Glossary

Absenteeism is the pattern of absence across a team over time, not a single day off. How the measure is used, and how it gets misread.

Actual hours are the effort a piece of work really consumed, as logged. What they are evidence of, and what they are not.

An allocation band groups a day's planned hours into a named load level. Why bands are read faster than numbers on a crowded grid.

Annual leave is the planned holiday allocation people book in advance. How the type behaves differently from every other leave balance.

An assigned shift is the named time window one person is expected to work. Why it, and not the office opening time, is the right yardstick.

An attendance management system records when each person starts and stops work and compares it with their shift. How it differs from time tracking.

Attendance rate is the share of expected working days a person was actually present. How it is worked out, and why the denominator decides the number.

Available hours are what remains of a person's period after leave, holidays and commitments come off. The number every plan should start from.

Bench time is paid time with no work assigned to it, also called idle time. Why it is a planning signal and not a performance one.

Billable hours are the logged hours attributable to client work. What the classification decides, and where PeopleMuster stops.

Billable utilisation narrows the numerator to client-flagged hours only. What the narrower measure catches that a total utilisation figure hides.

The Bradford Factor scores absence as spells squared times total days, so frequent short absences outweigh one long one. The formula, worked through.

Capacity planning matches the work a firm has taken on against the hours it genuinely has. What the exercise answers, and when it is worth doing.

Capacity utilisation measures logged hours against genuinely available hours, with leave and holidays removed first. Why that denominator is fairer.

Casual leave is a short-notice allocation for personal matters, common in South Asian HR. How it sits between annual and sick leave.

Clock-in and clock-out are the paired records that open and close a working period. Why neither one means anything without the other.

Comp-off, or time off in lieu, is paid time off given back for extra hours or a worked rest day. How employers set the rate, the expiry and the record.

Compassionate leave is time away after a bereavement or family crisis. Why it is event-triggered rather than an allocation to spend.

Core hours are the window everyone must be available, inside an otherwise flexible day. How to pick the window, and what it is really for.

A daily recap is a short end-of-day account of where the hours went, logged per project. Why the daily rhythm beats a weekly catch-up.

Draft and submitted are the two states a timesheet moves between before review. Why the transition needs to be an event somebody can see.

An effort estimate predicts the work a piece of delivery will take, in hours or days. Why an estimate without a range is barely an estimate.

A fixed price engagement agrees one figure for a defined scope. Where the risk sits, and why the hours still need recording.

Flexitime lets people vary start and finish times while still meeting a total. What the arrangement asks of a team, and where it breaks down.

FTE expresses staffing in units of one full-time person. What the unit is good for, and the two things it quietly discards.

A grace period is the buffer after a shift start before an arrival counts as late. How wide to set it, and what widening it actually costs.

A half day is an approved arrangement to work roughly half a shift. How it is requested, counted against a quota, and recorded properly.

Headcount capacity estimates a team's delivery capacity from how many people it has. Where the estimate is useful, and where it misleads.

A holiday calendar is the published list of non-working dates for a period. What it has to feed, and when it needs publishing.

An hourly project is charged on effort spent rather than a fixed total. How the classification changes what the time record has to carry.

An HRIS stores the employee record; an HRMS runs the daily HR processes on top of it. How to tell which one a vendor is really selling you.

Late minutes measure how late an arrival was, as well as whether it was late. Why the minute count tells a different story from a late-day count.

Leave accrual is entitlement earned gradually across a period rather than granted up front. How the two models differ where it counts.

Carry-over is unused leave moved into the next period. Why caps and deadlines exist, and the December rush they are meant to prevent.

Leave encashment pays unused leave days as money: encashable days × daily rate, gross. How the daily rate is set, which leave qualifies, when it is paid.

A leave management system holds every leave type, balance and request in one place. What it replaces, and the four records it has to keep straight.

A leave quota is the allocation of days available under one leave type for a period. How quotas are set per type and per person.

A leave year is the twelve-month period a leave balance is measured against. Why the boundary you pick changes everybody's behaviour.

A logging window is how far back a person may still enter or amend time. Why the width of that window is the single strongest lever on data quality.

A manual punch is an attendance time entered by a person rather than captured by a device. When it is legitimate, and what must go with it.

A milestone is a named point in a project that is either reached or not. What makes one useful, and what makes one decorative.

A missed punch is a scan that never happened, leaving an incomplete record. How the gap gets closed, and why the fix needs a trail.

A night shift runs mainly through the overnight hours and crosses midnight. Why crossing midnight breaks so many attendance calculations.

A no-show is a scheduled shift nobody attended and nobody reported. What separates it from an absence, and why it is a cover emergency.

Non-billable hours are real work that no client engagement carries. Why the category deserves tracking rather than treating as waste.

On-time rate is the share of arrivals inside the allowed start window. Why it is a fairer punctuality measure than simply counting late days.

Over-allocation plans more hours than a person has; under-allocation plans fewer. Two ends of one scale, and why both go unseen.

Overtime is time worked beyond a person's normal scheduled hours. What the term measures, and why the threshold is never a universal number.

Paid leave is approved time away where the person continues to be paid. What the flag means for planning, and where its rules come from.

A partial day is attendance that is neither a full day present nor an absence. Why it deserves its own status rather than being rounded away.

Presenteeism is being at work while unable to work properly. Why attendance data cannot see it, and what does reveal it instead.

A project health score summarises delivery risk in one figure. What a score can genuinely do, and the false comfort it can create.

A project portfolio is every live engagement seen together rather than one at a time. What only becomes visible at that level.

A public holiday is a day the wider calendar treats as non-working. How it interacts with leave, shifts and attendance records.

Resource allocation assigns named people to project work for a set period and set hours. How it differs from capacity planning, and how to allocate well.

A resource plan is the published view of who is on what across a period. What makes one usable, and what quietly makes it fiction.

A rotating shift moves people between time windows on a repeating cycle. How rotation patterns work and why the direction of rotation matters.

A shift differential is the extra recognition attached to less desirable hours, such as nights or weekends. What the term means and where it stops.

A shift roster is the published plan of who works which shift over a period. What a roster must answer before it is worth publishing at all.

Sick leave is time away because of illness, taken without notice. Why it cannot be planned, and what that means for cover.

A split shift breaks one working day into two separated blocks with a long unpaid gap between them. Where the pattern is used and what it costs.

Standard hours are the baseline a role is expected to work in a period. How the baseline is used, and why it is not one number everywhere.

Target utilisation is the rate a firm plans to run at, not the one it measures. How to set one per team and per role, with a worked example in hours.

Time and a half is a multiplier concept: one and a half units of recognition for each unit of qualifying time worked. What the phrase means.

Time and materials charges for effort actually spent rather than an agreed total. Where the model fits, and what it demands in return.

Time logging is the act of recording how working time was spent against work items. Why the delay between doing and logging decides the data quality.

A timesheet is the record of how a person's working time was spent, split across the work it went to. What makes one trustworthy enough to act on.

Timesheet approval is the review step where somebody other than the author accepts the hours. What a real review checks, and what it cannot.

Unpaid leave, also called unpaid time off, is approved absence without pay. Why it still needs a record and a proper approval.

An unplanned absence is time away with little or no notice. Why the notice, not the reason, is what makes it operationally different.

Utilisation rate is logged hours divided by available hours, as a percentage. The formula, a worked example and a benchmark Deltek published in May 2026.

A utilisation report presents hours and their split over a period. What belongs in one, and the number it should never carry alone.

Variance is the gap between what was planned and what happened. Why the direction and the pattern matter more than the size.

An HRIS is the system of record for your people: who works here, in what role, reporting to whom. Why its data quality decides every HR report.

An HRMS is software that runs daily HR work on one employee record: attendance, leave, time and onboarding. What sits inside one and who logs in.

PSA software runs client work for service firms: projects, time, people and capacity. What sits inside it, and how it relates to your HR system.

Working hours are the hours actually worked in a period, after breaks come off. Why they differ from time on site and from time logged.