Shyfter contracts vs. payroll provider contracts: what's the difference?

Both sides talk about contracts, and that's where the confusion starts. In Shyfter, a contract is a document the employee signs. At your payroll provider (also called a social secretariat or payroll bureau), a contract is something else entirely: an internal data line used to run payroll. These are two distinct concepts, with different purposes. This article clarifies each one and explains how they connect.

Shyfter contracts: documents to sign

In Shyfter, a contract is a document, in the literal sense. It's the digital equivalent of the paper contract: the same document you would have had signed by hand, but generated, prefilled and signed directly in the platform.

You manage them from Documents → Contracts. A contract can start from a template, an uploaded file (PDF, Word...) or text written in Shyfter. Once sent, it appears to the employee in their Shyfter Staff mobile app (or on the clock-in tablet), where they sign it. That's it: a document to read and sign, nothing more.

These contracts also exist in an automatic version: in sectors where schedules change every week, Shyfter can generate and send a contract for signature each time you publish shifts. Here too, it's always a document the employee signs.

In short, on the Shyfter side, a contract serves to formalize an agreement and get it signed. It is not meant to calculate payroll.

Payroll provider contracts: internal payroll lines

Your payroll provider uses the same word for something completely different. For them, a contract is not a document to sign, but a contract line in their own system, containing everything needed to run a person's payroll: the status (employee, student, etc.), the number of hours per week, the number of days worked, the cost, and so on.

These contract lines are purely internal to the payroll provider. Most of the time, the customer never sees them and has no access to them: they live only in the provider's tools. So they are neither the paper contracts nor the digital contracts signed in Shyfter.

Where do they come from? The account manager at the payroll provider can create them manually, particularly the very first time, when opening an employee's file. After that, in most cases, they are created automatically at the payroll provider from the Dimona (via the NSSO). The provider retrieves the declared data, notably the start and end times, and turns it into its digital contract lines. With this information, it runs payroll.

What really matters: the contract number

Each contract line at the payroll provider carries a number. Depending on the case, this number can change:

• For a daily contract, it may be assigned differently each day depending on the contracts.
• It can change from time to time, for example when a number of hours is modified.
• But most of the time it stays the same, and it is carried over from day to day, month to month and year to year.

This number matters for the payroll export. It's what links the right sheet to the right person, based on the number used at the payroll provider. In the vast majority of cases, everything goes smoothly: there is a single contract number, stable over time.

How the two worlds connect

Shyfter is connected to most payroll providers, but the level of integration varies from one partner to another:

• With some payroll providers, the integration is deeper: Shyfter's contract lines are transferred directly into the provider's internal tools.
• With most, this transfer does not exist. The contract lines are then created automatically at the payroll provider from the Dimona, as described above.

That's why there is no single answer to the question "are my contracts synced between Shyfter and the payroll provider?". It depends on the partner and on your configuration.

When in doubt, contact your account manager

If you're wondering which contracts are synced in Shyfter or at the payroll provider, the best move is to ask your account manager at the payroll provider directly. They know the exact configuration of your account and how their contract lines work.

Good news: most of the time, everything runs without a hitch. A single contract number is carried over from one period to the next, and payroll follows its normal course.