Glossary

The terms used across these docs and in the app, in one place.

Actual cost

Labor cost plus expenses recorded so far. On a time-based project, actual hours.

Billing rate

What a client is charged per hour for a person's work. Separate from the cost rate, and used only when hourly revenue is on.

Budget

An optional target for a project: an amount in its currency, or hours on a time-based project. On a fixed-price project it is also the revenue.

Cost account

A named bucket of work (for example CAPEX, OPEX or a client) defined by JQL. It can carry its own rates and receive expenses. Managed site-wide by Jira administrators.

Cost project

The app's own entity: a scope plus everything that hangs off it (rates, team, expenses, revenue, budget). Not a copy of a Jira project.

Cost rate

What a person costs the business per hour.

Default hourly rate

The project's fallback rate, used when no own, account or role rate applies. A new project starts at 0.

Effective from

The date a rate starts to apply. Hours logged on or after it use the new rate; earlier hours keep their old one.

Expense

A cost that is not logged time: a licence, travel, a contractor invoice. One-off or recurring.

Fixed price

A revenue mode where the project's budget is its revenue regardless of hours logged.

JQL

Jira Query Language. Used to define a cost project's scope and a cost account's issues.

Labor cost

The sum of every worklog's hours times its rate.

Margin

Profit as a share of revenue.

Milestone

A date and a cumulative planned spend. Together they form the plan the Overview compares actual cost with.

Monetary-based

A project type whose cost and budget are in a currency, computed from hourly rates.

Period (of a rate)

A stretch of time during which a rate has one value. A rate with several periods has a history.

Portfolio

A group of cost projects with a combined view of cost, budget and team.

Profit

Revenue minus actual cost.

Role

A named group of people in one project with a shared cost and billing rate.

Scope

What a cost project reads: one or more Jira spaces, or a JQL filter. It resolves to one JQL string.

Space (Jira space)

Jira's name for a project container. "Jira space" and "Jira project" mean the same thing in these docs, to tell them apart from a cost project.

Time-based

A project type whose cost and budget are in hours. It uses no rates and has no revenue.

Worklog

A record of time logged on a Jira issue. Cost Tracker reads these; nobody logs time in the app.