Resources

The words a controller, a supervisor or a payroll clerk would actually use

75 terms across 4 categories: air traffic control roles, roster concepts, request types and payroll terms. Maintained by the product team as SkyRoster's own business vocabulary and compiled onto this page on every build, so it cannot drift from what the product actually calls things.

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Air Traffic Control roots

A C H J P Q R S U

ANSP: Air Navigation Service Provider. The kind of organisation Skyroster is built for.
ATC: Air Traffic Control.
CompetencyMore: An employee's effective set of qualifications and training requirements, maintained through the competency matrix.
Contract propagationMore: Applying a unit's contract values to the units, teams, and employees below it when the contract is changed; runs only when values actually changed and stops at Readonly-contract units.
Controller: An air-traffic controller; the primary employee role rostered by Skyroster.
Head of UnitMore: An employee designated as Primary or Secondary Head of an organizational unit; receives memberships for the unit and (per SKRN-2647) all teams under it.
Job NumberMore: The employee's payroll/HR identifier shown under the employee name in rosters and schedulers; the user-facing "employee ID" that every employee filter must accept alongside the name (established by SKRN-2453).
Position: An operational ATC working position a controller occupies during a shift.
Primary unitMore: The single unit an employee formally belongs to for scoping purposes (visibility, approvals, attendance); an employee can hold memberships in other units; the primary unit drives PRIMARY_UNIT-scoped access, while those memberships drive MEMBERSHIP-scoped access.
QualificationMore: A controller's endorsement / certification authorising them to work specific positions or sectors.
Readonly contractMore: A flag on a unit's contract that protects the unit and its entire subtree from contract propagation coming from ancestors.
SectorMore: An ATC airspace sector covered by controllers on duty.
Sector OpeningMore: A sector-planning definition of which sector configurations are open across the operational day; it produces the working-position demand the tactical roster staffs against.
Unit: An organisational unit within an ANSP (a tower, an approach unit, an area control centre).
Unit MembershipMore: An employee's formal association with a unit; determines which units appear on the employee's profile and governs unit-scoped eligibility checks such as eligible approver resolution.

Roster

B C D E H I M O P S T W

Backup poolMore: The set of employees (including trainees) not assigned to any team; they can still be selected onto a roster but have no team membership.
BaselineMore: A published version of the strategic roster; the source of truth for downstream consumers.
Bridge dayMore: A working day adjacent to a public holiday (between the holiday and a weekend) granted as a day off in the unit's holiday calendar. Unlike public holidays, bridge days count as regular days in leave-balance and allowance calculations.
Continuation rosterMore: A strategic roster generated to continue from a previous month, carrying forward the relevant prior-period scheduling context into the new month.
DraftMore: The unpublished, in-progress state of a strategic roster.
Extra shiftMore: A sporadic-use shift added to a roster outside the standard manpower requirements; defined by a shift type / qualification pairing that is, by definition, not part of the MPRs.
HolidayMore: A calendar bank-holiday day. Drives special-rate payroll codes and dedicated rostering rules.
InstructorMore: The primary employee on a shift that has trainees or support employees.
MPRMore: Manpower Requirement. The demand on a roster: how many shifts of which type are required per day.
Off shiftMore: A shift cell representing the employee's scheduled day off on the published baseline; the slot a Work Request typically replaces when approved.
Preferred allocationMore: A per-employee preset of preferred working positions, used to auto-fill the tactical roster; applied via the "allocate preferred (all)" and "enforce tactical template" actions on the tactical workbench.
Preferred day: A user-facing marker that an employee desires (or wishes to avoid) being scheduled on a given day.
PublishMore: The action that promotes a draft to a baseline.
Shift typeMore: A named recurring shift pattern (start time, end time, duration, day/night classification).
Slot: A single demand cell that an employee occupies on a given day.
Strategic rosterMore: Long-horizon shift planning at the template level.
Support employeeMore: An employee assisting an instructor on a shift; mutually exclusive with trainees on the same shift.
Support LinkMore: An instructor assignment within a support period, specifying which instructor supports the employee and during what time window.
Support PeriodMore: A time-bounded interval during which an employee receives mentoring/support from one or more instructors for specific qualifications; while active, the employee is excluded from independent assignment on those qualifications.
Tactical rosterMore: Day-of execution: which person fills which position inside published shifts.
Tactical TemplateMore: A reusable preset of MPRs and settings, scoped to a Unit and roster style, applied when configuring a tactical workbench.
TraineeMore: An employee learning operational duties under an instructor on a shift.
WorkbenchMore: The supervisor UI where a draft / baseline is edited.

Requests

B C D F I L O P Q R S T W

BeneficiaryMore: The employee a request is for (for a swap, both swapped employees). A beneficiary can never satisfy a role-based approval step of their own request; only an explicit individual self-consent step is reachable.
Cancellation requestMore: An employee-initiated request to cancel a previously approved Work Request; awaits a supervisor decision before the WR returns to APPROVED or is fully removed.
Duty requestMore: Duty-assignment request.
Force ApprovalMore: A checkbox a user with global write on the approval resource can tick when filing a request for someone else; the request is created already Approved, with every approval step (including a document step) recorded against the filer. Never available for one's own request.
Inbound Work RequestMore: A Work Request where the employee is asking to work an extra shift; the standard WR form.
Leave requestMore: Time-off request.
Legal ReasonMore: The mandatory reason a requester picks when creating a Work Request or Shift Extension, chosen from an admin-configurable, tenant-scoped list with a tenant default.
Off Work Request (Off-WR)More: A Work Request variant where the employee is asking not to work a shift they would otherwise be assigned; on approval it installs an off shift on the destination cell.
Pending → Approved: The multi-step lifecycle a request moves through from submission to finalisation.
Position ViewMore: The tactical roster view where supervisors see available employees and initiate Work Request assignments.
Qualification changeMore: Supervisor action that edits the qualification on a baseline shift bound to an approved Work Request, Swap, or Shift Extension; moves the employee's assignment to a matching unassigned slot in the new qualification cell while preserving the bound request's identity and BWH ledger.
RequesterMore: The user who files a request, on their own behalf or on behalf of someone else (e.g. a supervisor filing a leave for a subordinate from the Team Scheduler). Distinct from the Beneficiary; a requester who is not a beneficiary can be an eligible approver of the request's steps.
Shift Extension Request (SER)More: An employee asks to extend an existing shift.
Shift resulting from Work RequestMore: A shift cell whose current assignment was installed by an approved Work Request, replacing the employee's original off shift on the published baseline.
Stacked Shift ExtensionMore: A Shift Extension approved on top of a shift that was itself installed by another approved request (typically a Work Request); both the extension and the underlying request apply to the same cell.
Swap requestMore: Two (or N paired) employees ask to exchange shift assignments.
Time-based requestMore: A leave or duty request whose deduction period is measured in hours rather than full calendar days.
Work Reason (Work Request Reason)More: An optional admin-configurable, tenant-scoped reason selected when creating a Work Request or Shift Extension; distinct from Legal Reason, which is a separate list and is required.
Work Request (WR)More: An employee asks to work a shift outside their normal schedule.

Payroll

B C D E M O P S U

Bank Holiday (BH)More: Payroll category for a calendar holiday day worked.
Bank of Working Hours (BWH)More: A per-employee credit balance accumulated by working extra hours and consumed by approved Work Requests.
BufferMore: An automatically-generated, auto-approved leave that justifies a missing attendance period (a gap between the mandatory/working period and the employee's clock records). Created only for the gap at the START of a mandatory period.
BWH scoreMore: The hours an employee has consumed from their Bank of Working Hours in a given calendar year; shown on the Dashboard staff-score list and the Team Scheduler employee balance modal. Distinct from the remaining BWH balance.
Close-of-monthMore: The monthly payroll finalisation event that locks in reported hours and produces the export bundle for your payroll system.
Compensatory Time Off (CTO)More: Substitute time-off granted in lieu of payroll for working overtime, on holidays, or on weekly off days.
Cost CentreMore: A 5-digit accounting code associated with a Unit, used by the payroll export to classify employee hours and allowances for your payroll system.
CTAMore: Controller (operational ATC role) as an employee category with payroll carve-outs distinct from non-operational staff.
DisregardMore: A supervisor action that marks a clocking entry as no longer counting toward attendance. The entry stays visible in the record with status Disregarded rather than being deleted, and is excluded from worked-time computation. One-way: there is no un-disregard action.
Export (payroll)More: The on-demand Reporting-page action producing a month's ABSENCES or OVERTIME file for review; read-only, repeatable, and never marks anything as reported — unlike Close-of-month.
Mandatory periodMore: The working/scheduled period during which an employee is expected to be clocked in; gaps against it may require justification (see Buffer).
Meal allowanceMore: Per-day meal-allowance amount included in payroll.
Operational ShiftMore: A non-office ATC shift (no half-day absence logic); its attendance bounds come from tactical mandatory periods rather than office half-day rules.
Overtime (OT)More: Hours worked above the contracted schedule that translate to overtime payroll.
Overtime scoreMore: An employee's running total of overtime hours accumulated from Work Requests and Shift Extension Requests; a lifetime figure, not year-scoped, and excludes duty hours by design.
Presumed ActionMore: The system-computed Clock-in/Clock-out interpretation of an attendance entry, derived from the alternating in/out sequence within a search period rather than stored per entry.
Supposed TimeMore: The scheduled time an employee is supposed to work in a period (shift working window minus break, plus duty-request time); the denominator shown against worked time on the attendance timesheets.
Unjustified timeMore: Time inside an employee's mandatory period that is neither covered by their clock records nor justified by an approved leave or duty; totalled per day on the attendance timesheet.

Compiled from the product source on 12 September 2026. Missing a term you need? Tell us and we will add it.