Welcome to the TimeRewards comprehensive glossary – your ultimate reference guide to time tracking, expense management, project budgeting, and workforce terminology. Whether you’re a small business owner learning the basics of time tracking, a project manager optimizing your team’s productivity, or an enterprise administrator managing complex workforce solutions, this resource will help clarify key concepts and terminology.
Welcome to the TimeRewards comprehensive glossary—your ultimate reference guide to time tracking, expense management, project budgeting, and workforce terminology. Whether you're a small business owner learning the basics of time tracking, a project manager optimizing your team's productivity, or an enterprise administrator managing complex workforce solutions, this resource will help clarify key concepts and terminology.
Our glossary is organized alphabetically with detailed definitions, practical examples, and industry best practices to help you navigate the world of time and expense management confidently. Use this resource to enhance your understanding of essential concepts that impact workforce efficiency, project profitability, and organizational success.
Definition: Time off benefits (like vacation or sick leave) that employees earn incrementally over a specified period rather than receiving a lump sum at the beginning of the year.
Example: An employee who earns 2 vacation days per month has accrued 12 days after working for 6 months.
Best Practice: Track accrued time off in real-time and make balances visible to employees to promote transparency and help with leave planning.
Definition: A cost accounting method that assigns overhead and indirect costs to related products and services based on the resources consumed by specific activities.
Example: A marketing agency using ABC would calculate the true cost of a client project by tracking direct labor hours plus a portion of overhead costs based on the specific resources utilized.
Best Practice: Implement detailed time tracking that captures not just the duration but also the specific activities performed to enable accurate activity-based costing.
Definition: A predefined sequence of steps through which timesheets, expense reports, or other documents must pass to receive authorization from appropriate stakeholders.
Example: A three-tier approval workflow might require a team leader to approve a timesheet before it's sent to the department manager and finally to payroll for processing.
Best Practice: Configure approval workflows to match your organization's structure while minimizing unnecessary approval steps that could cause delays.
Definition: The process of recording when employees start and end their workdays, including arrivals, departures, and breaks.
Example: A retail store uses a digital system where employees clock in with their employee ID at the beginning of shifts and clock out when they leave.
Best Practice: Choose attendance tracking methods that balance accuracy with employee convenience, and ensure compliance with local labor laws regarding employee monitoring.
Definition: Technology that records time spent on activities without requiring manual entry, often using computer monitoring, GPS location, or integration with work applications.
Example: A software developer's time is automatically logged based on their activity in project management tools, code repositories, and active applications.
Best Practice: Implement automatic time capture with appropriate privacy settings and always allow employees to review and modify automatically captured time entries before submission.
Definition: Time spent working directly on client projects or tasks that can be charged to the client according to agreed-upon rates.
Example: A consultant who spends 3 hours researching and 2 hours writing a report for a client records 5 billable hours.
Best Practice: Clearly distinguish between billable and non-billable activities in your time tracking system and establish consistent guidelines for what constitutes billable work.
Definition: The time unit used to quantify and bill for work (e.g., 6-minute increments, 15-minute increments, or hourly).
Example: A law firm that bills in 6-minute increments (1/10 of an hour) would round a 14-minute call to 0.2 hours (12 minutes) for billing purposes.
Best Practice: Choose billing increments that balance fair compensation with client perception—smaller increments provide more precise billing but can appear to be nickel-and-diming to clients.
Definition: The difference between planned (budgeted) and actual time or expenses for a project or task.
Example: A website development project budgeted for 100 hours that actually takes 115 hours has a budget variance of +15 hours or +15%.
Best Practice: Monitor budget variances in real-time, investigate significant deviations promptly, and use historical variance data to improve future budget estimates.
Definition: The pace at which a project consumes its allocated budget or resources over time.
Example: A marketing campaign with a $30,000 budget that has spent $10,000 after one month of a three-month timeline has a burn rate of $10,000 per month.
Best Practice: Track burn rates weekly or monthly and compare them to project timelines to identify potential budget overruns before they become critical.
Definition: The process of determining the production capacity needed to meet changing demands for products or services.
Example: A software development team using capacity planning would analyze historical time tracking data to determine how many projects they can realistically handle simultaneously.
Best Practice: Combine historical time tracking data with future availability (accounting for planned vacations and holidays) to create accurate capacity forecasts.
Definition: The action of recording the beginning and end of a work period in a time tracking system.
Example: Warehouse workers clock in at the beginning of their shift by scanning their ID badges and clock out the same way when leaving.
Best Practice: Place clocking terminals or make mobile clocking apps available in convenient locations to minimize time spent on the clocking process itself.
Definition: Time off granted to employees in lieu of overtime pay for hours worked beyond their regular schedule.
Example: An employee who works 48 hours in one week might receive 8 hours of comp time to be used for a future day off instead of receiving overtime pay.
Best Practice: Clearly document comp time policies and ensure they comply with applicable labor laws, as comp time in lieu of overtime pay may be restricted in some jurisdictions for non-exempt employees.
Definition: A department or function within an organization that incurs costs but doesn't directly generate revenue.
Example: HR, IT, and Accounting departments are typically considered cost centers in most organizations.
Best Practice: Implement departmental time tracking to monitor cost center efficiency and justify resource allocation based on the services provided to revenue-generating units.
Definition: A numeric or alphanumeric identifier assigned to specific projects, tasks, or activities for tracking and allocating expenses.
Example: A construction company might use cost code "ELEC-100" for electrical work on residential projects and "ELEC-200" for electrical work on commercial projects.
Best Practice: Develop a consistent, intuitive cost code structure that balances detail with usability—too many codes create confusion, while too few limit analytical capabilities.
Definition: The internal cost of an employee's time to the organization, including salary, benefits, and overhead, usually expressed as an hourly rate.
Example: An employee with an annual salary of $60,000 plus $15,000 in benefits and overhead might have a cost rate of approximately $36 per hour.
Best Practice: Regularly update cost rates to reflect changes in compensation and overhead costs, and use them to calculate the true profitability of projects and services.
Definition: A visual interface displaying key metrics, statistics, and indicators about time tracking, expenses, project progress, or other business data.
Example: A project manager's dashboard shows team utilization rates, budget consumption, upcoming deadlines, and recent timesheet submissions in a single view.
Best Practice: Customize dashboards for different user roles, focusing on the metrics most relevant to their responsibilities and decision-making needs.
Definition: A fixed fee charged for a professional's services for a full day, regardless of the exact number of hours worked.
Example: A photographer charges a day rate of $2,000 for a corporate event, covering up to 10 hours of photography services.
Best Practice: Clearly define what constitutes a "day" in terms of expected hours and specify additional charges for work beyond those hours.
Definition: Work time that can be directly attributed to the production of specific goods or the delivery of specific services.
Example: Hours spent by a graphic designer creating a client's logo would be considered direct labor for that project.
Best Practice: Track direct labor separately from indirect labor to enable accurate job costing and profitability analysis.
Definition: Periods when employees are unable to perform their regular duties due to system failures, lack of materials, equipment maintenance, or other interruptions.
Example: A manufacturing team experiences two hours of downtime when a critical machine breaks down and requires emergency repairs.
Best Practice: Create specific time tracking codes for various types of downtime to analyze patterns and identify improvement opportunities.
Definition: The length of time between the start and end of a work session, task, or project.
Example: A task that begins at 9:00 AM and finishes at 11:30 AM has a duration of 2.5 hours.
Best Practice: For billing and costing accuracy, distinguish between duration (elapsed time) and actual working time when interruptions or multitasking occur.
Definition: A project management technique that measures project performance by comparing the amount of work completed against the planned budget and schedule.
Example: A project that has consumed 50% of its budget but completed only 40% of its deliverables would have a negative earned value, indicating it's over budget.
Best Practice: Integrate time tracking data with EVM calculations to provide real-time performance metrics rather than waiting for periodic manual assessments.
Definition: The percentage of an employee's available work time that is spent on billable or productive activities.
Example: A consultant who records 32 billable hours in a 40-hour work week has a utilization rate of 80%.
Best Practice: Set target utilization rates that reflect realistic expectations, accounting for necessary administrative time, professional development, and other non-billable activities.
Definition: The process of assigning business expenses to specific projects, departments, cost centers, or budget categories.
Example: A business trip expense for a client meeting would be allocated to that client's project budget rather than general overhead.
Best Practice: Establish clear expense allocation guidelines and make the process as streamlined as possible through digital receipt capture and integration with accounting systems.
Definition: The process of reviewing and authorizing employee-submitted expenses before reimbursement or payment.
Example: A sales manager reviews a sales representative's travel expense report, approving legitimate business expenses and requesting clarification on questionable items.
Best Practice: Implement a multi-tier approval system based on expense amount, with higher-value expenses requiring additional levels of review.
Definition: Classifications used to organize and group similar types of business expenditures for tracking, reporting, and tax purposes.
Example: Common expense categories include travel, meals and entertainment, office supplies, professional development, and telecommunications.
Best Practice: Align expense categories with tax deduction categories to simplify tax preparation, and limit the number of categories to avoid confusion.
Definition: A formal company document outlining rules and guidelines for what expenses employees can submit for reimbursement and how they should be documented.
Example: An expense policy might specify that employees must book flights at least 14 days in advance when possible and must submit receipts for all expenses over $25.
Best Practice: Make expense policies easily accessible, use clear language, provide examples, and periodically review for compliance with changing business needs and tax regulations.
Definition: A document (typically digital) submitted by an employee itemizing business-related expenditures for reimbursement or accounting purposes.
Example: An expense report might list hotel costs, meal expenses, transportation, and client entertainment costs from a business trip.
Best Practice: Use mobile expense reporting tools that allow receipt capture at the time of purchase to improve accuracy and speed the reimbursement process.
Definition: A predetermined, unchanging price charged for a project or service, regardless of the actual time or resources consumed.
Example: A web development agency charges a fixed fee of $10,000 for a basic e-commerce website, even if the hours worked exceed initial estimates.
Best Practice: Base fixed fee quotes on detailed historical time tracking data to ensure profitability, and clearly define project scope to prevent scope creep.
Definition: A paid day off that employees can choose to take on a date of their preference, often used to accommodate diverse religious or cultural observances.
Example: Rather than specifying which religious holidays are observed, a company might provide three floating holidays that employees can use according to their own traditions.
Best Practice: Track floating holidays separately from standard vacation time in your time off management system, and establish clear policies about scheduling and expiration.
Definition: An employee's classification as either exempt or non-exempt from overtime pay requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act in the United States.
Example: Hourly warehouse workers are typically non-exempt and entitled to overtime pay, while salaried executives are usually exempt.
Best Practice: Configure time tracking systems to automatically apply overtime calculations for non-exempt employees and maintain detailed records of all hours worked to ensure FLSA compliance.
Definition: A self-employed individual who provides services to multiple clients without being permanently employed by any single organization.
Example: A freelance copywriter works on marketing materials for various companies on a project-by-project basis.
Best Practice: Require freelancers to track and report their time in detail to maintain project budgets, even when paying fixed project fees rather than hourly rates.
Definition: A type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, showing the start and finish dates of different elements and their dependencies.
Example: A product launch Gantt chart would display overlapping timelines for development, testing, marketing, and sales training activities.
Best Practice: Integrate actual time tracking data with Gantt charts to compare planned versus actual timelines and adjust future schedule estimates accordingly.
Definition: A location-based service that triggers actions when a mobile device enters or leaves a predefined virtual boundary.
Example: A construction company uses geofencing to automatically clock workers in when they arrive at a job site and clock them out when they leave.
Best Practice: Set appropriate geofence radius sizes (typically 100-300 feet) to accommodate GPS accuracy limitations, and always provide a manual override option for system failures.
Definition: The total cost of employee compensation before any deductions, including wages, salaries, bonuses, and overtime pay.
Example: A manufacturing company's gross labor costs include production workers' wages plus supervision and quality control staff salaries.
Best Practice: Track gross labor costs by department, project, and location to identify efficiency opportunities and inform strategic workforce planning.
Definition: The amount charged or paid for one hour of work or services.
Example: A freelance designer charges an hourly rate of $85 for graphic design services.
Best Practice: Periodically review and adjust hourly rates based on skill development, market conditions, and value delivered to clients.
Definition: The total time an employee spends performing job duties, excluding breaks, time off, and other non-working periods.
Example: An employee who is present at work from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM with a one-hour lunch break has 8 hours worked.
Best Practice: Clearly define what constitutes "hours worked" in your time tracking policy, especially regarding activities like travel time, training, and on-call time.
Definition: Periods during the workday when employees are not actively productive due to factors beyond their control.
Example: Factory workers experience idle time when waiting for materials to be delivered or when equipment is being repaired.
Best Practice: Create specific time tracking codes for different types of idle time to identify and address systemic productivity barriers.
Definition: Work that supports production or service delivery but cannot be directly attributed to specific products, services, or customers.
Example: Time spent by maintenance staff ensuring equipment operates properly is indirect labor that benefits all production activities.
Best Practice: Track indirect labor by category to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements and to ensure appropriate allocation of overhead costs.
Definition: In the context of time tracking, the connection between time tracking software and other business systems like payroll, project management, or accounting.
Example: A time tracking system integrated with payroll automatically transfers approved timesheet data for wage calculation without manual re-entry.
Best Practice: Prioritize integrations that eliminate duplicate data entry and implement two-way synchronization where possible to maintain consistent information across systems.
Definition: The process of tracking and allocating all expenses associated with a specific project or job to determine its true profitability.
Example: A construction company uses job costing to track labor hours, materials, equipment, and subcontractor expenses for each building project.
Best Practice: Implement detailed time tracking with job-specific codes and require all expenses to be coded to specific jobs to enable accurate profitability analysis.
Definition: A fixed price charged for completing a specific task or job, regardless of the time it takes.
Example: An auto repair shop charges a standard job rate of $200 for replacing brake pads, whether it takes 1 hour or 2 hours.
Best Practice: Continue tracking actual time spent on fixed-rate jobs to evaluate profitability and refine future pricing strategies.
Definition: A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.
Example: For a service business, billable utilization rate might be a KPI measuring productivity, while invoice turnaround time might be a KPI for administrative efficiency.
Best Practice: Use time tracking data to develop time-based KPIs and establish appropriate benchmarks based on historical performance and industry standards.
Definition: The cost of employee benefits and employer-paid taxes in addition to direct wages or salaries.
Example: For an employee earning $25 per hour in direct wages, additional costs for health insurance, retirement contributions, and payroll taxes might add a labor burden of $10 per hour.
Best Practice: Calculate accurate labor burden rates for different employee categories and include them in project costing and pricing decisions.
Definition: The difference between budgeted labor costs and actual labor costs for a project or time period.
Example: A project budgeted for $10,000 in labor that actually requires $12,500 has a labor cost variance of +$2,500 or +25%.
Best Practice: Analyze labor cost variances by breaking them down into rate variances (differences in hourly costs) and efficiency variances (differences in hours used).
Definition: The allocation of employee time and associated costs across different projects, departments, or activities.
Example: A company might distribute an IT support specialist's time across multiple departments based on service requests or predetermined allocation percentages.
Best Practice: Use detailed time tracking rather than estimated allocations where possible to improve the accuracy of cost distribution and departmental profitability metrics.
Definition: A unit representing one hour of work performed by one worker.
Example: A construction project estimated to require 120 labor hours could be completed by 6 workers in 20 hours or 4 workers in 30 hours.
Best Practice: Track labor hours by skill category to improve the accuracy of future estimates and to identify opportunities for using different staff combinations.
Definition: A unit of work representing the work of one person for one hour. This gender-neutral term is preferred over the traditional "man-hour."
Example: A team of five people working for 8 hours each contributes 40 person-hours of effort in a day.
Best Practice: Use person-hours for estimating project requirements and compare estimated versus actual person-hours to refine future planning.
Definition: The process of recording distances traveled for business purposes, typically for reimbursement or tax deduction.
Example: A sales representative records mileage for trips between the office and client locations for monthly reimbursement at the standard rate.
Best Practice: Use GPS-enabled mobile apps to automatically track business mileage with minimal manual effort and maximum accuracy.
Definition: An invoicing approach where clients are billed upon completion of predefined project stages rather than based on time spent or at regular intervals.
Example: A website development project might bill 30% upon design approval, 40% upon development completion, and 30% upon final launch.
Best Practice: Link milestone billing to time tracking to ensure project stages remain profitable, even when client payments are not directly tied to hours worked.
Definition: Time spent on activities that cannot be charged to clients, including administrative tasks, business development, and professional development.
Example: An attorney spending time on continuing education, firm meetings, or networking events records these as non-billable hours.
Best Practice: Track non-billable hours with the same diligence as billable hours to understand their impact on overall profitability and to identify opportunities for efficiency.
Definition: An employee who is entitled to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) when they work more than 40 hours in a workweek.
Example: Hourly workers in retail, administrative assistants, and production line workers are typically classified as non-exempt employees.
Best Practice: Configure time tracking systems to automatically calculate overtime for non-exempt employees and to flag potential compliance issues like missed breaks.
Definition: Work performed by employees that is not recorded in the official time tracking system and is therefore unpaid.
Example: An employee checking and responding to work emails from home after regular business hours without recording this time.
Best Practice: Create clear policies prohibiting off-the-clock work and implement systems that make it easy to record all work time, including remote and mobile work.
Definition: Hours worked beyond a standard work period (typically 40 hours per week in the US) that are compensated at a premium rate (typically 1.5 times the regular rate).
Example: An employee who works 45 hours in a week would receive 40 hours of regular pay plus 5 hours of overtime pay at the higher rate.
Best Practice: Implement automated alerts when employees approach overtime thresholds to help managers make informed decisions about work distribution and cost management.
Definition: The method of determining overtime pay based on applicable labor laws, considering factors like regular rate of pay, work period, and premium percentages.
Example: Under the FLSA, overtime is typically calculated as 1.5 times the regular hourly rate for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek.
Best Practice: Automate overtime calculations in your time tracking system while allowing for adjustments to accommodate special circumstances or different jurisdictional requirements.
Definition: A fixed daily allowance paid to employees to cover expenses when traveling for business purposes.
Example: A company provides a per diem of $75 for meals and incidentals when employees travel domestically, regardless of actual spending.
Best Practice: Set per diem rates based on location costs (many organizations use government-established rates) and integrate these with your expense tracking system for easy reporting.
Definition: The process of estimating the total cost of a project by determining required resources, including labor hours, materials, and other expenses.
Example: A marketing agency creates a project budget allocating 60 hours of design time, 40 hours of copywriting, and $5,000 for advertising placement.
Best Practice: Base project budgets on historical time tracking data from similar projects rather than optimistic estimates, and include contingency allowances for unexpected complications.
Definition: A unique identifier assigned to a specific project for tracking time, expenses, and other resources.
Example: A consulting firm might use code "ACM2023" for all work related to the Acme Corporation 2023 Strategy project.
Best Practice: Develop a consistent, intuitive coding system that makes it easy for employees to select the correct project when tracking time and expenses.
Definition: The process of recording time spent on specific projects or clients to enable billing, cost analysis, and project management.
Example: A web developer tracks time spent on design, coding, testing, and client communication for each website project separately.
Best Practice: Break projects into specific tasks or phases to provide greater visibility into where time is being spent and to identify potential bottlenecks or efficiency opportunities.
Definition: A commercial document issued by a buyer to a seller indicating types, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services.
Example: A company issues a PO for 20 new computers at $1,200 each before the vendor delivers and invoices for the equipment.
Best Practice: Integrate PO numbers with expense tracking to easily match purchases with their authorizations and to maintain budget control.
Definition: A predefined target or expectation for productivity, sales, or other measurable outcomes within a specific time period.
Example: A call center sets a quota of handling 50 customer service calls per day per representative.
Best Practice: Use time tracking data to establish realistic quotas based on historical performance and to identify factors that impact individual or team productivity.
Definition: A document listing the standard prices charged for different services, often varying by staff level or expertise.
Example: A digital agency's rate card might show junior designers at $85/hour, senior designers at $150/hour, and creative directors at $225/hour.
Best Practice: Link rate cards to your time tracking system to automatically apply the correct billing rates based on who performs the work and what type of service is provided.
Definition: Time tracking that records duration as work happens, rather than relying on after-the-fact estimates or manual entries.
Example: A timer-based application that consultants start and stop as they switch between different client projects throughout the day.
Best Practice: Choose real-time tracking tools that minimize disruption to workflow while still capturing accurate time data, and provide mobile options for tracking on the go.
Definition: The process of collecting, organizing, and storing documentation of business expenses for reimbursement, accounting, and tax purposes.
Example: A sales team uses a mobile app to photograph receipts immediately after purchases, automatically uploading them to the expense management system.
Best Practice: Implement digital receipt capture with OCR (optical character recognition) to automatically extract key information and reduce manual data entry.
Definition: The process of assigning available resources (particularly staff time) to various projects or tasks based on priorities, skills, and availability.
Example: A project manager allocates 25% of a developer's time to maintenance, 50% to a major client project, and 25% to internal tool development.
Best Practice: Use time tracking data to verify that actual resource usage aligns with planned allocations and adjust plans when significant deviations occur.
Definition: A fee paid in advance to secure the ongoing services of a professional or firm, typically for a specified number of hours or scope of work per period.
Example: A company pays a law firm a monthly retainer of $5,000 for up to 25 hours of legal services.
Best Practice: Track time against retainer agreements meticulously to ensure clients receive their entitled service hours and to identify when additional billing should occur.
Definition: The process of assigning employees to shifts or projects based on business needs, employee availability, and other constraints.
Example: A restaurant manager creates a weekly schedule ensuring appropriate staffing levels for each meal service while accommodating employee time-off requests.
Best Practice: Integrate scheduling with time tracking to easily compare planned versus actual hours and to streamline payroll processing based on actual attendance.
Definition: The gradual expansion of project scope beyond the original agreement, often without corresponding adjustments to budget, timeline, or resources.
Example: A website redesign project that originally included five pages gradually expands to fifteen pages as the client requests additional features.
Best Practice: Use detailed time tracking at the task level to identify scope creep early and initiate change order processes before significant unpaid work accumulates.
Definition: Additional compensation provided to employees working less desirable hours, such as evenings, nights, or weekends.
Example: A manufacturing company pays a 15% shift differential for overnight shifts and a 10% differential for weekend shifts.
Best Practice: Configure your time tracking system to automatically apply appropriate shift differentials based on when hours are worked rather than relying on manual calculations.
Definition: Expenses that don't directly contribute to physical assets or tangible deliverables but are necessary for project completion.
Example: Project management time, administrative support, and consultant fees are soft costs in a construction project.
Best Practice: Track soft costs through detailed time tracking and expense allocation to ensure they're adequately covered in project budgets and client billing.
Definition: A time tracking method where users manually start and stop a timer as they begin and end specific tasks.
Example: A freelance designer starts a timer when beginning work on a client's logo and stops it when switching to another project.
Best Practice: Use stopwatch tracking for varying tasks requiring detailed breakdowns, but consider automatic tracking tools for routine or predictable work patterns.
Definition: Recording time against specific tasks or activities rather than just projects or clients.
Example: A software developer tracks time separately for coding, testing, documentation, and client meetings within the same project.
Best Practice: Define standardized task categories across similar projects to enable meaningful comparisons and improve the accuracy of future estimates.
Definition: The combined process of monitoring both the hours worked and the costs incurred for various business activities.
Example: A consulting firm tracks consultants' hours along with their travel expenses, meal costs, and material purchases for each client engagement.
Best Practice: Implement an integrated system that handles both time and expenses to simplify reporting, billing, and reimbursement processes.
Definition: A device or system that records when employees start and end their work periods.
Example: A manufacturing facility uses biometric time clocks where employees scan their fingerprints to record arrival and departure times.
Best Practice: Choose time clock systems that balance security (preventing "buddy punching") with convenience and provide backup methods for system failures.
Definition: A single record of time spent on a specific activity, typically including duration, date, project/client information, and description.
Example: A time entry might show 2.5 hours spent on "Johnson Project - Database Configuration" on May 15, 2023.
Best Practice: Encourage employees to enter time contemporaneously (same day) rather than reconstructing activities days later to improve accuracy.
Definition: Scheduled periods when employees are not working but may be paid, including vacation, sick leave, holidays, and personal time.
Example: An employee schedules two weeks of vacation time off during the summer months.
Best Practice: Integrate time off tracking with your scheduling and resource management systems to ensure adequate coverage and prevent project disruptions.
Definition: Compensatory time provided to employees who have worked beyond their scheduled hours instead of paying overtime.
Example: An employee who works a 10-hour day might receive 2 hours of TOIL to use at a later date.
Best Practice: Establish clear policies for how TOIL is earned, tracked, and used, including any expiration dates or maximum accrual limits.
Definition: A document or digital record that captures an employee's work hours over a specific period, typically a week or month.
Example: A weekly timesheet shows hours worked each day, projects or clients served, and any time off taken during the period.
Best Practice: Implement electronic timesheets with built-in validation to identify missing entries, overlapping times, or other inconsistencies before submission.
Definition: Dishonest reporting of work time by employees, resulting in payment for hours not actually worked.
Example: An employee asking a colleague to clock them in before they actually arrive at work is committing time theft.
Best Practice: Implement appropriate controls like biometric verification or geofencing while maintaining a culture of trust and addressing root causes of time theft such as inflexible schedules or unrealistic expectations.
Definition: The process of recording the amount of time spent on various work activities, projects, or for specific clients.
Example: A graphic designer records how many hours they spend working on different client projects each day.
Best Practice: Choose time tracking methods appropriate for your work environment and culture, balancing accuracy needs with administrative burden and employee experience.
Definition: Applications designed to record, manage, and analyze how time is spent across an organization.
Example: TimeRewards provides tools for employees to log their hours, managers to approve timesheets, and administrators to generate reports for billing and payroll.
Best Practice: Select time tracking software that integrates with your existing business systems (payroll, project management, CRM) and offers appropriate tracking methods for your work environment (manual entry, stopwatch, automatic tracking).
Definition: A time management technique where a fixed, maximum time period is allocated to an activity.
Example: A project manager allocates a timebox of two hours for a brainstorming session, regardless of whether all possible ideas have been generated.
Best Practice: Use timeboxing in conjunction with time tracking to improve focus, prevent perfectionism, and ensure balanced progress across multiple priorities.
Definition: A unique identifier used to associate time or expenses with specific categories like projects, clients, departments, or activities.
Example: An employee might use tracking code "MKTG-2023" when recording time spent on marketing activities for the 2023 fiscal year.
Best Practice: Develop a logical, consistent coding structure that balances detail with usability—too many codes create confusion, while too few limit analytical capabilities.
Definition: Costs incurred while traveling for business purposes, including transportation, accommodation, meals, and incidentals.
Example: Airfare, hotel charges, taxi fares, and business meals during a conference trip would all be classified as travel expenses.
Best Practice: Create detailed expense categories for different types of travel costs to support tax reporting and to identify cost-saving opportunities in specific areas.
Definition: Time spent traveling for business purposes, which may be compensable working time depending on circumstances and applicable regulations.
Example: Time spent driving from the office to a client site would typically be considered compensable travel time, while a normal commute from home to office would not.
Best Practice: Establish clear policies on what travel time is compensable, how it should be tracked, and which projects or cost centers should be charged.
Definition: Hours worked that cannot be charged to clients, including administrative tasks, professional development, and internal meetings.
Example: Time spent on staff meetings, training sessions, and completing timesheets is typically unbillable.
Best Practice: Monitor the ratio of billable to unbillable time at both individual and organizational levels, and implement strategies to minimize necessary but non-revenue-generating activities.
Definition: The visual elements and interactive components of software through which users input and receive information.
Example: A time tracking application's UI might include timers, dropdown menus for project selection, and visual dashboards showing time distribution.
Best Practice: Prioritize UI simplicity and intuitiveness in time tracking solutions, as complex interfaces discourage regular time entry and reduce data accuracy.
Definition: The percentage of an employee's available work time that is spent on billable or productive activities.
Example: A consultant who works 40 hours in a week and bills 30 hours to clients has a utilization rate of 75%.
Best Practice: Set reasonable target utilization rates that account for necessary non-billable activities and vary targets by role, seniority, and department.
Definition: The process of examining differences between planned and actual performance, including time spent, costs incurred, and results achieved.
Example: A variance analysis might reveal that a project took 20% more hours than budgeted but cost only 10% more due to using less expensive resources.
Best Practice: Conduct variance analysis regularly during projects (not just at completion) to enable timely corrective actions and to incorporate learnings into ongoing operations.
Definition: A digital system that allows employees to clock in and out from various locations using computers, mobile devices, or specialized applications.
Example: Field service technicians use a mobile app to clock in when arriving at a customer site and clock out upon job completion.
Best Practice: Implement appropriate controls like geofencing or IP restrictions to ensure virtual time clock accuracy while providing flexibility for legitimate remote work scenarios.
Definition: A hierarchical decomposition of a project into smaller, more manageable components, often used as a framework for time tracking and cost allocation.
Example: A software implementation project might be broken down into planning, development, testing, training, and deployment phases, each with multiple sub-tasks.
Best Practice: Align time tracking categories with your WBS to enable detailed project monitoring and to identify which components are consuming more resources than planned.
Definition: A unit of time representing one hour of labor performed.
Example: A construction project estimated at 500 work hours could be completed by 10 workers in 50 hours or by 5 workers in 100 hours.
Best Practice: Track work hours at task-specific levels to develop more accurate estimating standards for future projects and to identify efficiency improvement opportunities.
Definition: The days and times an employee is expected to be working.
Example: A standard full-time work schedule might be Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, while a part-time schedule might be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM.
Best Practice: Configure time tracking systems to accommodate various work schedules, including flexible arrangements, and to flag exceptions when actual hours deviate significantly from scheduled patterns.
Definition: The sequence of steps through which work passes from initiation to completion, often involving multiple people and approval stages.
Example: A time tracking workflow might include employee submission, manager approval, payroll processing, and client billing steps.
Best Practice: Automate workflow notifications and reminders to keep processes moving efficiently, and design workflows with appropriate bypasses for exceptional situations.
Definition: The amount of work assigned to or expected from an employee or team within a specific time period.
Example: A customer service representative with a workload of 50 tickets per day or a content writer expected to produce 10 articles per week.
Best Practice: Use time tracking data to quantify actual time required for different types of work and adjust workload expectations accordingly, accounting for individual capabilities and experience levels.
Definition: A fixed period of seven consecutive days used for calculating work hours, overtime, and other employment considerations.
Example: A company might define its workweek as Sunday through Saturday for payroll and overtime calculation purposes.
Best Practice: Clearly communicate your defined workweek to employees and configure time tracking systems to calculate overtime and other time-based metrics according to this definition.
Definition: A timesheet formatted in Extensible Markup Language (XML) for data interchange between different systems.
Example: A time tracking system might export XML timesheets to be imported into a payroll system or project management tool.
Best Practice: Implement validation rules for XML timesheets to ensure data integrity during system transfers and maintain documentation of the XML schema for troubleshooting purposes.
Definition: The total number of working hours available from an employee or team during a calendar or fiscal year, accounting for holidays, vacation, and other time off.
Example: A full-time employee with 25 vacation days and 10 holidays would have a yearly hour budget of approximately 1,800 hours (2,080 potential hours minus 280 hours of time off).
Best Practice: Calculate yearly hour budgets for each employee individually based on their specific time off entitlements and use these figures for capacity planning and resource allocation.
Definition: The process of maximizing revenue or profitability from a fixed capacity of time or resources through strategic pricing and allocation decisions.
Example: A consulting firm practicing yield management might prioritize higher-margin clients during peak demand periods and offer discounted rates during typically slower periods.
Best Practice: Use detailed time tracking data to identify patterns in resource utilization and efficiency, and adjust pricing and staffing strategies to optimize yield across different business cycles.
Definition: A budgeting method where every expense must be justified for each new period, starting from a "zero base" rather than using prior budgets as a starting point.
Example: Instead of automatically allocating 100 hours per month to a recurring client, a zero-based approach would require justification of exactly how many hours are needed for the coming month's specific deliverables.
Best Practice: Use granular time tracking data from past periods to inform zero-based budgeting decisions while still requiring thoughtful analysis of future requirements rather than simply replicating historical patterns.
Definition: A system that automatically records time based on an employee's presence in defined geographic areas or proximity to specific beacons.
Example: A construction worker's time is automatically logged when they enter a job site perimeter, with different projects represented by different zones on the site.
Best Practice: Implement privacy safeguards and backup manual systems for zone-based tracking to address technical failures or legitimate exceptions to location-based rules.
This glossary serves as a comprehensive reference for time tracking, expense management, and workforce optimization terminology. Understanding these concepts is essential for effective business management, accurate client billing, and operational efficiency.
TimeRewards is committed to providing not just powerful time and expense tracking tools, but also the knowledge resources you need to maximize their value. We regularly update this glossary to reflect emerging trends and terminology in the field.
Have a term you'd like to see added to our glossary? Contact us with your suggestions.
Need a personalized demonstration of how TimeRewards can streamline your time tracking and expense management processes? Request a demo with our solutions team today.
