External employees are freelancers who work for you but are not permanently employed. ZEP distinguishes two models: Freelancer (bills you separately and sends invoices) and Freelancer with credit note (you automatically create a credit note from recorded times and receipts).

To be able to choose the employment options Freelancer and Freelancer with credit note at all, you activate them once in administration:

The Employment section is then available in the Master data step when creating an employee and on the Master data tab of the Edit Employee dialog.

External employees are created like regular employees. The general workflow is described in the article Creating, editing, and deleting employees. In the Master data step, in the Employment section, select either Freelancer or Freelancer with credit note as the Type.

With the employment type Freelancer, the employee records project times in ZEP but bills you independently outside of ZEP. Additionally, the VAT ID field appears in the Employment section, which can be used in reports and interfaces.

With the employment type Freelancer with credit note, ZEP automatically creates a credit note from the recorded times and out-of-pocket receipts. Additionally, the Credit step appears when creating an employee, the Credit tab appears in the Edit Employee dialog, and the Credit note settings card appears in the employee file.

On the Credit tab, you maintain:

The exact fields per tab are described in the article Employee data.

External employees appear in employee reports like all others and can be filtered by employment type. With the employment type Freelancer with credit note, additional credit-note reports are available in the Revenue & Costs area.

To create a credit note for an external employee with the employment type Freelancer with credit note, open Reports > Employees and, in the Travel and Costs or Costs group, the Credit notes entry. Select the employee and the period.

In terms of content, the credit note corresponds to the (travel) expense report for permanently employed staff, plus "Internal Remuneration" for recorded services in the selected period. As soon as you create a credit note, ZEP automatically locks the relevant period – no further changes can then be made to the employee's already settled time entries and receipts.

Employees with the employment type Freelancer with credit note see their own credit note under My Reports. This way they check for themselves which amounts are settled for a period.

You open your credit note under My Reports in the Travel and Costs or Costs group via the Credit notes entry. The entry appears if the setting View own credit note is set in your Employee data and your user role has the Time & Costs row under My Reports in Roles & Permissions.

You select the period and receive the credit note with the internal remuneration for your recorded times, the receipts you paid privately and the travel expenses. This way you check before the payout whether all times and receipts of the billing period are included.

An authorized person in your company, for example accounting, creates the credit note, typically once per billing period, under Reports > Employees. Therefore, record your times and receipts completely by the end of the billing period, because ZEP locks the period for changes when the credit note is created.