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ATC rostering glossary

Find clear definitions for 75 terms across 4 categories. From ATC roles to payroll, follow each concept to the relevant product capability.

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Air Traffic Control roots

A C H J P Q R S U

ANSP: Air Navigation Service Provider. An organisation that provides air navigation services.
ATC: Air Traffic Control.
CompetencyMore: An employee's effective set of qualifications and training requirements, maintained through the competency matrix.
Contract propagationMore: Applying changed contract values from a unit to the units, teams and employees below it. Units with a read-only contract retain their own values.
Controller: An air traffic controller; the primary employee role rostered by SkyRoster.
Head of UnitMore: An employee designated as the primary or secondary head of a unit, with membership of that unit and its teams.
Job NumberMore: An employee's HR or payroll identifier, displayed alongside their name in rosters and used to find their record.
Position: An operational ATC working position a controller occupies during a shift.
Primary unitMore: The main unit an employee belongs to. It determines access and approval scope where the system uses the primary unit; additional memberships can provide scope in other units.
QualificationMore: A controller's endorsement / certification authorising them to work specific positions or sectors.
Readonly contractMore: A setting that prevents a unit and its subordinate units from inheriting contract changes made higher in the organisation.
SectorMore: An ATC airspace sector covered by controllers on duty.
Sector OpeningMore: A plan showing which sector configurations are open during the day and the working positions that need coverage.
Unit: An organisational unit within an ANSP (a tower, an approach unit, an area control centre).
Unit MembershipMore: An employee's association with a unit, used to determine unit eligibility and relevant approval responsibilities.

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 a strategic roster, used as the reference for subsequent planning and operational changes.
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: An additional shift and qualification combination outside the standard staffing requirements.
HolidayMore: A public holiday used in the calendar, applicable payroll categories and scheduling rules.
InstructorMore: The primary employee on a shift that has trainees or support employees.
MPRMore: Manpower Requirement. The numbers and types of staff assignments required over a planning period.
Off shiftMore: A scheduled day off in the published roster. An approved request for additional work can replace it with a duty.
Preferred allocationMore: An employee’s preferred working positions, which can be used when filling a tactical roster.
Preferred day: A recorded preference to work, or avoid working, on a particular day.
PublishMore: Make a reviewed draft roster available as a published version.
Shift typeMore: A defined shift with a start time, end time, duration and day or night classification.
Slot: An individual assignment space within the demand for a day or period.
Strategic rosterMore: A plan assigning employees to shifts across a roster period.
Support employeeMore: An employee assisting an instructor on a shift; mutually exclusive with trainees on the same shift.
Support LinkMore: An assignment identifying the instructor supporting an employee during a specified part of a support period.
Support PeriodMore: A period in which an employee receives support from instructors for specified qualifications. During that period, the employee is not eligible for independent assignments using 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 planning workspace used to review and edit a roster.

Requests

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

BeneficiaryMore: The employee affected by a request; both employees are beneficiaries of a swap. A beneficiary can provide an explicitly required consent but cannot fulfil a role-based approval step for their own request.
Cancellation requestMore: A request to cancel an approved work request. A supervisor decides whether the original request remains approved or is removed.
Duty requestMore: Duty-assignment request.
Force ApprovalMore: An option for a user with global approval-write permission to submit an already-approved request for another employee. All approval steps are recorded against that user. It cannot be used for their own request.
Inbound Work RequestMore: A request by an employee to work an additional shift.
Leave requestMore: Time-off request.
Legal ReasonMore: A required reason for a work request or shift extension, selected from the organisation’s configured list.
Off Work Request (Off-WR)More: A request to be released from an otherwise assigned shift. Approval replaces the assignment with time off.
Pending → Approved: The multi-step lifecycle a request moves through from submission to finalisation.
Position ViewMore: A tactical roster view showing available employees and supporting requests for additional work.
Qualification changeMore: A supervisor’s change to the qualification on a published assignment linked to an approved request. The assignment moves to an available place for the new qualification while retaining the associated request and working-hours balance record.
RequesterMore: The person submitting a request, for themselves or another employee. A requester who is not a beneficiary may be eligible to approve a step according to their role.
Shift Extension Request (SER)More: An employee asks to extend an existing shift.
Shift resulting from Work RequestMore: An assignment created by an approved work request in place of the employee’s original scheduled time off.
Stacked Shift ExtensionMore: An extension to a shift that was itself created by an approved request. Both requests remain associated with the assignment.
Swap requestMore: A request by employees to exchange shift assignments, subject to the applicable checks and approvals.
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 additional reason for a work request or shift extension, selected from a separate list from the required legal reason.
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 approved leave entry covering a missing attendance period at the start of a mandatory working period.
BWH scoreMore: The hours used from an employee’s Bank of Working Hours during a calendar year. This differs from the remaining 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 five-digit accounting code associated with a unit, used to classify employee hours and allowances in payroll exports.
CTAMore: Controller. An operational ATC employee category with payroll treatment that differs from non-operational staff.
DisregardMore: Exclude a clocking entry from worked-time calculations while retaining it in the attendance record with the status Disregarded. This action cannot be reversed in the product.
Export (payroll)More: An action that produces a monthly absences or overtime file for review. It can be repeated and does not close the payroll period or mark hours as reported.
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: An operational ATC shift whose attendance requirements follow the tactical roster’s mandatory periods, rather than office half-day rules.
Overtime (OT)More: Hours worked above the contracted schedule that translate to overtime payroll.
Overtime scoreMore: The accumulated overtime hours from work requests and shift extensions. This total is not limited to one calendar year and excludes duty-request hours.
Presumed ActionMore: The system’s interpretation of an attendance entry as clock-in or clock-out, based on the sequence of entries in the relevant period.
Supposed TimeMore: The scheduled working time for a period, calculated from shift time minus breaks plus relevant duty-request time. Attendance reports compare it with worked time.
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.

Definitions reviewed 25 September 2026. Have a question about a term? Contact the SkyRoster team.