How employee documents, company HR policies, and compliance tracking work in Arche: uploading and verifying files, publishing policies, and staying ahead of statutory deadlines.
Employee documents
Documents holds contracts, ID copies, tax forms, certifications, medical certificates, performance and disciplinary records, and anything else filed against an employee. view_documents gives read access; manage_documents enables uploading, editing, verifying, and deleting through the management view. With view_documents but without manage_documents, the page presents My Documents, including an own-document upload flow.
Each document has a title, a document type, the uploaded file, an optional expiry date, and an optional description. Files upload through Arche's file service and are previewed in place: PDFs and images render inline; anything else offers a direct download.
Verification and expiry
A document manager can mark a document Verified once they've checked it. Unverified documents show up under the Unverified tab so nothing sits unreviewed. Documents with an expiry date within 30 days appear under Expiring Soon, and anything past its expiry date is flagged in red on the main list. Summary cards at the top of the page total documents, verified count, expiring-soon count, and unverified count.
The management lists are filtered to direct reports for users classified as team managers. Holding manage_documents alone does not remove that UI filter.
HR policies
HR Policies (shown as Company Policies to employees) holds published company policy: leave rules, code of conduct, compensation, benefits, safety, disciplinary, remote work, data privacy, and general/other categories. manage_hr_policies lets you create, edit, publish, and delete policies; readers with view_hr_policies see published policies grouped by category as browsable cards.
A policy has a title, category, required content (the policy text, markdown supported), an optional short summary, an effective date, a sort order, and an optional attachment (PDF or Word document, up to 10MB). A policy stays a draft until you tick Publish to employees.
If the official policy text only exists as a PDF, Arche attempts to extract text for AI search; extraction can fail or be skipped for PDFs above the extraction-size limit, so check the indexing status; Word (.docx) attachments are not parsed for this yet, so for those you'd paste the text into the Content field or export to PDF first. The admin table shows an indexing status icon per policy with an attachment (indexing, success, partial success, or failed) so you can see whether AI search over that document is actually working.
Compliance documents
Compliance Documents (read with view_compliance or manage_compliance; edit with manage_compliance) tracks licenses, certifications, insurance, work permits, NDAs, contracts, safety certificates, background checks, health certificates, training records and similar, either company-wide or owned by a specific employee.
Each document has a name, type, issuing authority, reference number, issued and expiry dates, and an alert window in days before expiry (default 30). Creating one is a two-step flow: save the details first, then attach the file (PDF, PNG, JPEG, or WebP). You can also skip the attachment and add it later from the edit screen.
Status and expiry alerts
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Valid | Current and in good standing |
| Expiring Soon | Inside its alert window |
| Expired | Past its expiry date |
| Pending Review | Awaiting a manual review |
| Revoked | No longer valid |
A document in Pending Review can be marked reviewed with one click, which sets it to Valid. The page banner surfaces a live count of expired and expiring-soon documents company-wide, with a shortcut to filter straight to the expired list.
Compliance calendar
Compliance Calendar tracks recurring statutory filings, license renewals, audits, and other obligations with due dates, with read access through view_compliance or manage_compliance and management actions through manage_compliance.
An obligation has a category (statutory filing, license renewal, audit, or other), a frequency (monthly, quarterly, annual, or one-time), a jurisdiction, a due day of month, a next due date, an owner, an alert window, and an optional reference number.
Provision Kenya defaults creates these four monthly tracking entries with a configured due day of 9. These are application defaults; review each obligation's date for your filing process:
| Obligation | Covers |
|---|---|
| PAYE (P10) monthly return | Monthly Pay As You Earn return and payment to KRA via iTax |
| SHIF monthly contribution | Social Health Insurance Fund monthly contribution remittance |
| NSSF monthly contribution | National Social Security Fund monthly contribution remittance |
| Housing Levy monthly return | Affordable Housing Levy monthly return and payment to KRA |
This is idempotent: running it again doesn't create duplicates of obligations that already exist.
Marking an obligation filed
Mark as Filed records the filing with an optional reference number and optional evidence upload (PDF or image, up to 10MB). Statuses are:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Not yet due to be filed, or awaiting filing |
| Filed | Completed for this cycle |
| Overdue | Past the due date and not yet filed |
| Waived | Not applicable this cycle |
The daily scan rolls a recurring obligation forward after its due date only when it is filed or waived, and resets it to pending for the next period. Unfiled past-due obligations remain overdue.
Permissions summary
| Permission | Grants |
|---|---|
view_documents | Read employee documents |
manage_documents | Upload, edit, verify, delete through the document management view |
manage_hr_policies | Create, edit, publish, delete HR policies |
manage_compliance | Manage compliance documents and the compliance calendar |
FAQ
Why can't the AI assistant answer questions from a policy I attached? Check the indexing status icon next to the policy. If it shows a warning, the attached PDF may be image-only (scanned) with no extractable text: add the wording to the Content field directly, or attach a text-based PDF instead. Word attachments aren't parsed for AI search yet.
What happens if I click "Provision Kenya defaults" twice? Nothing changes on the second run: it only creates obligations that don't already exist by name.
Can an employee see their own compliance documents? Compliance Documents is a management page: there's no employee self-service view for it, unlike Employee Documents which has a personal "My Documents" tab.
Does marking a compliance document "Pending Review" happen automatically? No, you set the status yourself when creating or editing the document; Arche doesn't infer it from the expiry date.