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Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the terms used across TimeLogger.

The words TimeLogger uses, in plain language.

Tracking#

Term	What it means
Agent	The desktop app that records time, apps and — where the policy allows — screenshots. Always visible in Task Manager.
Manual timer	A tracking mode where nothing is recorded until the person presses Start.
Automatic	A tracking mode where the agent records inside the capture window with no clicks.
Hybrid	Automatic capture plus an optional timer to attribute time to a project.
Visible / Silent	The agent variant. Visible shows a tray icon and window; Silent runs without them on company-owned devices, only when every gate is met.
Capture window	When the agent may capture: a working-hours fence, always, or while signed in. It’s never an attendance expectation.
Private time	A pause of all capture for personal time, up to a daily allowance. Managers see only the total.
Idle / away	No input for a while becomes idle, then away. What happens to that time depends on the policy.
Offline buffer	Where the agent keeps captured data while offline, encrypted on the device, until it can upload.
Activity level	An estimate from keystroke and mouse counts — never what was typed. The formula is published.
Score-only (non-invasive)	A capture profile with no screenshots, webcam or live view. Scores still work from app and site classification.

Time and approvals#

Term	What it means
Time entry	One stretch of time: who, when, project, task and note, and whether it came from a timer, the agent, or was added by hand.
Self-reported	Time added by hand, including offline entries such as a client visit. Counted as tracked but never as active time.
Timesheet	One person’s time for one period (daily, weekly, twice a month or monthly), submitted for approval.
Approved / locked	Approved hours are the hand-off to payroll and billing. Locked periods can’t change without an audited unlock.
Rounding	Optional rounding of totals in timesheets and exports. Stored time is never changed.
Worth a look	Data-quality patterns worth a conversation, such as a very long session. Prompts, never verdicts.

Policies and compliance#

Term	What it means
Tracking policy	The versioned settings that decide exactly what is captured for the people it applies to.
Scope	Where a policy is assigned: workspace, department, team, member or device. Narrower scopes win, field by field.
Effective policy	The final settings for one person or device after every policy and rule is combined.
Compliance profile	A workspace-wide ruleset (Standard, GDPR-safe, HIPAA-safe, GLBA-safe) that only ever removes collection.
Regional rules	Rules for where people work — for example no Silent mode in the EU — worked out from settings the owner enters, never from location.
Forced change	A setting a profile or rule switched off for someone, shown next to the policy.
Scheduled change	A policy change that collects more, waiting for its start date so people are told first.
Disclosure	The plain-language notice of what is and isn’t collected. People acknowledge it before any capture.

Administration#

Term	What it means
Enrollment token	A secret that lets agents join the workspace during a silent install. Shown once.
Pin / rollback	Keeping a device or the whole workspace on a chosen agent version.
Audit log	The append-only record of every privileged action, with before and after values.
Deletion receipt	A signed record of data deleted by retention or erasure.
Erasure certificate	A signed record of what was deleted and what was kept, and why, when someone’s data is erased.
API key / scope	A credential for the public API, limited to the resources its scopes name and to its creator’s role.
Seat	For billing: a person with tracked time in the billing period.

Something unclear or out of date? Tell your workspace admin, or write to the TimeLogger team from Settings — we update these guides with every release.