Glossary.

The words Hours at Work uses, with definitions. Bookmark this page — every other guide uses these terms exactly as defined here.

Workspace

Your organization's space in Hours at Work — one nonprofit with its own URL, settings, charge codes, people, and data. Each workspace lives on its own subdomain (your-org.hoursatwork.com).

Role

Every person has exactly one role — Staff, Approver, or Admin. Roles set base permissions: who can log hours, who can sign off, who can manage the workspace.

• Staff — Logs their own hours. The default base role.
• Approver — Reviews and signs off on a staff member's timesheets. Can also log their own hours.
• Admin — Full workspace access. Manages charge codes, periods, exports, billing, and people.
• Primary admin — The single admin who holds workspace ownership. Can transfer this status to another admin.

Access

An optional add-on on top of a role, granting analyst capabilities. Granted per person on the User profile.

• Fiscal Analyst — Unlocks the fund-side reports (Funding Reconciliation, Charge-code Effort, Staff Effort).
• HR Analyst — Unlocks the payroll-side reports (Payroll Readiness, Unfinished, Pending Approvals, Late Submissions, 40h Threshold, Weekly Reconciliation, Compliance Gaps, HR Export).

In some builds the UI labels the Fiscal Analyst Access checkbox as Fiscal Manager — same Access, different label. The canonical term is Fiscal Analyst.

Charge code

Anything staff allocate hours to — a grant, an admin category, or a leave type. Every charge code has a Name (what staff see), a Code (short identifier for HR exports), a Kind, and (for Grant kinds) a Funder and Funder type.

Charge-code kind

The category of a charge code. One of:

• Admin — Unbillable internal time. Staff meetings, internal projects.
• Grant — Billable to a funder. Requires a Funder and Funder type.
• Leave — PTO, sick, holiday, bereavement. Requires a Leave subtype.

Funder

The granting organization behind a Grant-kind charge code (e.g. HRSA, CDC, Kellogg Foundation). A field on a charge code, not a synonym for the charge code itself.

Funder type

The category of the funder — Federal, State, Foundation, Local, Internal, or Other. Drives the breakdown on Funder reports.

Funding split

Each staff member's allocation of expected hours across one or more charge codes, set by your Admin on the User profile → Timeline. Stored as a series of versions — each with an effective-from date and an optional effective-to date — so a staff member can have one split, then a new one, then a new one again over the course of a year.

Funding Reconciliation reads splits week by week. For each Monday-starting week in your date range, it picks whichever version was in effect on that week's Monday and distributes that week's expected hours across the version's charge codes. When you schedule a funding-split change, set the effective-from date to a Monday — that keeps the week-by-week math aligned with the version change.

Pay period

A biweekly or semi-monthly window during which staff log hours and after which payroll runs.

• Cadence — Biweekly (every two weeks) or Semi-monthly (the 1st and 16th of each month).
• Pay period status — OPEN means staff can still submit and approvers can approve. CLOSED means edits are frozen.

Pay category

A payroll code (REG, OT, HOL, VAC, SCK, DIFF, CALL) used in HR exports. Distinct from charge codes — pay categories describe how the hour gets paid (regular, overtime, holiday); charge codes describe what the hour was spent on.

Timesheet

One staff member's hours for one work week. Has one of four statuses:

• DRAFT — Saved but not submitted. Editable.
• SUBMITTED — Submitted to the approver. Read-only until the approver decides.
• APPROVED — Signed by the approver. The Signed PDF is available for download.
• REJECTED — Sent back by the approver with a note. Editable again until resubmitted.

Work week

The seven-day grid staff log against. Either Monday–Sunday or Sunday–Saturday, set by the Admin on the workspace.

Approver assignment

The Staff-to-Approver mapping, with an effective-from date and an optional effective-to date. Each staff member has exactly one active Approver at a time; setting a new Approver end-dates the previous one automatically.

Delegation

A temporary reroute of an Approver's pending queue to a delegate, for a date range — vacation coverage, parental leave, conference travel. Only the Admin can set up a Delegation.

Period locking

The Admin-applied lock that prevents edits to all timesheets on or before a chosen cutoff date.

Lock through date

The cutoff date used when applying a Period lock. Every timesheet ending on or before this date is locked.

Signed PDF

The audit-ready PDF generated when a timesheet is approved. One staff member, one week. Carries the hours table, both signatures (staff and approver), timestamps, IPs, and a device hash.

Bundle PDF

A multi-week, multi-staff PDF pulled by a Fiscal Analyst for a date range, for funder reporting. Generated from the Staff Effort report's multi-select Download bundle.

Submission deadline

Business days after pay period end by which staff must submit. Set by the Admin on Workspace settings.

Department

Optional grouping of staff inside a workspace (e.g. Programs, Clinical, Operations). Used for filtering reports.

FTE

Full-time-equivalent factor for a staff member — 1.0 is full time, 0.6 is 24 hours a week, and so on. Drives expected hours in the 40h Threshold report.

Terms to avoid

If you've used other time-tracking systems, you've probably picked up vocabulary that doesn't line up with Hours at Work. The terms below are out — every doc, screen, and report uses the canonical term instead.