Glossary

Accessible record — a time record the worker can see without making a request. Part of the standard where a duty to record working time applies, and the cheapest data quality control available.

Automatic capture — inferring time from device activity. The most accurate method and the most intrusive, which are the same property.

Billable hour — a unit of account rather than a measurement. It rewards hours over outcomes, and every borderline decision tilts one way.

Capacity factor — actual project effort as a proportion of contracted hours, derived from history. Usually much lower than planning models assume.

Catch-all rate — proportion of time recorded to a general or other category. Rising means the structure has stopped fitting the work.

Estimate factor — the measured ratio of actual to estimated effort, by work category. Free once actuals exist, and rarely used.

Idle detection — noticing that input stopped. A duration question when it prompts the person to classify the gap; a monitoring question when it decides silently.

Purpose limitation — the written commitment that data collected for pay, billing and costing is not used for other things. Here it is also what keeps the data accurate, since the record is written by the person it describes.

Realisation — the chain from recorded hours to billed hours to collected amount. The two gaps are where the money is.

Recording delay — time between the work and the entry. The single strongest predictor of accuracy and the most responsive to design.

Tidiness — proportion of daily totals landing exactly on round figures. A high rate indicates reconciliation rather than a well-run week.

Write-off — time recorded and not billed. Usually a pricing, scoping or staffing finding rather than a performance one.

Terms used loosely elsewhere

"Time tracking" covers four different purposes — recording hours, billing, costing and monitoring — with different data, different law and different failure modes. These notes name which one.

"Productivity" in this field usually means keystroke counts. It measures input, not work.

"Objective record" is a legal standard, not a marketing claim. It means actual time rather than scheduled time, reliable and accessible to the worker.

"Utilisation" is a planning measure. As an individual target it removes supervision, training and business development from the record.

"Compliance" is sometimes used for whether timesheets were submitted. The word properly refers to the legal duty, which is about the employer's obligation rather than the worker's punctuality.

How to read these notes

Start with the foundations if the subject is new, particularly the note separating recording from monitoring.

Start with the legal section if you operate in the EU, where recording daily working time is a duty rather than a choice.

Start with the boundary section if activity monitoring has been proposed.

Start with common failures if a deployment has stalled.

Nothing here is legal advice, and the notes say so where it matters.

On the numbers in these notes

A short note on how to treat any figure here.

No benchmarks are quoted, deliberately. Recording accuracy, utilisation and realisation depend on the work, the recording method and the sector, and a figure from elsewhere predicts nothing about your organisation.

No accuracy percentages are given for timesheet data, because the error depends almost entirely on recording delay, which you can measure and change.

Where a relationship is stated — that accuracy falls with delay, that individual targets remove investment work from the record, that write-offs are usually a pricing finding — that is the part worth relying on.

Every number worth having is your own, measured the same way twice.

Terms deliberately avoided

Several common phrases in this field are not used in these notes.

"Employee monitoring software" covers products that record duration and products that capture screens. These notes name the specific capability.

"Productivity score" describes an input count presented as an outcome measure.

"Idle time" is used both for a gap in input and for time not worked. They are not the same and conflating them is how unpaid work happens.

"Timesheet compliance" describes whether forms arrived, which is not what compliance means in the legal sense that matters here.

"Best practice" conceals whose practice and in what jurisdiction. These notes state the trade-off instead.

Turn the principle into a test

For an example that can make this requirement testable, consult this terminology example. Treat the page as a starting point rather than proof: reproduce the workflow with real roles, exceptions and permissions before relying on the result.