Employment types explained

Every staff member in InstructorHUB has an employment type, and it does one important job: it decides how their pay leaves the studio at the end of a period. Setting it correctly when you add someone means the pay run routes their money the right way without you having to think about it again.

There are three employment types, and each one points to a payout channel.

An Employee is paid through payroll. Their approved hours and any salary line add up to a payroll figure that flows to your payroll or bookkeeping in the usual way. This is the right choice for anyone on your books as staff.

A Contractor is paid by invoice rather than payroll. When you run pay, a contractor's approved hours become an invoice instead of a payroll amount, which matches how a self-employed teacher bills you. Contractors also carry their own tax treatment, so the amounts are kept separate from your payroll totals. There is more on this in Contractor vs employee pay.

Account credit holds a person's pay against their account rather than paying it out. This is useful when someone's earnings offset something they owe the studio, for example a teacher whose own child attends classes. The amount is still calculated and recorded, it just routes to credit instead of payroll or an invoice.

The employment type sits on the Profile tab of the staff editor, and you can change it later if someone's arrangement changes. If a person already has classes on the timetable when you switch their type, InstructorHUB will warn you about any conflicts so nothing is routed the wrong way by accident.

Employment type is separate from pay structure, which is whether a person is paid per session or on a fixed salary line, and separate again from whether they are included in payroll at all. A salaried employee, an hourly employee, and a contractor can all sit side by side on your team, each routed correctly. For how the routing plays out when you run pay, see The three payout channels.