Employee Document Management

Updated July 29, 2026

Document Management is Marmend's HR document hub. Store contracts, work permits, certificates and onboarding paperwork in one place, with automatic expiration tracking, template-based generation, and requests you can send to employees for the paperwork you are still waiting on.

What you can do

Upload any HR document (PDF, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, PNG, up to 10 MB) and attach it to an employee
Categorise it, using your workspace's own category list
Control who sees it — Employee visible or HR only
Track expiration dates — documents expire themselves, and HR is notified 30, 7 and 1 day ahead
Generate from a template — fill a template with employee data instead of retyping it, optionally drafting the template with AI
Request a document from an employee, with a due date and instructions
Search across document names, categories, filenames, notes and the person the document belongs to

Who sees what

The page is open to every signed-in employee, and everything on it branches on one thing: whether you can manage documents (owner, admin or hr).

	Owner / Admin / HR	Everyone else, including managers
Page title	All Documents	My Documents
Scope	every employee's documents	only their own, and only those marked Employee visible
Tabs	Active, Expired, Archived, Templates	Active, Expired
Buttons	Generate from Template, Assign Request, Upload Document	— (see Known issues)
Pending requests panel	no	yes
Archive	any active document	no
Delete	any document	only documents they uploaded themselves

A manager has no special view of their direct reports' documents here — that needs the HR role. An employee never sees another person's documents, and never sees HR only documents, including ones attached to their own profile.

Tabs

Tab	Shows
Active	Documents in force
Expired	Documents past their expiration date
Archived	Documents you have archived (HR only)
Templates	The template library and the AI drafter (HR only)

Every tab carries a count. The counts follow your search term but ignore the tab you are standing on, so you can see how many matches are waiting on the other tab.

Columns — Active: Document name, Category, Employee, Uploaded, Expires. Expired: the same with Expires before Uploaded. Archived: Document name, Category, Employee, Uploaded. Expires shows — when no date is set.

Clicking a row opens the detail panel: preview or file icon, document name, status chip, an HR only chip where it applies, then Category, Employee, Uploaded, Expires, File size and Notes. Arrows at the top step through the list without closing it.

Finding a document

One box, many fields — you do not need to know which field holds your term.

You remember	Example	Works?
Part of the document name	`NDA` finds Special NDA Agreement	Yes
The category	`permit`	Yes
The uploaded filename	`nda-signed-2026`	Yes
Something from the notes	`Berlin`	Yes
Whose document it is — first name, last name or both	`Bob Marley`	Yes
Their work email	`bob.marley`	Yes

It is forgiving in the same ways the equipment search is: case does not matter, a fragment of a word is enough, name order does not matter (Marley Bob works), small misspellings are tolerated (Marly), and accents are normalised (Muller finds Müller).

Two limits worth knowing:

Categories are matched on the stored English value. work_permit or permit matches in every language; a translated label may not.
Nicknames are not resolved — Robert will not find someone recorded as Bob.

Employees can search their own documents too. Press Enter to apply a term immediately rather than waiting for the short pause while you type.

How to

Upload a document (HR)

Go to Company → Documents and click Upload Document.
Pick the Employee.
Drop in the file — PDF, DOC, DOCX, JPG or PNG, up to 10 MB. One file per document.
Give it a Document name and a Category (or + New category).
Optionally set Visibility — Employee visible (the default) or HR only.
Optionally set an Expiration date.
Optionally add Notes — they are searchable.
Click Upload Document. The button stays disabled until the file has finished uploading.

A preview thumbnail is generated in the background for PDF, JPEG and PNG files, and appears in the detail panel a moment later. DOC and DOCX files show a category icon and the filename instead.

Employees uploading their own documents should do it from their profile page → Documents, not from this page. See Known issues.

Generate a document from a template (HR)

Create the template — Templates → New Template. Fill in Template name, Category and Template body, using {{variables}} where employee data belongs. The editor lists all thirteen: employee_first_name, employee_last_name, employee_full_name, employee_email, employee_job_title, employee_start_date, employee_salary, employee_department, employee_manager, employee_work_type, employee_arrangement, company_name, today_date.
- Short of time? Generate template with AI drafts a body from a plain description ("Job offer letter for software engineer"). It opens in the editor for review — it is a draft, not a finished document, and it consumes your workspace's AI credits.
Generate for an employee — Generate from Template, pick the employee and the template. A live Preview shows the result with that person's real data.
Click Generate PDF. The document is filed under the employee, named Template - Employee Name, with the template's category and Employee visible visibility.

Templates can be edited or archived. Archiving hides a template from the list and from the Generate picker without destroying it. Templates can also be managed at Company → Admin → Document Templates.

Request a document from an employee (HR)

For paperwork the employee has to provide.

Click Assign Request.
Pick the Employee, a Document name (up to 255 characters) and a Category.
Set a Due date.
Optionally add Instructions for employee — what exactly to upload.
Click Assign Request.

The employee sees it in their Pending Requests panel above their document list, with the due date. After the due date passes, the request is flagged Overdue automatically.

Assigning a request does not send an immediate notification. The employee finds out by opening the page, or from the reminders sent 7 days and 1 day before the due date. If it is urgent, tell them directly.

Requests are fulfilled from the employee's profile page → Documents, where the upload form shows which request it satisfies. There is no fulfil action on this page, and no HR-facing list of open requests here.

Track expirations

Any document can carry an expiration date — a work permit valid until 2027, for instance. Once a day Marmend:

flips any active document past its date to Expired, moving it to the Expired tab
notifies owners, admins and HR 30, 7 and 1 day before the date, and again the day after it passes

Expired documents are never deleted automatically. Employees see their own expired documents in the Expired tab but do not receive expiry notifications — that is deliberately HR's job.

Archive or delete

Archive (HR, active documents only) moves a document out of the active list while keeping the record and the file. You are asked to confirm.
Delete is permanent: the record, the stored file and the preview are all removed. There is no recycle bin and no retention window. HR can delete any document; everyone else can delete only what they uploaded.

There is currently no un-archive action. An archived document can be downloaded or deleted, but not returned to Active — so archive when you mean "out of the way for good", and rely on Delete only when you truly want the file gone.

Onboarding checklists

Checklists live at Company → Admin → Onboarding Checklists, not on this page. A checklist is a named list of document categories required for a role — create one (e.g. "Engineering — Germany"), add the categories, and a new employee's profile shows progress against it. An item counts as done once the employee has an active document in that category, so HR can see at a glance what is still missing.

Tips

Set expiration dates on every permit and contract. The 30/7/1-day reminders are the main benefit, and they only fire when the date is there.
Use HR only deliberately — and set it at upload. Visibility cannot be changed afterwards from this page.
Prefer Archive to Delete, but know that archiving is currently one-way too.
Put searchable words in the Notes. Notes are matched by the search box, which makes them the right place for the detail you will want to find in a year.
Name templates for what they produce, not for who asked — the template picker shows name (Category) and nothing else.

Known issues

More than one page of documents. Pagination on this page is not wired up, so a workspace with more than 15 documents cannot page through the list. Use the search box to narrow it down until this is fixed.
Employees cannot upload from this page. The upload form needs an employee, and that selector is only shown to HR — so a self-upload here fails with "Something went wrong". Employees should upload from their profile page → Documents, which works correctly.
Category and employee filters have no controls. Both filters work, but nothing renders them; they can only be set by editing the page address (?category=…, ?employee=…).
The Documents menu item never highlights when you are on the page.

FAQ

Who can see employee documents? Owners, admins and HR see everything. Everyone else — including managers — sees only their own documents, and only those marked Employee visible.

How long are download links valid? One hour. After that the link expires and a new one is generated on demand.

Can I undo a deletion? No. Delete removes the record and the file permanently.

Can I un-archive a document? Not at the moment — see Known issues.

Is there an audit trail of who opened a document? No. The uploader is recorded on each document, but downloads and views are not tracked. Do not rely on this feature for access auditing.

What file formats are supported? PDF, DOC, DOCX, JPEG and PNG, up to 10 MB per file. Previews are generated for PDF, JPEG and PNG only.

Where are the files stored? In Marmend's private storage — originals and preview thumbnails in separate buckets — reachable only through short-lived signed links, never a public URL.

Why don't I see all the tabs? Archived and Templates are HR-only. Without the owner, admin or HR role you see My Documents with Active and Expired.