Roles and task types

Roles and task types are two separate settings that get confused with each other. This is what each one actually decides, and how they interact when an hour is sent.

Roles

A role is who somebody is charged as — Field Surveyor, Plant Operator, whatever your crew actually calls itself. Add one on Roles with a Name, and nothing else: a role carries no price of its own. What it costs is set per project, on that project's rate table, because the same role can be worth a different rate on two different jobs.

A role's name is what prints under Charged as on the works summary a client receives, so name it the way you want a client to read it. Every organisation starts with one role already there, Field worker, which you can rename or add to at any time.

Task types

A task type is what somebody was doing — site work, travel, a calc-up, lunch. Add one on Task types with a Name and, if you want the crew to see it, a Description.

The one setting that matters is Chargeable. It decides whether hours recorded against this task type can reach a client invoice at all. Unchargeable hours — travel, lunch, leave, whatever your crew doesn't bill a client for — are still recorded, still appear on a timesheet, and still go into the payroll export. They just never reach an invoice, because the task type itself says not to charge them, not because nobody priced them.

That distinction matters when a project's rate table has no line for a role: an hour recorded against a chargeable task and an unpriced role blocks sending until you price it or mark the task unchargeable. An hour recorded against an unchargeable task and that same unpriced role is not affected at all — it was never going to the invoice either way, so there is nothing to block.