Glossary

Key terms used throughout Consult.

Actual leave balance

The employee's leave balance that appears on payroll records. It does not subtract leave that has not yet been taken, meaning it gives an accurate reflection of what the employee has from a financial perspective.

Allocation request

A request raised to a resource manager when a user is allocated to a project but does not have capacity. See Approve resource requests.

Application role

A named bag of abilities assigned to a user that determines what they can do across the app.

Available leave balance

The amount of leave that an employee is currently eligible to take. Pending requests are subtracted, so this is the applicable balance when an employee wants to take time off.

Baseline

The initial planned hours snapshot taken at the start of a project. Used to measure schedule variance against forecasted and actual hours.

Billed hours

The hours included on an invoice. This may differ from the actual hours captured on timesheets, since the project manager can adjust billed hours at invoice creation.

Business entity

A legal entity within a tenant. Projects are tagged with a business entity so the correct legal entity is used when invoicing. See Business entities.

Client Account Lead (CAL)

The user assigned as account lead on a client record. This user gets project manager-level access (including financials) on every project belonging to that client.

Compliance to plan

Actual hours divided by forecast hours, expressed as a percentage.

Deliverable

A discrete unit of work within a WBS project. Has its own start, end, code, order, and (for WBS) total hours.

Designation

A rate card, with a recommended hourly rate per currency and links to one or more offerings.

Direct reports

Resources that have you as their resource manager.

Firm contribution

A project type used for internal contributions that aren't directly billable but still tracked financially.

Forecasted hours

The currently-planned hours for upcoming weeks/months. Formerly known as "Planned hours" before January 2026. See Hour types.

Hour Management (HM)

A per-resource toggle that prevents a user from logging more hours than allocated on a project. Useful for contractors with fixed scope.

Indirect reports

Resources that do not report directly to you, but who have a resource manager that reports to you.

Internal rate

The user's hourly internal cost rate. Drives margin, internal cost, and contractor spend calculations. See Understanding rate changes.

Lock hours

A flag set on an invoice that prevents further timesheet capture within that invoiced period.

Offering

A service line or business unit (for example, Engineering or Project Services). Offerings link designations, projects, and users together. See Offerings.

Organogram

The visual reporting structure. Exists at company, project, and user levels.

Planned hours (Baseline)

The hours captured at the start of the project, frozen at baseline. Formerly known as "Original planned hours" before January 2026. See Hour types.

Primary resource manager

The user marked as the primary resource manager for an employee. Used to build the company organogram link back to the CEO.

Project Manager (PM)

A user designated as PM on a specific project. Has elevated rights for that project only. See Application vs project vs user roles.

Project rate

The hourly rate for a designation on a specific project. Time-effective, meaning it does not retroactively change historical financials.

Reports To

The line manager on a user profile. Display only on the company organogram and not used by any functional logic.

Resource

A user allocated to a project against a designation.

Resource Manager (RM)

The user responsible for approving allocation requests, timesheets, and leave for one or more direct reports.

Resourcing

The process of assigning users to project designations and allocating their time.

Tenant

A consultancy organisation in Consult, identified by its domain. Has isolated users, projects, currencies, and integrations.

Timesheet compliance

Approved timesheets divided by total timesheets for a period.

Utilization target

The percentage of working hours a user is expected to bill. Drives capacity and dashboard colouring.

WBS

Work Breakdown Structure. Consult has two WBS formats: WBS (deliverable-first) and WBS 2 (resource-first with deliverable caps). See Choose the project format.

WIH (Work in Hand)

Revenue from projects in Sold or In Progress status.

WIV (Work in View)

Revenue from Pipeline projects, split by win probability.

Work at risk

Any actual hours captured before the purchase order date. This will typically be the case when work is done while a project is in pipeline stage.

Workstream

A grouping within a project's organogram, sitting under the project director.