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Glossary
Every term VERA uses, in plain English. When something is referenced elsewhere in this documentation, it links back here.
A
Allocation
See Envelope.
Alert threshold
The percentage of budget used that triggers a warning. Default is 80%. When a project reaches 80% of its hours budget, VERA flags it. Configurable per-project and per-task.
Agile project
A project type made up of numbered sprints. The parent Agile project is a container — it has no contract value or budget of its own. Each sprint has its own contract value and hours budget. See Agile & Sprints.
B
Billing rate
The hourly rate charged to the client (revenue-side). Distinct from hourly_cost, which is what the agency pays the team member (cost-side). Set per-project in the Projects Master sheet. Owner-managed.
Budget (project-level)
The total hours contracted or available for a project — budget_hours in the Projects sheet. Set by the Owner only. This is the Tier 1 budget. Not to be confused with allocations (Tier 2).
Burn rate
How fast a retainer is consuming its monthly hours budget. Expressed as a pace: hours logged ÷ days elapsed. VERA projects this forward to the end of the month and flags over/underpace. See Retainers.
C
Client
An organization or entity that work is done for. Every project must belong to a client. Internal overhead work uses the built-in "Internal" client.
Contract value
The total dollar amount agreed with a client for a project (Fixed Price) or sprint (Agile). Used for revenue recognition — VERA calculates earned revenue as a percentage of completion against this value.
Cost
What the agency pays to deliver the work. Calculated as hours × hourly_cost from Rate History. For vendor users with an active liability, the liability's agreed_amount overrides the hourly calculation entirely.
D
Deadline
The project delivery date. Visible to Owners and Managers. Never shown to Users. Not used for billing — it exists for capacity planning and delivery management.
Discipline
A functional role category — e.g. Engineering, Design, Account Management. Used for capacity planning (check_capacity) and team categorisation. Separate from the user's permission role.
E
Envelope
A per-person hour budget on a specific project. When a Manager says "give Alice 40 hours on the Nike project," that creates an envelope. The name comes from the practice of putting a fixed amount of money in an envelope — once it's spent, it's spent. Tool names use "allocation" (e.g. allocate_hours) but the concept is always an envelope. See Envelopes.
F
Fixed Price project
A project billed at a flat contract value regardless of hours. Revenue is recognised progressively: (hours_logged ÷ hours_budget) × contract_value. Work should stop when hours_budget is exhausted.
Forecast (envelope-aware)
For retainers, VERA can project end-of-month hours two ways: (1) based on historical pace alone, or (2) hours_logged + allocated_remaining — the envelope-aware forecast, which accounts for planned work already committed in active envelopes. The envelope-aware forecast is more accurate when teams actively maintain envelopes. See Retainers.
H
Health status
A project's overall delivery risk indicator. Computed from burn rate vs. budget:
- Healthy (>70% budget remaining) — ✅
- Watch (50–70% remaining) — ⚠️
- At Risk (<50% remaining) — 🚨
Hourly cost
What the agency pays a team member per hour. Stored in Rate History with an effective date. Used to calculate project cost and margin. Owner-only data — never surfaced to Managers or Users.
L
Liability
A fixed payment commitment to a vendor user on a project. Example: "We agreed to pay Dev House X $5,000 for the auth module." When a liability exists, it replaces the hours × rate cost calculation for that vendor on that project. Create/cancel is Owner-only; read is Owner and Manager. See Vendors & Liabilities.
M
Manager
A permission role. Managers can see their assigned projects (percentages only, no dollar amounts), manage envelopes for those projects, and approve time off. See Roles & Permissions.
Margin
Revenue minus cost for a project. Margin = Revenue − Cost. Shown as a dollar amount to Owners, or as a percentage to Managers.
O
Out of Office (OOO)
A protected project category (time_off) used to track employee absence. Users submit requests via request_time_off; Managers approve via approve_time_off. Time is only logged to OOO after approval — Users cannot log directly to the OOO project.
Owner
The highest permission role. Owners see everything: dollar amounts, rates, all projects, all users. See Roles & Permissions.
P
P&L (Profit & Loss)
Revenue minus cost, at the project or portfolio level. VERA calculates this live from time entries, rate history, and liabilities.
Pro Bono project
A project type with $0 revenue. Hours are tracked but no billing is generated. Useful for charity work, community projects, or internal initiatives that don't need financial tracking.
Project Master (22. Projects Master)
A sheet that stores financial metadata for each project: type, contract value, billing rate, is_billable. It's the source of truth for revenue calculations. Joined to the Projects sheet by project name.
PTO (Paid Time Off)
Vacation or paid absence. Requested by Users, approved by Managers/Owners. The approval automatically logs the time entry. See Time Off Requests.
R
Rate History (13. Rate History)
An append-only ledger of hourly costs per team member. Each row has an effective_from date. When calculating cost for a past entry, VERA finds the rate that was effective on that entry's date. Changing a rate never alters historical data.
Retainer project
A project billed at a fixed monthly fee. The client pays for a set number of hours per month (budget_hours). VERA tracks monthly burn rate and flags over/underspend. See Retainers.
Revenue
Money earned from a project. How it's calculated depends on project type — see Financials & P&L.
Role
A user's permission level: owner, manager, or user. Controls what data they can see and what actions they can take. See Roles & Permissions.
S
Sprint
A time-boxed work unit within an Agile project. Sprints have two statuses: planned ($0 revenue) and active (revenue accrues as hours are logged). Sprint numbers are auto-incremented. See Agile & Sprints.
T
T&M (Time & Materials)
A project type where the client is billed for actual hours worked at the billing rate. Revenue = hours × billing_rate. Work should stop when hours_budget is exhausted.
Task
A work category used when logging time — e.g. Development, Design, QA, Client Meeting. Tasks must be enabled for a project before they can be used. Tasks can have their own hour budgets and alert thresholds.
Tenant
A single workspace/client of the VERA platform. Each tenant has its own Slack app, Google Sheet, and credentials. Multi-tenant means one VERA deployment serves many agencies independently.
Time entry
A single logged record of work: a person, a project, a task, hours, and a date. The atomic unit of all time tracking.
U
Unresolved item
A flagged operational issue that requires a Manager's attention — e.g. a team member is sick or absent while they have active project envelopes, or someone's total envelopes exceed their available capacity. Envelopes are project-lifetime budgets (not day- or week-specific), so a conflict means "this person is absent and has ongoing committed work" — not "they were scheduled to work that specific day." Shown in morning summaries as 🔴 blocks.
User
The base permission role. Users can log their own time, request time off, and view their own entries. See Roles & Permissions.
V
Vendor
A team member with employment_type = "vendor". Represents an external contractor or agency. PMs log hours on behalf of vendors. Vendor cost is typically governed by a liability rather than hourly rate.
Variance
The difference between planned and actual. Used in two contexts:
- Hour variance: estimated hours − actual hours logged
- Cost variance: estimated cost − actual cost
- Burn rate variance: projected end-of-month hours − monthly budget (for retainers)