Working with a Principal Contractor

A principal contractor in Assignar Pay is a client of your organisation. After you accept their invitation, they appear on Clients & Projects with a Principal contractor badge. You do not get a new page or a new navigation item. This guide walks through the invitation, creating your organisation, submitting details, the projects they manage for you, nominating crew and plant, and leaving.

The Invitation

The principal contractor sends an email invite to a contact at your company. Open the link while signed in as that person.

1. The accept page shows who invited you and the organisation they named.
2. If the invite is still pending, you can Accept or Decline.
3. If you already belong to an organisation, accept binds that organisation as the child of the link.
4. If you don't have an organisation yet, the page asks you to create one from the invite — name, slug, and confirm. That new organisation becomes the child of the link.

Staff whose email matches a pending invite also see a notice at the top of Clients & Projects: "You have an invitation from {organisation}". That notice links to the same accept page. There is no notice if the invite is for someone else.

Expired invites can be resent by the principal contractor. A declined or rejected invite is finished.

Creating Your Organisation

Use this path only when the invitee has no organisation yet. The create form is on the accept page:

1. Enter the organisation name (required).
2. Optionally set a URL slug; otherwise Pay derives one from the name.
3. Confirm that you are creating a new organisation.
4. Submit. You land in that organisation as owner, with the principal contractor already bound as a client.

If you already own or administer an organisation, accept with that organisation instead of creating another.

Your Principal Contractor as a Client

After accept, open Clients & Projects. The principal contractor is a client row:

• The name and tax identifier come from their organisation and stay in sync while the link is open. You cannot rename them or delete the client until the link ends.
• A Principal contractor badge sits next to the name, with the current status (accepted, submitted, changes requested, approved, and so on).
• Tags, email, and contacts on that client remain yours to edit.
• Click the badge, or Principal contractor in the card menu, or open /projects?orgLink={id} to open the principal-contractor drawer.

Name click does not open the usual edit dialog while the link is open (the same pattern as the system default client). After the link ends, the row is an ordinary client you can rename or delete.

A getting-started card on Home appears when you have at least one open child link. It lists live steps (organisation profile, logo, phone, depot, workers, assets, submit) and links into Settings, the depots tab, workers, assets, and this drawer. You can dismiss the card only once the link is approved. Organisations with no links see no change on Home.

Submitting Details

The drawer leads with the approval state. Owners and people with Settings manage can submit; everyone else sees the profile step as "ask an owner".

Accepted (not yet submitted)

1. Open the drawer from the badge, the card menu, or the Home card.
2. Review the organisation checklist (name, tax identifier, address).
3. Fix anything missing in Settings (company details and tax identifier), then return and Submit for approval.
4. Submit stays disabled until the profile the approval RPC checks is complete.

Submitted

The drawer shows that the details were sent and that you are waiting for the principal contractor. The snapshot is read-only.

Changes requested

Every round's feedback is shown verbatim. Update the organisation profile in Settings, then Resubmit.

Rejected

The reason is shown. The link is finished; the client is no longer locked.

Approved

The drawer shows the approval date, the projects they have engaged you on, and Leave (owners / Settings manage). The Home card headline switches to "Linked to {organisation} on N projects", and Dismiss becomes available.

If the principal contractor turns the Subcontractor Hub module off, the drawer shows a paused banner and the actions are disabled until they turn it back on.

PC-Managed Projects

When the principal contractor engages you on one of their projects, a matching project appears under their client in your workspace:

• Name, code, status, and dates are copied from their project.
• Those fields are locked with a "Managed by {organisation}" hint while the engagement is active. You cannot move the project to another client.
• Opening the project from the drawer goes to that mirror when it exists.
• Ending the engagement (or leaving / being revoked) marks the mirror Completed. Re-engaging the same project restores it.

Your own projects, and projects for other clients, are unchanged.

Telling your principal who and what is coming

Once the principal contractor has engaged you on a project, open that mirror project. A Crew & plant tab appears there. This is how you tell them which of your workers and plant are coming — summaries only. They never receive a copy of your roster, and they cannot see payroll identifiers, emails, serial numbers, VINs, or live GPS.

The parent-facing Subcontractors tab (invite your own subcontractors) is hidden on these mirror projects.

Nominate workers

1. Open the mirror project and choose Crew & plant.
2. Click Nominate workers.
3. Search, select the people you are bringing, and optionally set a Role on this project for each selected worker.
4. Click Nominate. Already-nominated people are listed as disabled with an Already nominated badge.
5. Inactive workers are hidden from the list. A muted line tells you how many were excluded.

Nominate plant

1. On the same tab, switch to Assets (or click Nominate assets).
2. Select the plant you are bringing and click Nominate.
3. Plant has no role label. An asset with a registration plate shows that plate to the principal contractor; an unclassified attachment is still nominatable.

Withdraw

Withdraw is a state change, not a delete. Use Withdraw on a live nomination. The row stays in Withdrawn history on this tab, and the principal contractor still sees that it was withdrawn. You can nominate the same worker or asset again later (including after a re-engagement) — Re-nominate the N from the previous engagement pre-selects the previous set when it is available.

Owners and people with Subcontractors manage can nominate and withdraw. Other staff can see the list.

The principal contractor reads this register on their project's Subcontractors tab (expand Show crew and plant). They cannot accept, reject, or acknowledge a nomination. Ending the engagement, leaving, or being revoked empties what they see; the nomination rows stay in your workspace.

Leaving

Leave is Revoke from the child side. Only an owner or someone with Settings manage sees the control.

1. Open the principal-contractor drawer.
2. Click Leave.
3. Confirm. The dialog warns that your workers and assets will no longer be visible to the principal contractor. You may add an optional reason (up to 2,000 characters).
4. After leave, the client is an ordinary client — you can rename or delete it. Their directory shows the link as revoked.

There is no leave email today; the principal contractor sees Revoked on their side immediately.