Offer

The offer is the last screen in recruitment and the first one in employment. It holds the position, the grade, the joining date, the date the offer lapses and the pay breakup the offer letter prints. Moving its status to Accepted creates the employee record there and then, carrying nine things across from the candidate's file and nothing else.

Where

Recruitment & Onboarding › Offer

Who uses it

HR, with whoever signs offers off

When

After the final interview, before the candidate joins

Needs first

Recruitment Applicant and a ready-to-process Position

What it is for

Everything before this screen is about deciding. This screen is about committing: a named position, a grade, a joining date, a pay breakup and a date by which the candidate has to answer.

It is also the hinge in PeopleNest where a candidate stops being a candidate. There is no separate "convert applicant" step and no import to run. Setting the status to Accepted and saving creates the employee record immediately, inside the same save, and writes the new employee number back onto the offer and onto the candidate's file.

Because that is irreversible in practice, the two things the conversion cannot do without are checked before it runs: an accepted offer with no joining date is refused, and a declined offer with no reason is refused. Those two refusals are not bureaucracy. The joining date becomes four separate dates on the employee record, and a declined offer with no reason is the one thing recruitment cannot report on afterwards.

The offer also carries its own lifecycle, which is driven by the Status field rather than by buttons. Saving at Sent writes the candidate an e-mail with the offer number, the offer date and the joining date. Saving at Accepted writes him a welcome naming his new employee number. And an offer whose expiry date has passed is moved to Expired for you the next time it is saved, so a stale offer cannot sit in the list looking live.

What actually happens when an offer is accepted

This is the part consultants are asked about most, so it is set out item by item.

An employee record is created. One employee, created active, with his document already released, so he appears in the employee list and in the screens that read it straight away. He is created once: if the candidate already carries an employee number, from an earlier offer or from his application having been marked Hired, that existing employee is used and no second record is made.

Nine things are carried across from the candidate's file, exactly these:

Carried across	From	Onto the employee record
Title	Recruitment Applicant	Title
First Name	Recruitment Applicant	First Name
Last Name	Recruitment Applicant	Last Name
Birth Date	Recruitment Applicant	Birth Date
Gender	Recruitment Applicant	Gender
Marital Status	Recruitment Applicant	Marital Status
Nationality	Recruitment Applicant	Nationality
Religion	Recruitment Applicant	Religion
Employee Type	Recruitment Applicant	Employee Type

The joining date on the offer becomes four dates on the employee record: his joining date, his start date, the date his record takes effect from, and the date his status is counted from. That is why an acceptance without a joining date is refused.

Everything else has to be typed by hand, on Employee Basic Information and the screens around it. Item by item, none of the following crosses over, even when the candidate's file has it:

• His middle name. The employee is created with a first and a last name only.
• The position and the grade named on this very offer. They are the offer's record of what he was offered, and they are not written onto his employee record or his organization assignment.
• The pay breakup on this offer. Not one line of it reaches his salary structure. It is what the offer letter prints, and nothing else reads it.
• His identification: CNIC, passport, driving licence, every line on his Identification tab.
• His addresses and his contact numbers.
• His photograph.
• His blood group, his native language, his birth country and birth city.
• His number of dependants, even though the candidate file holds it.
• His disability details.
• His education, his previous employers, his skills, his courses and his certifications.
• His current salary, which was asked for during screening.
• His department, cost centre, reporting line and organization assignment.
• His probation and confirmation dates.
• His shift, his attendance policy, his leave entitlement, his payroll setup and his bank account.

So the honest answer to "does it create the employee for me" is: it creates him, with a name, a date of birth, a few personal codes and a joining date, and the rest of his file is a day's work on Employee Basic Information and Employee Onboarding. Tell the client that before go-live, not after the first hire.

Two more things happen quietly. The new employee number is written onto the candidate's file, which is what stops him ever being hired twice. And every Career Application belonging to that candidate which is not already at Hired is moved to Hired with today's date. If he had applied for two vacancies, both applications are marked Hired by the one acceptance, so close the other one off on the Applications Pipeline yourself with the right outcome.

Every field, in plain words

General

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Offer	The reference of this offer	OFR-2026-0042	Required. Must be unique. It is quoted in both e-mails the candidate receives.
Offer Date	The day the offer is made	4 Feb 2026	Required. The expiry date and the joining date both have to be on or after it.
Application ID	The careers page application this offer answers	Pick it from the list, for example APL-2026-0311	Fill it when the candidate came through the public careers page, so the offer and his own view of it line up. Leave it blank for a walk-in or a referral.
Applicant	The candidate being offered the job	Pick it from the list, for example APP-2026-0147	Required. This, and only this, is what the employee record is built from.
Applicant Name	His name	Fills itself from the Applicant. Leave it.	This is the name the offer letter prints.
Position	The position he is being offered	Pick it from the list, for example Production Supervisor	Required. Only released positions are offered. It is recorded here and not copied to his employee record.
Grade	The grade the position sits at	Pick it from the list, for example G-7	Not copied to his employee record either.
Grade Name	The grade in words	Fills itself from the Grade. Leave it.
Joining Date	The day he is expected to start	1 Mar 2026	Required. Cannot be before the Offer Date. On acceptance it becomes his joining date, start date, effective-from date and status date, so get it right.
Expiry Date	The day the offer lapses	15 Feb 2026	Cannot be before the Offer Date. Once it has passed, the next save moves a draft, approved or sent offer to Expired. Leave it blank for an offer with no deadline.
Status	Where the offer stands	Pick it from the list, see below	Required. This field is how the offer is sent, accepted and declined. There are no buttons.
Decline Reason	Why he said no	Wanted 95,000 against our 78,000 band.	Typed, not picked. Required as soon as the status is Declined, and the save is refused without it. Write the real reason, in money or in words, because three of these is what gets a salary band revised.
Employee	The employee number he was given	Fills itself when the offer is accepted. Leave it.	Blank until then. If it already carries a number, he is already an employee and the acceptance will not create a second one.
Responsible	Who owns this offer	Pick him from the list, for example the HR manager	Only released employee records appear.
Responsibility Centre	The unit the offer is charged to	Pick it from the list, for example Weaving
Notes	Anything to be said about the offer	Relocation to Faisalabad agreed verbally, bus provided. Confirmed by Director Operations on 3 Feb.	The place for what was agreed outside the letter. It does not reach the employee record, so repeat anything important there.

Status takes one of six values:

• DRF Draft. Where a new offer starts if you do not set anything. Nothing is sent to the candidate.
• APR Approved. Signed off internally, not yet out with the candidate. Nothing is sent.
• SNT Sent. The offer is out. Saving at this status e-mails the candidate with the offer number, the offer date and the joining date.
• ACC Accepted. He said yes. Saving at this status creates his employee record and e-mails him a welcome naming his employee number. A joining date is required first.
• DEC Declined. He said no. A Decline Reason is required.
• EXP Expired. The offer lapsed. You can set it yourself, and a passed expiry date sets it for you on the next save.

Wage Breakup

One line per element of the pay being offered. This is what the offer letter prints. Nothing downstream reads these lines, so the salary itself still has to be set up on his payroll screens after he joins.

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Wage Type	The element of pay	Pick it from the list, for example Salary Basic	The same wage types payroll uses, so the letter and the eventual payslip speak the same language.
Wage Type Name	The element in words	Fills itself from the Wage Type. Leave it.
Wage Type Direction	Whether the element is paid or deducted	D Debit or C Credit, as the payroll wage type master uses them	Nothing on this screen checks it, so copy the direction the wage type carries in payroll rather than guessing.
Value %	The element as a percentage of another	50	Use it where the client quotes a percentage, for example house rent at 50 percent of basic. Use the percentage or the amount, not both.
Value	The element as an amount in rupees	78,000	The monthly figure the letter prints.

A Production Supervisor offer at a five hundred person mill usually reads: Salary Basic 78,000, House Rent Allowance 50 percent, Conveyance Allowance 4,000, Medical Allowance 6,000.

How to configure it

1. Make sure the candidate is on Recruitment Applicant with his title, name, date of birth, gender, marital status, nationality, religion and employee type filled in. Those nine are the only things the acceptance carries across, so anything missing there has to be typed onto the employee record later.
2. Make sure the Position has been released, or it will not appear in the list.
3. Open Offer, give it a reference and an offer date, and pick the Applicant. Fill the Application ID if he applied through the careers page.
4. Set the Position, the Grade, the Joining Date and the Expiry Date. Save at Draft while it is still being agreed.
5. Build the Wage Breakup to match what the letter will say.
6. Move the status to Approved when it is signed off, and to Sent when it goes out. Saving at Sent e-mails the candidate.
7. When he answers, set the status to Accepted or to Declined. Declined needs a reason. Accepted needs the joining date and creates the employee.
8. After an acceptance, open Employee Basic Information for the new employee number and finish his record: his identification, his address and contacts, his organization assignment, his probation dates, and his payroll and attendance setup. Then run him through Employee Onboarding.

Scenarios

"He accepted. What do we have, and what do we still have to do?"

You have an employee, active and released, with his title, name, date of birth, gender, marital status, nationality, religion, employee type and a joining date. You still have to type his CNIC, his address, his mobile number, his department and reporting line, his probation and confirmation dates, his shift and attendance policy, his leave entitlement, his bank account and his salary structure. Treat an acceptance as the start of the employee file, not the end of it.

"He turned us down, reopen the vacancy"

Set the status to Declined and write the real reason in Decline Reason. Then do the three things PeopleNest does not do for you: mark his line on the Applications Pipeline as rejected with the reason, set the pipeline's status back to Sourcing, and push the Application Deadline and Close Date out on Recruitment Project so the vacancy is advertised again. Nothing on this screen reopens anything.

Keep the declined offer. The next hiring manager who asks why the band is being raised wants to see it.

"The salary figures in the letter never reached payroll"

They never do. The Wage Breakup is the letter's figures and nothing reads it afterwards. Set his salary up properly on his payroll screens once he has joined, using the breakup as your source.

"The same candidate was offered two different jobs"

The first acceptance creates the employee. The second accepted offer finds that he already has an employee number and uses it, so there is no second employee record, which is right. But do not leave the losing offer at Sent: set it to Declined or Expired with a reason, or the client has two live offers for one person.

Remember also that an acceptance marks every one of that candidate's applications as Hired. Go to the other vacancy's Applications Pipeline and close his line off honestly.

"The offer was never answered"

Give every offer an Expiry Date. When it passes, the next save moves the offer to Expired by itself, and the vacancy's funnel shows a candidate who went quiet rather than one who is still being waited for.

"We sent the offer twice and he got two e-mails"

He did not. The same message is not queued twice for the same offer, so re-saving a sent offer is safe.

What it is connected to

• Recruitment Applicant is the candidate, and the only source of what the employee record is built from.
• Career Application is what the Application ID points at, and an acceptance moves every one of the candidate's applications to Hired.
• Interview Evaluation is the evidence the offer rests on.
• Applications Pipeline is the vacancy's funnel, and it has to be updated by hand when an offer is accepted or declined.
• Recruitment Project is the vacancy, and is where a reopened vacancy's dates are pushed out.
• Position supplies the position offered, and only ready-to-process positions appear.
• Employee Basic Information is the record an acceptance creates, and where the rest of it is typed.
• Employee Onboarding is what happens to him next.

If something looks wrong

• "It says a joining date is required before an offer can be accepted" - the Joining Date is empty. It becomes four dates on the employee record, so it cannot be guessed.
• "It says a decline reason is required" - the status is Declined with nothing in Decline Reason. Write the real reason.
• "It says the joining date cannot be before the offer date" - or the expiry date is before the offer date. Both have to be on or after the day the offer was made.
• "It says the offer number already exists" - offer references are unique. Use the next one.
• "The offer went to Expired by itself" - its expiry date had passed. That is deliberate. Raise a new offer with new dates rather than reviving the old one.
• "The employee was created but half his file is empty" - that is what the conversion does. Nine things are carried across, listed above. The rest is typed on Employee Basic Information.
• "His middle name is missing on the employee record" - it is not carried across. Add it by hand.
• "The salary from the offer is not in payroll" - the Wage Breakup is read by nothing. Set his salary structure up on his payroll screens.
• "He accepted twice and we were expecting two employee records" - a candidate is only ever made into an employee once. The second offer reuses the number, which is the behaviour you want.
• "The candidate's other application also says Hired" - an acceptance marks all of his applications Hired. Correct the other vacancy's pipeline line by hand.