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This page is the structural view of TimeTracker. If how TimeTracker works is the story, this is the map.

The shape

The records, one by one

Workspace

The tenant. Everything below belongs to exactly one workspace and never crosses between them. See workspaces.

Member

A person’s membership of a workspace. This is where their role lives, so the same login can be an Owner in one workspace and a Member in another. A member also carries their rates, their schedule and their group memberships.
A member is not the same as an invitation. An invitation is a pending offer of access. It counts toward your seats, but it is not yet a person. Once accepted it becomes a membership, and the two are never double-counted. See pending invitations.

Group

A standing team of people – “Design”, “Engineering”, “Dublin office”. Groups are used for reporting and for supervision scope. A group does not own projects. It is a way of naming a set of people.

Client

A company you bill. Clients own projects and are the anchor for the client portal.

Project

One engagement for one client. This is the most important record in the product, because almost everything hangs off it: tasks, time, budget, rates, invoices and portal access. A project belongs to exactly one client. Moving a project to a different client changes who can see it in the portal, because portal access is derived from the client. See project visibility.

Section

The phases or columns inside a project – “To do / Doing / Done”, or “Discovery / Design / Build / Launch”. Sections are per project, so each project describes its own workflow. Sections are the user-facing status model for tasks. See project sections.

Task

The unit of work. A task sits in a section, inside a project. A task carries an estimate, assignees, tags, subtasks, comments, attachments, dependencies and a task number. See task fields.

Time entry

The atom of the whole product: one person, one stretch of time, against one task or project. Every entry records:
  • Who, when, how long
  • Which task or project
  • Billable or not
  • A frozen copy of the rates that applied at that moment
That last one matters. Changing a rate next month never rewrites last month’s numbers. See rate snapshots.

Timesheet

Not a separate record you fill in – it is a view of one person’s time entries for one week, plus a submission state. Recording time is filling in your timesheet. The timesheet adds the workflow: draft → submitted → approved or rejected, and locked once approved. See how timesheets work.

Timecard

A record of presence: clocked in at 09:02, clocked out at 17:30. It says you were at work. It does not say what you worked on. Timecards and time entries are separate on purpose. A factory or shop floor cares about presence. An agency cares about what the hours were spent on. Some businesses track both. See Time Clock.

Budget

A ceiling on a project – hours or money, one-time or monthly. Recorded time consumes it. See how budgets work.

Rate

The price of an hour. There are two kinds, and they are walled off from each other:
  • Billable rate – what you charge
  • Cost rate – what it costs you
Rates can be set at several levels, and a resolution order decides which one wins for a given hour. See how rates are chosen.

Expense

A cost that is not an hour – software, travel, a stock photo licence. An expense can be billable, in which case it can end up on an invoice. See expenses.

Leave request

Time off, checked against a leave policy and a balance. See time off.

Planned block

Intended work, placed on a calendar before it happens. A block has one organiser and a roster of participants. Only the organiser’s copy syncs to Google Calendar. A block is an intention. A time entry is a record. They never merge. See planner vs tracked time.

Invoice

A bill to a client, made of lines. Lines usually come from approved billable time and billable expenses. An invoice snapshots the details it needs – including your own company’s “bill from” block – so changing your address next year does not rewrite last year’s invoices. See invoice sender details.

Payment

Money received against an invoice. Several payments can sit against one invoice, which is why partially_paid is a real status. See record a payment.

Which records depend on which

Useful to know before you delete something. Nothing is deleted in one step. Most deletes move the record to Trash first, and high-impact deletes ask you to type the record’s name to confirm.

One-to-many at a glance

How TimeTracker works

The same model as a story, with numbers.

Glossary

Every term defined in one place.

Archive, Trash and Delete

What happens when a record goes away.

Projects overview

The record most of the model hangs off.