Workforce terms explained, the Indian way.
88 plain-English definitions covering attendance verification, time tracking, shift rosters, leave, payroll, labour codes, and security-guard operations. Each entry explains what the term means, how it is calculated or applied in India, and where it shows up in day-to-day HR and operations work.
A
Absenteeism Rate
Absenteeism rate is the percentage of scheduled working days or hours lost to unplanned employee absence over a period. The basic formula is unplanned absent days divided by total scheduled working days, multiplied by 100. It excludes approved leave, weekly offs and holidays. It is the key operational measure of workforce reliability and a direct driver of overtime and reliever cost.
Read definitionAttendance Management System
An attendance management system is software that records when employees start and finish work, applies the company's shift, late-mark and leave rules to those records, routes corrections through approvals, and produces the attendance reports and paid-day counts that payroll depends on. It replaces paper registers, Excel sheets and WhatsApp messages with one auditable record per employee per day.
Read definitionAttendance Percentage
Attendance percentage is the share of scheduled working days on which an employee was present, calculated as days present divided by total working days in the period, multiplied by 100. Weekly offs and holidays are excluded from the denominator; half days count as 0.5 and approved leave is treated according to company policy. It is used for attendance incentives, performance reviews and absenteeism tracking.
Read definitionAttendance Register
An attendance register is the record, on paper or electronic, in which an employer marks each employee's presence, absence, leave and holidays for every day of the month, with the columns and signatures that the applicable labour law prescribes. It differs from an informal attendance sheet in that it is a statutory document open to inspection and forms the basis of the wage register.
Read definitionAttendance Regularization
Attendance regularization is the formal process by which an employee requests a correction to their attendance record – a missed punch, a wrong status, outdoor duty not captured by the system – and a manager approves or rejects it before the record is locked for payroll. Every change is logged with who requested it, who approved it and why, so the final attendance is auditable.
Read definitionAttendance Roster
An attendance roster is the published shift plan against which each employee's punches are validated. It states who is expected on which shift, at which site, on which date, so that the attendance system can decide whether a punch is on time, late, early, on a weekly off or on a day the person was not scheduled at all. Roster plus punches equals attendance.
Read definitionB
Basic Salary
Basic salary is the fixed core component of an employee's pay on which most statutory calculations rest: EPF contributions, gratuity, statutory bonus and usually HRA are computed on basic (with dearness allowance where paid). Under the Code on Wages, basic plus DA and retaining allowance must form at least 50% of total remuneration.
Read definitionBiometric Attendance
Biometric attendance records an employee's presence by verifying a physical trait – fingerprint, face, iris or palm vein – against a stored template at the moment of punching. Because the trait cannot be lent to a colleague the way a card or PIN can, it is the standard defence against buddy punching, and it forms the capture layer of most factory and office attendance systems in India.
Read definitionBuddy Punching
Buddy punching is when one employee marks attendance on behalf of another who is late, absent or has already left – swiping a colleague's card, entering their PIN, signing their name in the register or punching from their phone. It inflates paid days and overtime for people who were not at work, and it is the main fraud that biometric and face-verified attendance systems exist to stop.
Read definitionC
Casual Leave (CL)
Casual leave is short-notice paid leave for unforeseen personal matters such as a family emergency, a government appointment or a sudden household need. Entitlements are set by state Shops and Establishments Acts and company policy, commonly up to 12 days a year, and CL is usually granted for one to three days at a time, does not carry forward, and is not encashable.
Read definitionCode on Wages, 2019
The Code on Wages, 2019 is the central law that merges the Payment of Wages Act, Minimum Wages Act, Payment of Bonus Act and Equal Remuneration Act into one statute. In force from 21 November 2025 alongside the other three Labour Codes, it fixes a uniform definition of wages, extends minimum wages to all workers, requires overtime at twice the normal rate and sets deadlines for paying wages.
Read definitionCompensatory Off (Comp Off)
Compensatory off is a paid day off granted to an employee who worked on a weekly off or a declared holiday, in lieu of that lost rest day. The Factories Act requires compensatory holidays when a worker is deprived of the weekly holiday, to be given within the same month or the two months following. Comp off is distinct from overtime pay, which compensates extra hours with money rather than time.
Read definitionContract Labour
Contract labour means workers hired by or through a contractor to work in an establishment, rather than employed directly by it. Security guards, housekeeping staff, canteen workers and loaders are common examples. The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act 1970 and now the OSH Code 2020 regulate who must register, who must hold a licence, and who is finally liable for wages, PF and ESI.
Read definitionCTC (Cost to Company)
CTC, or cost to company, is the total annual amount an employer spends on an employee: gross salary plus the employer's share of EPF and EPS, employer ESI, gratuity provision, and any insurance, bonus or benefits the company funds. It is the figure quoted in offer letters, and it is always higher than both gross and in-hand salary.
Read definitionD
Dearness Allowance (DA / VDA)
Dearness allowance is a cost-of-living component paid in addition to basic salary to offset inflation. In minimum-wage employments it appears as variable dearness allowance (VDA), linked to the consumer price index and revised periodically by the state. DA counts as wages for EPF, ESI, gratuity and bonus, so it is treated exactly like basic in statutory calculations.
Read definitionDuty Roster
A duty roster is a schedule that assigns named employees to specific posts, shifts and days for a defined period, usually a week or a month. It shows who is on duty, where, at what time, and who is on weekly off or leave. Hospitals, hotels, security agencies and housekeeping teams use it as the primary control document for staffing.
Read definitionE
Earned Leave (EL / Privilege Leave)
Earned leave is paid leave an employee accrues in proportion to days worked, meant for planned time off. Under the Factories Act adults earn one day for every 20 days worked after completing 240 days in a calendar year, with carry-forward up to 30 days. Shops and Establishments Acts set their own EL entitlements, commonly 12 to 18 days a year, and EL is the leave type most often encashed.
Read definitionEmployee Database
An employee database, also called the employee master, is the single record of every person on the rolls: identity, statutory IDs, job and reporting details, pay structure and documents. Attendance rules, shift assignment, leave policy and payroll all read from it, so a wrong joining date or missing UAN in the master becomes a wrong balance, a wrong shift or a wrong deduction downstream.
Read definitionEmployee Self-Service (ESS)
Employee self-service (ESS) is the part of an HR or attendance system that lets employees view and act on their own records without going through HR: checking attendance and shift, applying for leave, raising attendance regularization requests, downloading payslips and updating personal details. Delivered through a mobile app, ESS cuts HR queries and gives shift workers direct visibility into what they will be paid.
Read definitionEPF (Employees' Provident Fund)
The Employees' Provident Fund is India's mandatory retirement savings scheme administered by EPFO. Employee and employer each contribute 12% of basic plus DA, with the employer's share split between the pension scheme (8.33%) and the provident fund (3.67%). The statutory wage ceiling rose from ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 per month on 17 September 2026, and monthly ECR filing and payment are due by the 15th.
Read definitionEPS (Employees' Pension Scheme)
The Employees' Pension Scheme 1995 is the pension component of the EPF system. Out of the employer's 12% contribution, 8.33% of the employee's wages up to the statutory ceiling (₹25,000 from 17 September 2026) is diverted to EPS. Members generally need 10 years of pensionable service to qualify for a monthly pension; shorter service earns a withdrawal benefit instead.
Read definitionESI / ESIC (Employees' State Insurance)
Employees' State Insurance is a statutory health and social-security scheme run by ESIC. It applies to establishments with 10 or more employees (20 in some states) in implemented areas, covering employees whose gross wages are up to ₹21,000 per month. The employee contributes 0.75% and the employer 3.25% of gross wages, payable by the 15th of the following month.
Read definitionF
Face Recognition Attendance
Face recognition attendance verifies an employee's identity at punch time by converting a live camera frame into a numeric face descriptor and comparing it with the descriptor stored at enrolment. A match above a set threshold, combined with a liveness check to reject photos and videos, records the punch. It runs on dedicated terminals or on ordinary Android and iOS phones.
Read definitionField Force Management
Field force management is the practice of directing, tracking and supporting employees who work away from a fixed office or plant, such as sales representatives, service technicians, delivery staff, surveyors and security guards. It covers attendance from the field, location visibility, visit or task logging, reporting and expense control, usually through a mobile app connected to a central dashboard.
Read definitionForm 16
Form 16 is the annual TDS certificate an employer issues to each salaried employee from whom tax was deducted, due by 15 June following the financial year. Part A, downloaded from TRACES, summarises tax deducted and deposited quarter by quarter; Part B shows the salary breakup, exemptions, deductions and the tax computation. Employees use it to file their income-tax return.
Read definitionFTE (Full-Time Equivalent)
FTE, or full-time equivalent, expresses the total hours worked or scheduled by a group of employees as the number of full-time positions they add up to. One FTE equals the standard full-time hours, for example 48 hours a week or 208 hours a month in India. FTE lets you compare staffing across part-time, contract and full-time workers and is used in budgeting, staffing ratios and client billing.
Read definitionG
Geofence
A geofence is a virtual boundary defined on a map – most often a circle described by a centre coordinate and a radius in metres, sometimes a polygon drawn along a plot boundary – that software uses to decide whether a GPS position is inside or outside a place. In attendance systems, each work site has a geofence and punches are tested against it.
Read definitionGeofencing Attendance
Geofencing attendance is a rule applied at punch time that accepts an employee's check-in or check-out only if the phone's GPS location falls inside a virtual boundary drawn around the workplace. The boundary, or geofence, is usually a circle of 50–200 metres around a site's coordinates. Punches from outside are rejected or flagged for supervisor review.
Read definitionGPS Attendance
GPS attendance is a mobile attendance method that records the phone's satellite location coordinates at the moment an employee punches in or out, so the employer knows not only when but where the punch was made. It is usually paired with a geofence rule that accepts the punch only inside a defined area, and with selfie or face verification to prove who punched.
Read definitionGPS Spoofing / Mock Location
GPS spoofing, or mock location, is the practice of making a phone report a false position so that a GPS or geofenced attendance punch appears to come from the work site when the employee is somewhere else. It is usually done with a free 'fake GPS' app and Android's developer-options mock-location setting, and it is the main fraud risk in mobile attendance for field and security staff.
Read definitionGrace Period (Attendance)
In attendance, a grace period is the number of minutes after the scheduled shift start during which an employee can punch in without being recorded as late – commonly 5 to 15 minutes in Indian companies. It exists to absorb queueing at the gate and small delays. A punch after the grace period ends produces a late mark; the grace itself is not extra paid time.
Read definitionGratuity
Gratuity is a lump-sum payment an employer makes to an employee who leaves after at least five years of continuous service, under the Payment of Gratuity Act 1972. It is calculated as last drawn basic plus DA multiplied by 15/26 for each completed year of service, capped at ₹20 lakh, and must be paid within 30 days of becoming due. The five-year condition does not apply on death or disablement.
Read definitionGross Salary
Gross salary is the total of all earnings an employee is paid for a period before any deductions: basic, dearness allowance, HRA, other allowances, overtime, incentives and arrears. It excludes employer contributions such as employer EPF and gratuity provisions, which belong to CTC, and it is the base on which ESI coverage and contribution are determined.
Read definitionGuard Deployment
Guard deployment is the process of assigning security guards to client sites, posts and shifts so that the contracted strength is met every day. It covers the deployment plan agreed with the client, the reliever pool that absorbs weekly offs and leave, the deployment letter that records who is posted where, and the daily check that the posted strength matches the billed strength.
Read definitionGuard Tour (Patrol Round)
A guard tour is a scheduled patrol in which a security guard walks a defined route and records presence at fixed checkpoints in sequence. A guard tour system captures the time of each checkpoint scan so the agency and client can prove the round was actually completed. Older systems used a wand and metal tags; modern systems use NFC or QR checkpoints scanned with a smartphone app.
Read definitionH
Half Day (Attendance)
A half day in attendance is a day credited as 0.5 present and 0.5 absent, triggered when an employee works less than the minimum hours for a full day – commonly under 4 to 4.5 hours of an 8-hour shift – or by a policy rule such as accumulated late marks, a very late arrival or an early exit. Pay for the day is halved unless the shortfall is covered by half-day leave.
Read definitionHeadcount
Headcount is the number of people employed by an organisation, site or department at a point in time, counting each person as one regardless of hours worked. It is distinct from FTE, which weights people by hours, and from active strength, which counts only those actually working. Reconciling headcount against attendance and payroll every month is how ghost employees and unbilled workers are caught.
Read definitionHRA (House Rent Allowance)
House rent allowance is a salary component paid to help employees meet rental housing costs, usually set at 40% to 50% of basic. It is fully taxable under the new income-tax regime; the section 10(13A) exemption is available only to employees who opt for the old regime and pay rent. HRA is excluded from wages for EPF and gratuity purposes.
Read definitionHRMS (Human Resource Management System)
HRMS stands for Human Resource Management System, software that stores and manages employee records and HR processes across the employment lifecycle: onboarding, personal and statutory data, attendance and leave, payroll, performance, documents and exit. It differs from HRIS (record-keeping focus), HCM (strategic talent focus) and WFM (daily scheduling and attendance focus), though vendors blur the lines.
Read definitionL
Labour Welfare Fund (LWF)
Labour Welfare Fund (LWF) is a statutory fund set up under individual state Acts to finance housing, medical, educational and recreational schemes for workers. In states that have one, employers deduct a small fixed contribution from eligible employees, add the employer's share, and remit both to the state Labour Welfare Board on a half-yearly or annual schedule fixed by that state.
Read definitionLate Mark
A late mark is the entry recorded against an employee when their punch-in falls after the shift start time plus any grace period. Late marks are counted per month and most Indian companies convert a set number – typically three – into a half-day deduction, while others deduct proportional minutes. The rule and its consequence must be stated in the attendance policy.
Read definitionLeave Encashment
Leave encashment is the payment an employee receives in exchange for unused earned leave, calculated as the per-day wage multiplied by the number of leave days surrendered. In India it is paid on resignation, retirement or termination as part of the final settlement, and sometimes annually while in service. On exit, non-government employees get a tax exemption of up to ₹25 lakh.
Read definitionLeave Management System
A leave management system is software that holds each employee's leave entitlements, accrues balances on a schedule, takes and approves leave requests, validates them against holidays, weekly offs, rosters and attendance, and passes approved leave and loss of pay into the monthly payroll run. It replaces paper leave cards, Excel trackers and WhatsApp approvals with one auditable record per request.
Read definitionLeave Without Pay (LWP)
Leave without pay is leave that an employee applies for and the employer approves, but for which no salary is paid because the employee has no paid leave balance or the policy does not cover the reason. Unlike unauthorised absence, LWP keeps the employment relationship and usually service continuity intact, but the days are deducted from salary as loss of pay.
Read definitionLiveness Detection
Liveness detection is the check inside a face or selfie attendance app that confirms a real, living person is in front of the camera rather than a printed photo, a phone screen playing a video, or a mask. It runs before the face is matched against the enrolled record, so an employee cannot mark attendance for a colleague by holding up their picture.
Read definitionLoss of Pay (LOP)
Loss of pay is the salary deduction for days an employee was absent without paid leave to cover them. Payroll counts LOP days from the attendance and leave records and deducts one day's pay for each, using the company's divisor (26 or calendar days). LOP reduces gross, and therefore EPF, ESI and other proportional deductions for the month, and is shown as a separate line on the payslip.
Read definitionM
Man-Hours (Man-Days)
A man-hour is one hour of work by one person; a man-day is one person's full working day, conventionally eight hours. Man-hours are computed from attendance by summing each person's worked hours across a period, and they are the unit in which security agencies, facility-management and labour contractors bill clients, estimate projects and compare productivity across sites.
Read definitionMinimum Wages
Minimum wages are the lowest legal rates of pay fixed by the appropriate government (central for scheduled central-sphere employments, otherwise the state) for each skill category and often each zone. Rates are notified as a basic wage plus variable dearness allowance and revised periodically, commonly in April and October. Paying below the notified rate is an offence regardless of what the worker agreed to.
Read definitionMissed Punch
A missed punch is an attendance record with one of its two events missing: an employee marked in but never marked out, or marked out without a matching in. The system cannot compute hours for that day, so it needs a correction, called a miss punch or regularization request, stating the reason before payroll can treat the day as worked.
Read definitionMuster Roll
A muster roll is the statutory daily attendance register an employer or contractor must maintain for workers, listing each worker by name and serial number with a mark for every day of the wage period showing present, absent, leave or holiday, together with days worked and often hours and overtime. It is the base document from which the wage register is prepared and the first record a labour inspector asks for.
Read definitionN
Net Salary (Take-Home)
Net salary is the amount credited to an employee's bank account after all deductions are taken from gross salary: employee EPF, ESI, professional tax, TDS, Labour Welfare Fund, loan or advance recoveries and any LOP already reflected in gross. It is the figure employees mean when they ask about their in-hand salary.
Read definitionNight Shift
A night shift is a work period that falls wholly or largely within the night hours, most commonly a window covering 22:00 to 06:00. It is the shift that crosses midnight, so attendance must be attached to the date it starts. Night work carries specific rules on women's employment, transport and safety under the OSH Code and state laws, and often attracts an allowance.
Read definitionNight Shift Allowance
Night shift allowance is an extra payment made to employees for each night shift worked, compensating for the inconvenience and health cost of working at night. It is set by company policy or industry award rather than a single central law, is separate from statutory overtime, and is usually a flat amount per night or a percentage of basic wage. It is taxable as salary.
Read definitionO
Offline Attendance
Offline attendance is the ability of an attendance app or kiosk to accept a punch when there is no internet, store it on the device with the original time, location and photo, and upload it automatically once a connection returns. The server records the punch at the time it was captured, not the time it was synced, so employees in basements, warehouses and remote sites are not marked late or absent because of network failure.
Read definitionOpen Shift
An open shift is a rostered shift that has no employee assigned to it and is offered to eligible staff to claim, usually through an app or notice, with a supervisor approving the claimant. Open shifts are used to fill vacancies, cover no-shows and leave, and give employees a transparent way to pick up extra work without the supervisor phoning down a list.
Read definitionOvertime (OT)
Overtime is work performed beyond the legal daily or weekly limit of working hours, which in India is generally 9 hours a day or 48 hours a week. Overtime must be paid at not less than twice the ordinary rate of wages under the Factories Act and the Code on Wages. The hourly rate is usually derived by dividing the monthly wage by 26 days and then by 8 hours.
Read definitionP
Patrol Checkpoint
A patrol checkpoint is a physical tag fixed at a specific location on a site, such as an NFC sticker, QR code or RFID tag, that a guard must scan during a patrol round to prove presence at that spot. A guard tour is a sequence of checkpoints with expected times. Checkpoint placement, tolerance windows and missed-checkpoint alerts decide whether the patrol record is useful or just noise.
Read definitionPayroll
Payroll is the end-to-end process of calculating what each employee has earned in a pay period, deducting statutory and voluntary amounts, paying the net salary, and recording and remitting the deductions. In India it covers wages, overtime, LOP, EPF, ESI, professional tax, TDS and the monthly filings that follow.
Read definitionPayroll Processing
Payroll processing is the sequence of steps that converts a month's attendance and salary data into paid salaries and statutory remittances: gather inputs, compute gross pay, apply deductions, arrive at net pay, disburse through the bank, and file EPF, ESI, TDS and professional tax within their due dates.
Read definitionPayroll Register (Wage Register)
A payroll register, also called a wage register or salary register, is the employer's month-wise record of every employee's paid days, earnings by component, deductions, employer contributions and net pay. It is a statutory register under the Code on Wages and the contract-labour rules, the source from which payslips and EPF, ESI and TDS returns are prepared, and the first record an inspector or auditor asks to see.
Read definitionPost Order (Post Instructions)
A post order is the written set of duties, procedures and rules for a specific security post at a client site. It tells the guard on that post what to check, whom to allow, what to log, when to patrol, and whom to call in an emergency. Post orders are signed off by the client, acknowledged by every guard posted there, and updated whenever the site or the risk changes.
Read definitionPrincipal Employer
The principal employer is the owner, occupier or manager of an establishment that engages contract labour through a contractor. Even though the contractor hires and pays the workers, the principal employer must register the establishment, supervise wage payment, provide basic facilities, and pay wages, PF and ESI itself if the contractor defaults. It is the final point of liability for contract workers.
Read definitionProfessional Tax (PT)
Professional tax is a state-level tax on income from employment, profession or trade, capped by Article 276 of the Constitution at ₹2,500 per person per year. Employers in states that levy it must register, deduct the slab amount from each employee's monthly salary and remit it on the state's schedule. Several states, including Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, do not levy it at all.
Read definitionProxy Attendance
Proxy attendance is the Indian workplace term for attendance recorded for a person who was not actually present – a colleague punching for them, a supervisor marking absent workers present in the register, or a contractor listing 'ghost' workers who exist only on the muster roll. It covers buddy punching and goes further, into supervisor and contractor-level fraud that affects wages, PF, ESI and client billing.
Read definitionPSARA (Private Security Agencies Regulation Act, 2005)
PSARA is the Private Security Agencies (Regulation) Act 2005, the central law under which every private security agency in India must hold a licence from the state Controlling Authority before deploying guards. The licence is valid for five years, applies per state or district, and comes with duties on guard verification, training, a statutory register of guards and clients, and compliance with wage and social-security laws.
Read definitionPunch In / Punch Out
Punch in and punch out are the timestamped events that mark the start and end of an employee's working time – historically a card stamped by a mechanical clock, today a biometric scan, face match, QR scan or app tap. The pair of events, matched to the employee's shift, is what attendance software converts into hours worked, late arrival, early exit and overtime.
Read definitionR
Roster Management
Roster management is the end-to-end process of planning, building, publishing and maintaining employee work schedules, and then tracking how actual attendance matches the plan. It covers forecasting demand per post and shift, choosing rotation patterns, assigning people, handling leave, swaps and open shifts, and measuring coverage and schedule adherence. It is the operational core of any shift-based business.
Read definitionRotational Shift
A rotational shift is a work pattern in which employees cycle through different shift timings (for example morning, evening and night) over a fixed period instead of working the same hours permanently. Rotation spreads unpopular night and weekend duty fairly across the team, keeps a 24x7 operation covered, and is the norm in factories, hospitals, BPOs and security services in India.
Read definitionS
Salary Slip (Payslip)
A salary slip, or payslip, is the statement an employer gives each employee for a pay period showing paid days, earnings by component, deductions by component and net pay, along with identifiers such as UAN, ESI number and PAN. Under the Code on Wages every employer must issue a wage slip, and a PDF sent through an employee app meets the requirement where the rules permit electronic form.
Read definitionSandwich Leave
Sandwich leave is a policy rule under which a weekly off or public holiday that falls between two days of leave is itself counted as leave. If an employee is on leave on Saturday and Monday, the sandwich rule debits Sunday too, making it three days instead of two. It is a company policy device in India, not a statutory requirement, and it cannot override leave rights fixed by law.
Read definitionSelfie Attendance
Selfie attendance is a mobile attendance method in which the employee takes a photo of themselves in the app at punch time. The app verifies the face against the enrolled profile, stamps the punch with GPS coordinates and time, and stores the image or its descriptor as evidence. It is the standard method for security guards, field sales and other staff who work away from a fixed device.
Read definitionShift Allowance
Shift allowance is a payment made to employees for working rotational or non-standard shifts, such as evening, night or weekend hours, rather than a fixed general shift. It compensates for the disruption of irregular hours, is fixed by company policy or settlement rather than central law, may be flat or percentage-based, and is taxable as salary income.
Read definitionShift Roster
A shift roster is a schedule organised around shift codes rather than posts. It states which shift (morning, general, evening, night) each employee works on each date across a rotation cycle. Factories, call centres, hospitals and 24x7 operations use shift rosters to rotate teams fairly, keep weekly hours within the 48-hour legal limit and publish predictable patterns in advance.
Read definitionShift Swap
A shift swap is an employee-initiated exchange of rostered shifts between two colleagues, approved by a supervisor before it takes effect. It lets staff handle personal commitments without leaving a post uncovered. A valid swap keeps the same skill level on the post, does not push either person over legal hours limits, and does not double-book anyone.
Read definitionSick Leave (SL)
Sick leave is paid leave for an employee's own illness or injury. Entitlements come from state Shops and Establishments Acts and company policy, commonly up to 12 days a year, often with a medical certificate required beyond two or three consecutive days. For employees insured under ESI, cash sickness benefit from ESIC runs alongside or instead of employer-paid sick leave, depending on policy.
Read definitionSOS Alert (Panic Button)
An SOS alert is a one-tap emergency signal sent from a guard's or field employee's mobile app to supervisors and the control room, carrying the sender's identity, site, GPS location and time. It replaces the phone call a guard may not be able to make during an assault, fire or medical emergency. A working SOS setup needs an escalation chain, a response time target and a routine for false alarms.
Read definitionSplit Shift
A split shift is a working day divided into two or more separate blocks of work with a long unpaid gap between them, such as 07:00–11:00 and 17:00–21:00. Restaurants, school-bus drivers, housekeeping teams and retail stores use it to match staffing to two daily peaks. The total span from first start to last finish is limited by spread-over rules.
Read definitionSpread-Over
Spread-over is the total time span of an employee's working day measured from the first start of work to the final finish, including all rest intervals and unpaid breaks. Indian labour law caps it: the Factories Act limits spread-over to 10.5 hours a day (s.56), and state Shops and Establishments Acts set their own ceilings, commonly 10.5 to 12 hours.
Read definitionStatutory Bonus
Statutory bonus is the annual bonus employers must pay under the Payment of Bonus Act 1965 to employees whose basic plus DA is up to ₹21,000 per month and who worked at least 30 days in the accounting year. It ranges from a minimum of 8.33% to a maximum of 20% of wages, calculated on ₹7,000 per month or the scheduled minimum wage, whichever is higher, and is payable within 8 months of the year-end.
Read definitionT
TDS on Salary (Section 192)
TDS on salary is the income tax an employer must deduct every month under section 192 of the Income-tax Act, based on the employee's estimated annual taxable salary and chosen tax regime. The deducted amount is deposited by the 7th of the following month (30 April for March), reported quarterly in Form 24Q, and certified to the employee in Form 16 by 15 June.
Read definitionTime and Attendance
Time and attendance is the combined practice of recording whether an employee was present (attendance) and exactly how many hours they worked, including breaks, late arrivals, early exits and overtime (time). A time and attendance system captures punch events, converts them into worked hours against a shift, and hands payroll a per-employee total of paid days and payable hours.
Read definitionTimesheet
A timesheet is a record of the hours an employee spent working, broken down by day and usually by task, project, client or site, submitted for a week or a month and approved by a manager. Where an attendance record shows presence and total hours, a timesheet shows what those hours were spent on, which makes it the basis for client billing, project costing and hourly or overtime pay.
Read definitionW
Weekly Off
Weekly off is the one day of rest in every seven that Indian labour law guarantees to workers. The Factories Act (s.52) and state Shops and Establishments Acts require it, allow substitution within limits, and prohibit more than ten consecutive working days without a rest day. Whether the day is paid depends on the wage basis: it is built into monthly salary and excluded from daily-rate wages.
Read definitionWorkforce Management (WFM)
Workforce management (WFM) is the set of processes and tools an organisation uses to have the right number of people with the right skills in the right place at the right time. It spans demand forecasting, shift scheduling, time and attendance, leave management, absence control and productivity tracking. WFM is operational and daily, whereas HRMS covers the broader employee lifecycle.
Read definition