Chapter 07 — Quick-Reference Glossary
Chapter 07 — Quick-Reference Glossary
One-line definitions of every term used in this handbook, alphabetically. Chapter references point to the full explanation and worked examples.
Accounts Payable (AP) — Money owed to a supplier for goods/services already received, supported by an invoice; exact amount and due date are known. (Ch. 02)
Accrual Basis — Accounting method that records expenses when incurred and revenue when earned, regardless of when cash moves. (Ch. 02, 04)
Accrued Expense — A cost incurred but not yet invoiced; recorded as an estimated liability until the invoice arrives. (Ch. 02)
Activity Log — Operational history of planning objects (tasks, goals, sprints); deliberately kept separate from the financial audit trail. (Ch. 06)
Allocation Weight — The percentage of a task's cost assigned to each goal it serves; weights per task must sum to 100%. (Ch. 05)
Amortization — Spreading the cost of a non-physical asset (intangible, prepaid, right-of-use) over its useful life, usually straight-line. (Ch. 03)
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) — Total revenue divided by number of customers, per period. (Ch. 04)
Audit Trail — Append-only, chronological record of every financial transaction and change: who, what, when, before, after. (Ch. 06)
Book Value — An asset's original cost minus accumulated depreciation/amortization. (Ch. 03)
Break-Even Point — The volume at which total contribution equals fixed costs; fixed costs ÷ contribution per unit. (Ch. 04)
Budget — A cost plan, typically built bottom-up from task estimates and rolled up via weighted allocation. (Ch. 05)
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) — Total sales & marketing spend ÷ new customers acquired in the same period. (Ch. 04)
CAC Payback Period — CAC ÷ monthly contribution per customer; months needed to recover acquisition spend. (Ch. 04)
CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) — Spending that creates a long-lived asset; capitalized, then expensed over time via depreciation/amortization. (Ch. 01)
Cash Basis — Accounting method that records costs/revenue only when cash moves; simple but distorts timing. (Ch. 02)
Cash Transaction — A deposit or withdrawal on a bank account, linked to the cost or revenue event that caused it. (Ch. 02)
Churn Rate — Fraction of customers lost per period; its inverse approximates average customer lifetime. (Ch. 04)
COGS / Cost of Sales — Costs directly attributable to delivering the product that earned the revenue; scales with volume. (Ch. 01)
Contribution (per unit) — Revenue per unit minus variable cost (COGS) per unit; what each unit adds toward fixed costs and profit. (Ch. 04)
Cost Category — Classification bucket for a cost item: OPEX, CAPEX, Marketing, Overhead, Depreciation, Amortization. (Ch. 01)
Cost Item — A single recorded cost with amount, category, project/service link, payment status, and source. (Ch. 01, 02)
Data Lineage — The ability to trace any reported figure back through every transformation to its original source (API feed, invoice, manual entry). (Ch. 06)
Default-Deny — Security posture in which any action not explicitly permitted is refused; financial systems fail closed. (Ch. 06)
Deferred Revenue — Cash collected for service not yet delivered; a liability that converts to revenue as delivery occurs. (Ch. 04)
Depreciation — Spreading a tangible asset's cost (minus salvage value) over its useful life; straight-line or accelerated. (Ch. 03)
Double Declining Balance (DDB) — Accelerated depreciation: rate = 2 ÷ useful life, applied each year to remaining book value. (Ch. 03)
Estimate (Cost) — Pre-work prediction of a task's cost; kept immutable so it can be compared with actuals. (Ch. 05)
Fixed Asset — A tangible long-lived asset (server, laptop, furniture) subject to depreciation. (Ch. 03)
Fixed Costs — Costs that do not vary with volume in the short term (rent, salaried payroll). (Ch. 04)
Gross Margin — Gross profit ÷ revenue; the share of each revenue dollar left after direct delivery costs. (Ch. 01, 04)
Gross Profit — Revenue minus COGS. (Ch. 01)
Intangible Asset — A non-physical asset with future value: software licenses, patents, trademarks; amortized over its life. (Ch. 03)
Liability — An obligation to pay; in day-to-day operations chiefly AP and accrued expenses. (Ch. 02)
Liability Type — Classification of an unpaid cost: AP (invoice in hand) or ACCRUED (no invoice yet). (Ch. 02)
LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) — Contribution per customer per month × average lifetime in months. (Ch. 04)
LTV:CAC Ratio — Lifetime value divided by acquisition cost; ≈3:1 is the classic health benchmark. (Ch. 04)
Matching Principle — Match each cost to the periods that benefit from it — the rationale for depreciation, amortization, and accruals. (Ch. 03)
OPEX (Operating Expense) — Recurring, consumable cost of running the business; expensed in the period incurred. (Ch. 01)
Overhead — Indirect cost supporting the whole business; allocated to products via a documented driver. (Ch. 01)
Payback Period — See CAC Payback Period. (Ch. 04)
Payment Status — Stored fact (PAID / UNPAID) recording whether a cost item has been settled. (Ch. 02, 06)
Pay Later — Workflow that records an expense and creates a liability (AP or accrued) without immediate cash movement. (Ch. 02)
Pay Now — Workflow that records an expense and the matching bank withdrawal in one atomic operation. (Ch. 02)
Prepaid Expense — Cash paid in advance for a service consumed over time; held as an asset and amortized as consumed. (Ch. 03)
RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) — Permissions attached to roles rather than individuals; limits the blast radius of any account. (Ch. 06)
Revenue Event — A single recorded instance of revenue, attached to the most granular earning unit (ideally a service). (Ch. 04)
Revenue Recognition — Recording revenue when service is delivered, not when cash is received. (Ch. 04)
Right-of-Use (ROU) Asset — Lease-created asset representing the right to use an identified item over the lease term (IFRS 16 / ASC 842); amortized over the term. (Ch. 03)
Row-Level Security (RLS) — Database-enforced filtering of rows by tenant/project; protects data even from buggy application queries. (Ch. 06)
Salvage Value — Estimated value of a tangible asset at end of life; excluded from the depreciable base. (Ch. 03)
Separation of Duties — Control requiring that no single person both initiates and approves a financial transaction. (Ch. 06)
Straight-Line Method — Equal depreciation/amortization in every period: (cost − salvage) ÷ useful life. (Ch. 03)
Unit Economics — Revenue and cost per unit of business (customer, order, API call); answers whether one more unit creates or destroys value. (Ch. 04)
Useful Life — The period over which an asset is expected to benefit the business; the denominator of depreciation/amortization. (Ch. 03)
Variable Costs — Costs that scale with volume; in SaaS, essentially COGS. (Ch. 04)
Variance — Actual minus estimate; decomposed into price and quantity components to locate the cause. (Ch. 05)
Weighted Allocation — Splitting a shared cost across several goals/objects by explicit percentages that conserve the total. (Ch. 05)
Closing Note
Every concept in this glossary is implemented as a living feature of TupicFinance — the financial backbone of the Tupic ecosystem — where cost items, liabilities, asset schedules, revenue events, task budgets, and audit trails are not textbook abstractions but daily working objects. This handbook doubles as the conceptual manual for the platform: learn the term here, then watch it operate there.