Glossary
Session-Based Tracking
Also known as: Session-based attendance
Session-based tracking records attendance as discrete work sessions, each with a start, an end, and a project, rather than a single daily clock-in and clock-out. A day can contain several sessions across different projects, breaks, or locations. This produces a far richer and more accurate picture of how time was actually spent.
Traditional clock-in and clock-out reduces a whole day to two timestamps, which loses everything that happened in between: which projects were worked, where breaks fell, and what was billable. For services businesses, that lost detail is exactly the information needed for billing and utilisation.
Session-based tracking flips the model. Instead of one long block bracketed by two punches, the day is a sequence of meaningful sessions, each tagged to a project and reviewable on its own. This makes billable versus non-billable time, overtime, and breaks visible without guesswork or end-of-week reconstruction.
Crucially, session-based tracking achieves this without surveillance. It captures the structure of work, start, end, and project, rather than screenshots or keystrokes, so it respects privacy while still giving managers and finance the granularity they need. This is why it fits both modern distributed teams and India's tightening data-protection expectations.
India context
Session-level records support working-hour, overtime, and record-keeping expectations under the Labour Codes while staying data-minimal for the DPDP Act, 2023. Capturing only session structure, rather than surveillance data, aligns compliance with privacy.
How Workclave handles this
Session-based tracking is the core of Workclave: every work session is project-linked, approved, and billable, giving accurate attendance without clock-in rigidity or surveillance. It is DPDP-aligned and Labour Code ready, and free for teams up to five users. session-based attendance explained.
Related terms
Billable hours are the units of work time that can be charged to a client under a contract or engagement. They exclude internal activities like admin, training, or bench time that the client does not pay for. For services firms, billable hours are the direct link between effort and revenue.
Read definition →Utilisation rate is the percentage of an employee's available working time that is spent on billable client work. It is a core efficiency and profitability metric for IT services firms and agencies. A higher utilisation generally means more of your paid capacity is generating revenue.
Read definition →A timesheet is a record of how an employee's working time was distributed across tasks, projects, or clients over a period. It underpins billing, payroll, and productivity analysis in services businesses. Timesheets can be filled manually or generated from tracked work sessions.
Read definition →A manager approval workflow is the defined path by which attendance, leave, or time entries are reviewed and approved by the right manager before they become official. It turns self-reported data into an authoritative record. Approvals create accountability and an audit trail for payroll and billing.
Read definition →Field or remote attendance is the recording of presence for employees who work away from a fixed office, such as remote developers, consultants at client sites, or field staff. It replaces the office door or biometric reader with a software-based way to log a verified work session. The goal is trustworthy presence data without a physical device.
Read definition →