Glossary

Time Tracking Glossary

Clear definitions of workforce management and time tracking terms to help your team stay aligned.

Access Control

The system of permissions controlling who can view, edit, or manage resources. Defines what each role can do.

Activity

A single time entry representing work performed. Activities are the building blocks of timesheets and reports.

Administrator

A user with full organization control including settings, billing, members, and all projects.

Approval

The process of reviewing and accepting timesheets before payroll or billing. Ensures accuracy and compliance.

Assignment

The relationship between a team member and a project. Assignments control who can log time and at what rates.

Bank Holiday

Days when banks and financial institutions are closed. In the UK, this term is synonymous with public holidays.

Billable Hours

Work hours that can be charged to a client or project. Essential for professional services firms to track revenue.

Core Hours

Fixed time periods when all team members must be available, allowing flexibility outside those hours.

Cost

The expense associated with employee work hours. Calculated by multiplying time by cost rates for profitability analysis.

Custom Reports

User-defined reports with flexible groupings, metrics, and filters. Custom reports answer specific business questions.

Dashboard

The main screen in Sandtime.io showing weekly goal progress, recent activity, and a quick-start timer.

Federal Holiday

Holidays established by a national government, primarily affecting government offices and federally-regulated employers.

Free Plan

A pricing tier that gives access to a product at no cost. Sandtime.io is entirely free - unlimited users, no seat limits, no per-user fees.

Goal

A time target in Sandtime.io for a day, week, or month. All goals are calculated automatically from the core hours setting - not entered as a number directly.

Hourly Rate

The monetary amount charged or paid per hour of work. Used to calculate revenue and cost from tracked time.

Lock

Preventing further edits to a submitted timesheet. A locked timesheet cannot be changed without an approved unlock request.

Member

A team member who tracks time and views personal data. The standard role for employees and contractors.

Nonprofit / NGO

A non-governmental, non-profit organization that operates independently of government. NGOs and nonprofits use time tracking to report on grants, manage volunteers, and demonstrate accountability.

Observance

Notable dates that are not official days off. These do not affect work schedules unless an employer chooses to recognize them.

Open Innovation

A model where organizations build and share products openly with the wider community, often free of charge, rather than keeping everything proprietary.

Open Source

Software whose source code is published under a license that lets anyone read, modify, and redistribute it. Often self-hostable.

Organization

A top-level workspace in Sandtime.io that groups members, projects, and settings under one account. Each organization has its own billing and data.

Overtime

Hours worked beyond the standard workweek. Often subject to premium pay rates and labor law regulations.

Project

A container for organizing time entries and tracking work. Projects enable billing, reporting, and team coordination.

Project Administrator

A user who manages a specific project including members, settings, and approvals. Limited to that project scope.

Project Visibility

Settings controlling who can see a project and its data. Determines access for non-assigned members.

Public Holiday

Official days off recognized by a country's government. Most employees are entitled to paid leave.

Revenue

Income generated from billable work. Calculated by multiplying billable hours by revenue rates.

Role

A set of permissions defining what a user can do. Roles include administrator, project administrator, and member.

Tattleware

An informal, critical label for employee-monitoring software that captures screenshots, app usage, activity scores, or other digital surveillance data.

Temporal Rate

Rates that change over time with preserved history. Allows accurate retrospective reporting when rates are updated.

Time Rounding

Adjusting recorded time to the nearest interval for cleaner billing or reporting. Common intervals are 5, 15, or 30 minutes.

Time Tracking

The process of recording how employees spend their working hours. Enables payroll, billing, and productivity analysis.

Timer

The built-in stopwatch in Sandtime.io. Start it to begin tracking time, stop it to save the entry automatically to the current day in your timesheet.

Timesheet

A record of hours worked by an employee over a specific period. Used for payroll, billing, and compliance.

Undertime

Hours logged below the daily or weekly goal. Sandtime.io shows undertime as an unfilled progress bar - the gap between what you planned to work and what you tracked.

Utilization Rate

The percentage of available work hours spent on billable activities. A key metric for professional services profitability.

Weekly Goal

The total number of hours Sandtime.io expects you to log in a given week, calculated automatically from your core hours setting.

Keep exploring

Continue with the most relevant Sandtime.io pages for this topic.

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