry shows how many work logs and rate cards are waiting on an approval decision.

Before you start

A subcontractor needs a supplier record (Suppliers tab) and, if they'll log their own work, a linked People profile with worker type Subcontractor.
Before you can issue an RCTI to a supplier, that supplier needs a valid ABN and a recorded written RCTI agreement (both set on the Suppliers tab), and your workspace itself needs GST registration and a valid ABN in Workspace Settings.

How to use it

Work moves through the cluster in one direction: a work log is submitted → you approve it (which posts its cost to the project budget and rolls it into that supplier's monthly draft invoice) → once the month is complete you finalise the invoice to issue the RCTI. Rate cards and suppliers are the setup that work logs draw on; Subcontract Claims is a separate, simpler lump-sum path that doesn't go through work logs at all.

Approving submitted work logs can also be done from the Subcontractor Work tab on Team Approvals — that queue is scoped to logs nominated to you as approver. The Work Logs tab here shows every log across the whole tenant if you hold View or Approve access, regardless of who it was sent to.

Work Logs

Lists every subcontractor work log for the tenant (or just your own, if you can only log — not view — subcontractor work), with Work date, Supplier, Project, number of Lines, Claimed hrs, Total, and Status (Draft, Submitted, Approved, Rejected). A Pricing badge flags any log with a manual (non-rate-card) rate on it, worth a closer look before approving.

Reviewing and approving

Open View to see the full log — work items, quantities, rates, and any photos/attachments the subcontractor added.
Approve is the single chokepoint for incoming subcontractor cost. The confirmation shows the claimed hours and an advisory cross-check — how many site shift reports exist for that project and date, as a "was anyone on site?" sanity signal (it never blocks approval). Approving:
- posts the log's cost to the project's budget ledger immediately, and
- appends its lines onto that supplier's monthly draft invoice for the period (matched by month, not by any other reference), flipping that invoice to Approved.
- Approval is terminal. There's no un-approve for a mistake once the numbers are right — see Reverse approval below for the one narrow exception, otherwise correct with a credit.
Reject requires a reason — pick a quick-reason chip (Hours/quantity wrong, Rate not agreed, Wrong project, Missing detail, Duplicate) or type your own. The subcontractor is notified and can withdraw, fix, and resubmit.
Approve selected (bulk, via the toolbar) approves every selected Submitted log in one go; anything not actually pending is silently skipped and the skip count is reported.
Reverse approval only appears while the supplier's monthly invoice for that period is not yet finalised. It reverses the log's cost off the budget, removes its lines from the accruing invoice, and returns the log to Submitted so it can be corrected and re-approved. Once the RCTI is issued, this option disappears — corrections after that point are a credit, not a reversal.
Create client docket (approved logs only, needs Day Works Dockets access) clones the work into a draft outgoing Day Works docket so you can on-bill the client. Only the work narrative (description, quantity, unit) is copied — cost rates are never carried across — so you enter fresh client bill rates before signing and distributing it.

Logging on behalf of a subcontractor

Use Log for a subcontractor (needs View/Approve access) for a worker without their own account. Pick the Subcontractor / supplier, optionally the worker's name, the Project, Work date, and a nominated approver (same supervisor list timesheets use — you can't send it to yourself), then add Work items priced off that supplier's approved rate card or a manual rate. Choose what happens on save:

Send straight for approval — the entry goes to the nominated approver immediately.
Email the worker to confirm it first — the worker gets a single-use link to review and confirm the draft; it only enters the approval queue once they do.

A plain Log work button also appears, but it only works if you personally hold "Log Subcontractor Work" — day to day, office staff use Log for a subcontractor instead.

Suppliers also get their own single-use guest QR links (no login, no confirmation step needed) from the Suppliers tab — see below.

Rate Cards

The prices subcontractors are allowed to charge. Each card has a Type (Plant/Labour/Custom), Description, Unit, Rate, and an effective date range, plus a Status: Pending, Approved, Rejected, or Superseded.

New rate card creates one already Approved when raised by the office (pick the Supplier it belongs to). A subcontractor raising their own rate card lands as Pending instead, awaiting your approval.
Approve / Reject action pending cards — reject requires a reason.
Supersede with new rate caps the current rate the day before a new effective date and creates a fresh approved card for the new amount. Work already approved at the old rate keeps its frozen snapshot — superseding never rewrites history.
Only an Approved and current rate card is selectable when logging work — the rate-card picker (self-service or "Log for a subcontractor") never offers a pending, rejected, or expired card, and a tampered/foreign card id is rejected server-side too.

Subcontract Claims

A separate, lump-sum path for subcontractor cost that doesn't route through work-log lines at all — useful for a single claim against a claim number rather than itemised daily work. Needs the Manage Subcontract Claims permission.

New Subcontract Claim captures the Subcontractor, Project, the subcontractor's own Claim Number (unique per subcontractor), Claim Date, Claim Amount, and an optional Cost Code. It starts as Draft and every field stays editable until then.
Approve posts the claim's cost to the project budget and locks the claim's fields.
Mark paid moves an approved claim to Paid.
Cancel marks the claim Cancelled — but unlike Supplier Invoices, this does not auto-reverse the posted ledger cost. If a cancelled claim was already posted, reverse it with a manual credit yourself.
Approved/paid claims can never be permanently deleted — they're financial evidence, same rule as RCTIs (below).

Suppliers

The supplier register that everything else in this cluster hangs off. Needs Manage Supplier Invoices access.

Name, ABN (validated 11-digit), GST registered toggle (controls whether their RCTIs include 10% GST), and Active.
Linked subcontractors — account-holding users (worker type Subcontractor) billing under this supplier; the same link as the "Linked supplier" field on their People record, settable from either side. Their rate cards and RCTIs flow to whichever supplier they're linked to here.
Record RCTI agreement confirms a written Recipient-Created Tax Invoice agreement is on file — the ATO requires this before you can issue any RCTI to that supplier, and it's one of the four gates checked when you finalise an invoice.
Guest work-log links (on the supplier's edit page) — mint a single-use, emailable link a subcontractor can use to submit work without an account, optionally restricted to one project and with an expiry date. Resend revokes and reissues a fresh link; Revoke kills an outstanding one outright. The raw link is shown once at creation and never stored, so copy it immediately if you're not emailing it.

Supplier Invoices / RCTIs

The monthly Recipient-Created Tax Invoice for each supplier — one per supplier per calendar-month period. Needs Manage Supplier Invoices access. There's no manual "create" here: an invoice is created automatically (as a Draft, then Approved) the first time a work log for that supplier/month is approved, and keeps accruing lines as more logs for the same period are approved.

The list shows Number (a DRAFT-YYYYMM placeholder until issued, then the real RCTI-{year}-{sequence} — the description reads Accruing or Issued), Supplier, Period, Ex GST / GST / Inc GST totals, and Status (Draft, Approved, Paid, Cancelled).
Finalise & issue RCTI is the period lock. It's only available on an Approved, not-yet-finalised invoice, and checks four prerequisites first — your workspace is GST-registered with a valid ABN, and the supplier has a valid ABN and a recorded RCTI agreement — refusing with a clear list of what's missing if any fail. Once you proceed, it allocates the RCTI-{year}-{sequence} number, computes GST line-by-line then sums it (GST only applies if the supplier is GST-registered), snapshots both your ABN and the supplier's ABN onto the invoice, generates the PDF, and sets finalised_at — the period is now locked. A late work-log approval for that same supplier/month after this point can't attach to it; it starts a fresh invoice for the next open period instead.
Download RCTI opens the generated PDF once one exists.
Cancel marks the invoice Cancelled and automatically reverses every line's cost off the project budget — do not also post a manual credit, that would double-credit the project.

Retention — read before trying to delete one

Approved or paid RCTIs are tax and financial evidence and can never be permanently deleted, regardless of who's asking — this is enforced in the model itself, not just the UI. If an invoice needs to be undone, the path is Cancel (which auto-reverses the ledger), never a delete. The same rule applies to Subcontract Claims. Correcting an already-approved work log follows the same terminal logic: there's no un-approve once its RCTI is issued — use a credit.

Connected pages

My Subcontractor Work — the subcontractor's own self-service hub: logging work, viewing their finalised RCTIs, and checking their rate card.
Team Approvals — the nominee-scoped Subcontractor Work approval queue (alternative entry point to approving logs).
Budget Ledger — where approved work-log, RCTI, and claim costs land against the project.
Roles & Permissions — how the approval and management permissions used across this cluster are set up.

Tips & common mistakes

Can't finalise an RCTI? The error message lists exactly what's missing — usually a supplier ABN or the RCTI agreement not yet recorded on the Suppliers tab, or your own workspace GST/ABN details in Workspace Settings.
Approved the wrong work log? Use Reverse approval immediately, before the month's RCTI is finalised — after that, it's a credit, not a reversal.
A finalised invoice is missing a late approval? That's by design — a finalised period is locked. The late-approved log's cost still posted to the budget; it just accrues into the next open period's invoice instead of the one already issued.
Rate card greyed out when logging work? Only Approved, currently-effective cards are selectable — check its Status and effective dates on the Rate Cards tab.
Cancelling a Subcontract Claim doesn't zero out the budget? That's expected — unlike RCTI cancellation, claim cancellation doesn't auto-reverse; post the manual credit yourself.
Trying to delete an approved RCTI or claim? You can't — soft-delete/cancel is as far as it goes for financial evidence. See Retention above.