Key concepts

Key concepts

The handful of words mTime uses everywhere, and what each one means here.

Your organization

Workspace — your company’s own space in mTime: its employees, settings and data. One customer is one workspace. If you have access to several, you switch between them in the sidebar.
Org unit — a node in your organization tree, such as a department or a team. See Org units.
Employee and employment — an employee is the person; an employment is one engagement with your company, with its own start and end dates. An employee can have several employments over time. See Managing employees.
Employment terms — the contract-level setup shared by a group of employments: their work time norm, policies and time accounts. See Employment terms.
Manager — the person an employee reports to, who approves their timesheets and time off.

Timesheet — the grid for one period (a week or a month) where an employee’s time registrations live. It is what gets submitted and approved. See Timesheet.
Time registration — a single block of recorded time on an activity.
Activity — what time is registered on, such as a kind of work. An activity can also ask for a reason, dimensions or a project. See Activities.
Check in / check out — recording when someone arrives and leaves, in the app or on a kiosk.
Auto-registration — time registrations mTime creates by itself according to the work time policy, for example a lunch deduction.
Work time norm — the hours an employee is expected to work per day or week, from their employment terms.

Time off — every kind of leave: vacation, sick leave, parental leave and so on. An employee requests time off, and the request is approved or declined. See Time off.
Time account — a balance of time, such as vacation days, flex hours or a time bank. Its movements explain the balance: accrual (earning), consumption (spending), carryover, expiration, payout and adjustment (a manual correction). See Time accounts.
Flex — the running difference between the time worked and the norm, kept on a flex account and settled at the end of each period.
Allowance — a pay supplement calculated from worked time, such as an evening allowance. It is not a time off balance.

Policy — a set of rules you configure. A work time policy decides how worked time is counted, a time off policy how time off is earned and used, an allowance policy which supplements are paid, and a settlement policy what happens to a time account at the end of each period. See Settlement policies for how they come together.
Approval — an employee submits a timesheet, which then waits as pending for the approver. The approver approves or rejects it; time off requests are approved or declined. An approved timesheet can be reopened for corrections and submitted again. See Approvals.
Timesheet statement — the locked summary of a completed timesheet period, with its totals and account movements. It is what managers and payroll look at. See Timesheet statements.