Employment documents

What it is

Third parties regularly ask people to prove where they work: Apple asks for a proof of employment during Developer Program enrolment, banks and landlords ask for one before a loan or a lease, and immigration offices ask for one with a visa application. They usually want it on company letterhead, signed, and issued recently: often within the last 30 days.

Employment documents let a team, an organisation, or Aden itself produce that letter in a few seconds. You record who works for you, in what role, since when then download the document you need. Because the PDF is written the moment you open it, it is always dated today, so it never goes stale.

Three documents come out of the same record:

• Employment verification letter: confirms the role, employer and hire date. This is the one most organisations ask for.
• Offer letter: states the offered role, start date and terms.
• Employment agreement: the full terms of the engagement, for both parties to sign.

Using it

Add someone. Employment lives on the people you already manage, not on a page of its own. Open your members list, Members in an organisation or a team, Staff access in admin, and choose Employment on the person's row. Fill in their full legal name exactly as it appears on their ID, their job title and their hire date. Everything else is optional.

Issue a document. Each document in the dialog has Open PDF: it opens dated today, ready to download and send on. Reissue as often as you like; the date is fresh every time.

Get it signed. Send for signing puts the document through the same signing flow as your contracts: you sign it, and for an offer letter or an employment agreement the employee is invited to counter-sign. Everyone is emailed their own private link automatically, and each signer has a copy-link and a send-again button next to their name if they lose it. The dialog shows who has signed. When a document is finished, the button becomes Re-sign, so you can issue a fresh signed copy without touching the one already filed.

Who signs. Signed by lists everyone who signs for the employer. A company is often bound by two directors together, and a founder agreement is signed by every founder. Each gets their own signature line and their own signing link. Add nobody and you are the signatory. On an offer letter or an employment agreement the employee counter-signs too; a verification letter is one-sided.

Sending the links. Once you press Send for signing, each signer appears under the document with three buttons: Sign now if it's you, Copy link, and Email link to send it to them. Nobody has to hunt for a URL.

Signing for someone else. If a person has already saved a signature to their Aden profile, an owner or admin can press Sign for them to apply it. It only ever applies the signature that person gave Aden themselves, if they have none, the button isn't offered, and the action refuses. The signature certificate records who applied it: "Signature on file, applied by X on behalf of Y."

Signing. Drawing a signature is easier with a finger, so the signing page offers Sign on phone: scan the QR code, sign there, and the page you left open updates itself. Switching between drawing and typing keeps your drawing. When you sign something from inside Aden, the confirmation takes you straight back to the page you came from.

Nothing to retype. The person's legal name, address, nationality and identity number come from their Aden account and stay in step with it. Change it there and every future document is correct. The fields in the form are greyed-in placeholders; type in one only when this document has to say something different (a maiden name, a correspondence address).

Pick the language. A document is written in the language you choose, not English with a translation stapled on: Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish, Turkish, Russian or English. Set it per record, and the whole document, title, prose, table labels, dates and currency, follows.

Show only what's asked for. Salary and personal details (nationality, date of birth, identity number, home address) are both off by default. Documents get forwarded, and an identity number on a forwarded PDF is a liability. Turn either on when the recipient specifically asks. What Aden already knows from the person's account is prefilled, so you're confirming rather than retyping.

Founders. If someone holds shares or sits on the register as a director, record the percentage and the directorship. The document then states both, in the same words a company register uses. That is usually what a verifier means when they ask a founder to "prove" their role.

Download everything. Download all gives you one PDF containing all three documents, dated today.

Let the recipient check it. Every document prints a verification link, and so does every signed document Aden produces, contracts included. The signed copy carries a second link that confirms who signed it and when. Anyone who opens it sees the employer, job title, employment type and dates. Enough to confirm the letter is genuine, without exposing the salary, home address or email. Turn the link off per record if you'd rather not publish anything.

When someone leaves. Set an end date and switch the status to Ended: past letters stay verifiable and new ones read "was employed … until". Use Revoked to stop documents being issued at all.