--- title: "Core concepts" slug: start/concepts url: https://projectri.com/docs/start/concepts section: start audience: everyone mobile: false updated: 2026-09-08 source: Projectri documentation --- # Core concepts Workspace, project, task, client, time entry — the eight words the rest of the product assumes you already know. ![Core concepts](https://projectri.com/docs-shots/workspace-projects.png) Eight words carry most of Projectri. They are worth five minutes now because every other page uses them without explaining them again. ## Workspace A workspace is one company's Projectri. It owns everything inside it — projects, people, clients, money, settings — and nothing crosses between workspaces. Its web address begins with the workspace slug and your own handle, so a URL looks like `/acme/anwar/my-tasks`. That second segment is why two people can send each other a link and each still land on their own view of a shared screen. You can belong to more than one workspace with the same sign-in. The switcher is at the top of the left rail. ## Project The container for a piece of work. A project has a **key** — two to five letters, like `APO` — and every task in it is numbered from that key, so a task is `APO-42` for the life of the project even if it is renamed, moved between columns or reassigned. Projects are either **client** projects, which are attached to a client record and can be published to that client's portal, or **internal** ones, which cannot. That choice is made when the project is created and drives what the finance and portal screens do with it. ## Task The unit of work. A task has a status (Backlog, To do, In progress, In review, Done, Cancelled — plus any custom stages your workspace has added), a priority, an assignee, dates, and whatever else your workspace has configured: estimates, checklists, custom fields, dependencies, followers. Statuses are workspace-wide, not per-project, which is what lets My Tasks, reports and automations mean the same thing everywhere. ## Client A company you do work for. A client record holds contacts, contracts, quotes, invoices and the projects done for them, and it is the thing a portal login is attached to. A contact in the portal sees their client's data and nothing else. ## Time entry Hours logged against a task or a project on a date, marked billable or not. Everything downstream of "how did the week go" is built on these: timesheets, approvals, utilisation, capacity, budget burn, invoices. A time entry that has been approved is a fact the finance screens will use; one still in draft is not. ## Permission A named capability, like `task.create` or `finance.invoice.view`. Your role carries a set of them, an admin can grant or revoke individual ones per person, and every screen and API call checks the key rather than the role. That is why "can Sam do this" has a real answer rather than a guess — see [Roles and permissions](/docs/start/roles-and-permissions). ## Entitlement What your workspace's plan includes. Where a permission asks *are you allowed*, an entitlement asks *does this workspace have the feature at all*. A screen you cannot reach is one or the other, and the message tells you which — see [Plans and entitlements](/docs/features/plans-and-entitlements). ## Nia The assistant. She can read what you can read, do what you are allowed to do, and explain the product from this documentation. She is in the right-hand dock on the web, in the Nia tab on mobile, and on this site — see [Nia, the assistant](/docs/features/nia-assistant). ## Related - [Welcome to Projectri](https://projectri.com/docs/start/welcome.md): What Projectri is, who each part of it is for, and how to find your way around this documentation. - [Roles and permissions](https://projectri.com/docs/start/roles-and-permissions.md): The four workspace roles, the permission keys behind them, and why two people in the same workspace see different screens. - [Projects](https://projectri.com/docs/workspace/projects.md): The project list and the project itself — its people, milestones and progress, its tasks as a table, board, timeline or roadmap, and its documents, boards and meetings. - [My Time](https://projectri.com/docs/workspace/my-time.md): The hours you logged, read back to you — a calendar of days with their totals, and the entries underneath, by day or by task.