ERP and finance glossary

28 terms

AgenticAI: Software that performs work under a granted authority and escalates when outside it, rather than suggesting work for a person to perform.Frequently used to describe assistive features. Ask what it does without a person clicking approve — if the answer is nothing, it is assistive.
Append-only ledgerAccounting: A ledger where posted transactions are never modified or deleted; corrections are posted as reversals.
Authority modelAI: The framework defining what an automated actor may do, in which workflows, entities, and thresholds, and what it may never do.
Break-glass accessControls: Emergency elevated access to production, time-bound and requiring a second approver, logged and reported.Ask every vendor whether it exists. One claiming no employee can ever reach production data is usually describing policy rather than architecture.
Business graphPlatform: Customers, vendors, contracts, projects, documents, and people held as typed objects with relationships, rather than as rows in an accounting schema.
CalibrationAI: Whether a stated confidence matches actual accuracy — an agent claiming 95% confidence should be right about 95% of the time.More important than raw accuracy. An agent that is confidently wrong cannot be given authority at any accuracy level.
Change orderBuying: Additional scope beyond the agreed contract. Median variance to original implementation quote in our sample is +27%.
Control accountAccounting: A general ledger account whose balance should equal the total of a subledger, such as accounts receivable.
Cumulative translation adjustmentAccounting: The equity movement arising from translating a foreign subsidiary’s balances at different rates.Should fall out of the arithmetic. Where it is a plug, it absorbs translation errors silently.
Data processing addendumControls: A contract term setting out how a processor handles personal data on a controller’s instructions.
DimensionAccounting: A tag on a transaction describing context — department, location, project, customer — as opposed to an account, which describes economics.Most chart of accounts bloat is dimensions encoded as account numbers.
Evaluation setAI: Cases with known correct outcomes, held out from development, used to measure whether a system works.If it was built after the agent, it measures assumptions rather than accuracy.
Idempotency keyPlatform: A stable identifier on a write allowing a retried request to update rather than duplicate.Duplicate transactions from retried webhooks are the most common integration defect we find.
Intercompany eliminationAccounting: Removing transactions between group entities so consolidated figures do not double-count.
Landed costAccounting: The full cost of goods including freight, duty, and handling, allocated into the inventory cost layer rather than expensed separately.Commonly adds 15–30% for imported goods and changes which SKUs are profitable.
Parallel runningBuying: Operating the old and new systems simultaneously and comparing outputs before retiring the old one.The first line cut when a project is behind, and the one that proves the numbers tie.
Percentage of completionAccounting: Recognising revenue on a fixed-fee engagement in proportion to progress rather than to billing.
Prompt injectionAI: Instructions hidden in content a model reads, intended to make it act against its operator’s intent.The defence is bounding what the agent can do, not making the model harder to fool.
Row-level securityControls: Database-level enforcement that a query returns only rows the actor is permitted to see, independent of application code.
RPO and RTOPlatform: Recovery point objective is how much data a worst-case failure loses. Recovery time objective is how long restoration takes.
Scenario demoBuying: A demo run on the buyer’s own transactions and edge cases, sent to the vendor in advance.
Segregation of dutiesControls: Ensuring no single actor can both create and approve the same transaction. Applies to automated actors as well as people.
Shadow ledgerPlatform: A parallel ledger built from your existing system’s data that reconciles against it nightly, used to prove correctness before any migration.
Straight-through processingAI: The share of transactions completing with no human interaction. The definition varies enormously between vendors.Ask whether an approval click counts. Including it inflates a rate by ten to fifteen points.
SubprocessorControls: A third party a vendor engages that may process your data on their behalf.
Three-way matchAccounting: Comparing a purchase order, a goods receipt, and a supplier invoice before approving payment.
Total cost of ownershipBuying: All costs of a system over a period — licence, implementation, integration, internal time, and the cost of leaving.Vendor proposals typically show two of these five lines.
Work in progressAccounting: Work performed but not yet invoiced. In services this is usually the largest unrecorded asset.

The terms that hide the most

Several entries above carry a note because the term is used inconsistently, and in every case the ambiguity favours the vendor rather than the buyer.

Agentic is the clearest example. It is applied to features that suggest a coding for a person to approve and to software that performs the posting itself under a granted authority. Those are different products and the word does not distinguish them. The question that does: what does it do without a person clicking approve?

Straight-through processing is the second. A vendor counting an approval click as straight-through will quote a rate ten to fifteen points higher than one who does not, for identical real performance. Always ask for the definition alongside the number.

Where a term is used to mean two things, the ambiguity is almost never accidental and almost never favours the buyer.

Terms we have deliberately not padded

This glossary is short. Most vendor glossaries run to hundreds of entries because they exist to capture search traffic rather than to explain anything, which is why they define “invoice” and “budget” at length.

We have included terms where a definition genuinely helps during an evaluation, and left out the ones any finance professional already knows. If you were looking for something and did not find it, tell us — the omission is either deliberate or an oversight, and we will say which.

Where these definitions come from

They are written by people who implement this software, not by a content function. Where a definition reflects our own opinion rather than settled usage — the note on agentic, for instance — it is flagged as a note rather than presented as neutral.

Questions

Common follow-ups.

Why is this glossary so short?

Because it exists to explain rather than to capture search traffic. Most vendor glossaries run to hundreds of entries and define "invoice" at length, which helps nobody in an evaluation.

Which terms should we be most careful with?

Agentic and straight-through processing. Both are used to describe materially different things, and in both cases the ambiguity favours the vendor.

Are these definitions neutral?

The definitions are. Several carry a note that reflects our opinion, and those are flagged as notes rather than presented as settled usage.

Can we reuse these definitions?

Yes, with attribution. If you find one that is wrong, tell us and we will correct it and note the correction.

Where can I find accounting terms specifically?

The accounting glossary goes deeper on ledger, close, revenue recognition, and consolidation terminology.

Glossary

Missing a term?

The terms that hide the most

Terms we have deliberately not padded

Common follow-ups.

Ask what it does unapproved.