The words below appear on SeroBooks screens, reports and in this Knowledgebase. Each has a short, plain meaning and, where it helps, a link to the article where it is used.
A
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Account | One heading in the chart of accounts that money is recorded against: a bank account, Sales, Rent, GST/HST Payable. Every transaction moves money between accounts. See Chart of Accounts. |
| Accounts Payable (A/P) | What the business owes its vendors: bills entered and not yet paid. See Vendor Balances. |
| Accounts Receivable (A/R) | What customers owe the business: invoices raised and not yet paid. See Customer Balances. |
| Accrual basis | Counting income when it is invoiced and expenses when they are billed, whether or not money has moved. The usual basis for financial statements. Compare cash basis. |
| Aging | A report of open balances grouped by how long they have been owing (current, 1–30 days, 31–60 and so on), such as A/R Aging Summary. |
| Assembly | An item built from other items (a kit, a finished product). Building it uses up the components and adds the assembly to stock. See Build Assemblies. |
| Audit trail | The record of who created, changed or deleted each transaction, and when. See Audit Trail. |
B
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Balance Sheet | What the business owns (assets), owes (liabilities) and is worth to its owners (equity) on one date. See Balance Sheet. |
| Bank feed | Transactions downloaded from your bank into SeroBooks, to match or add. See Bank Feeds. |
| Basis | Whether a report is on the accrual or the cash basis. |
| Bill | A vendor's invoice to you, entered so you know what you owe and when. See Enter Bills. |
| Budget | Amounts you plan to earn and spend, by account and month, for comparison with actual results. See Set Up Budgets. |
C
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Capital Cost Allowance (CCA) | Canada's tax depreciation: the part of a fixed asset's cost you may deduct each year, by CCA class. See Fixed Asset Manager and CCA. |
| Cash basis | Counting income when money is received and expenses when they are paid. Compare accrual basis. |
| Chart of accounts | The full list of the business's accounts. |
| Class | A way of tagging transactions by department, fund, product line or anything else that is not a location or a job, so reports can be split by it. See Classes. |
| Cleared | A transaction ticked in a bank reconciliation because it appears on the bank statement. Cleared transactions are locked to that reconciliation. |
| Closing date | The date on or before which the books are closed. Transactions dated then cannot be added, changed or deleted, unless the closing date password is given. See Set Closing Date and Year-End. |
| Cost of goods sold (COGS) | What the items you sold cost you. Posted when an item is sold, from its inventory value. See Item accounts. |
| Credit (Cr) | The right-hand side of an entry. Credits increase income, liabilities and equity, and decrease assets and expenses. On a vendor's balance, Cr is what you owe them; on a customer's, a credit in their favour. |
| Credit memo | A document that reduces what a customer owes, for returned goods or an allowance. It can be applied to an invoice or refunded. See Create Credit Memos and Refunds. |
| Customer:Job | A customer, or one job for that customer, used to track income and costs by job. See Jobs. |
D
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Debit (Dr) | The left-hand side of an entry. Debits increase assets and expenses, and decrease income, liabilities and equity. On a customer's balance, Dr is what they owe you. |
| Deposit | Money paid into a bank account. Make Deposits moves payments from Undeposited Funds into the bank as one deposit. See Make Deposits. |
| Deposit To | The account a received payment goes into: a bank account, or Undeposited Funds. See Undeposited Funds and the Deposit To account. |
| Discrepancy (reconciliation) | A difference between where a reconciliation left off and where the next one starts, caused by changing a cleared transaction. See Reconciliation Discrepancy. |
| Double entry | Every transaction has equal debits and credits, so the books always balance. |
| Drill down | Clicking a figure on a report to see the transactions behind it. See Drilling down from a report. |
E
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Equity | The owners' share of the business: what it owns less what it owes. Includes capital put in, drawings and retained earnings. |
| Estimate | A quotation to a customer. It changes nothing in the books until it is turned into an invoice. See Create Estimates. |
| Exempt | A supply on which no sales tax is charged and no input tax credits can be claimed. Compare zero-rated. |
| Expense | A cost of running the business: rent, wages, supplies. Also the SeroBooks form for recording a cost already paid. See Enter Expenses. |
F – G
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Finance charge | Interest charged to customers on overdue balances. See Assess Finance Charges. |
| Fiscal year | The business's 12-month accounting year, which need not be the calendar year. |
| Fixed asset | Something the business owns and uses for more than a year: a vehicle, equipment, a building. |
| General journal entry | An entry made directly to accounts, with debits equal to credits, for adjustments that no form covers. See Make General Journal Entries. |
| General ledger (GL) | Every entry in the books, account by account. See General Ledger. |
| GIFI | The General Index of Financial Information: the codes the Canada Revenue Agency uses for financial statement lines on a T2 return. See Income Tax (T2 / GIFI). |
| GST / HST | Canada's federal Goods and Services Tax, and the Harmonized Sales Tax that combines it with the provincial tax in some provinces. See How sales tax works in SeroBooks. |
H – L
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Home currency | The currency the books are kept in. See Home Currency Adjustment and foreign currency. |
| Input tax credit (ITC) | GST/HST paid on business purchases that a registrant can recover from the tax it collects. Quebec's equivalent for QST is the input tax refund. |
| Inventory asset | The account holding the value of stock on hand. Buying stock increases it; selling stock moves value from it to cost of goods sold. |
| Invoice | A bill to a customer for goods or services sold on credit. See Create Invoices. |
| Item | Anything you buy or sell and put on a form: a stocked product, a service, a charge. See The Item List. |
| Item receipt | Stock received from a vendor before the bill arrives. In SeroBooks, Receive Items. See Receive Items. |
| Landed cost | Freight, duty and other costs of bringing stock in, added to the cost of the items. See Bill lines. |
| Liability | Something the business owes: vendor bills, loans, sales tax collected, payroll deductions. |
| Location | A store, warehouse or office of the business. Stock and many reports are kept by location. |
M – O
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Memorized transaction | A transaction saved to be entered again, by hand or on a schedule. See Memorized Transactions. |
| Net income | Income less expenses for a period: the bottom line of the Profit & Loss. |
| Opening balance | What an account held on the day the business started in SeroBooks. See Enter Opening Balances. |
| Overpayment | Money received beyond what the invoices owed, kept as a credit for the customer. |
P
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Payment run | A batch of vendor bills paid together. See Payment Runs. |
| Pending invoice | An invoice saved but not yet final. Nothing is posted until it is marked final. See Pending Invoices. |
| Period lock | Another name for the closing date. |
| Place of supply | Where a sale is considered to take place for sales tax. It decides which province's or state's tax applies. |
| Posting | Recording a transaction's debits and credits in the general ledger. |
| Posting map | The accounts each kind of transaction posts to (Accounts Receivable, Sales revenue, GST/HST payable and others). Nothing reaches the ledger until it is complete. See Accounting Setup. |
| Price level | A customer group with its own discount or price list, which invoices apply to its customers. See Price Levels. |
| Profit & Loss (P&L) | Income less expenses for a period; also called an income statement. See Profit & Loss. |
| PST / QST | The provincial sales taxes of British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba (PST), and the Quebec Sales Tax (QST). |
| Purchase order (PO) | An order sent to a vendor. It changes nothing in the books until goods are received or billed. See Create Purchase Orders. |
R
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Reconcile | Match the transactions in an account with the bank or card statement until the difference is zero. See Reconcile. |
| Register | One account's transactions in date order, with a running balance. See Use Register. |
| Retained earnings | Profits kept in the business from earlier years. At year-end, the year's net income moves here. |
| Reversing entry | A journal entry that undoes itself automatically on a later date, used for accruals. |
S
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Sales order | A customer's order you have agreed to fill. It changes nothing in the books until it is invoiced. See Create Sales Orders. |
| Sales receipt | A sale paid for on the spot, with no invoice left owing. See Enter Sales Receipts. |
| Statement | A summary sent to a customer of their invoices, payments and balance. See Create Statements. |
| Sub-account | An account listed under a parent account, so reports can show detail and a total. |
T
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| T2 | The Canadian corporation income tax return. |
| T4 / RL-1 | Year-end slips reporting employees' pay and deductions, federally and in Quebec. See Year-End Slips. |
| T4A / T5018 | Year-end slips for payments to contractors and subcontractors. See Contractor Slips. |
| Terms | When an invoice or bill is due (Net 30, Due on receipt), and any discount for paying early. See Terms List. |
| Transaction | Anything that changes the books: an invoice, payment, bill, cheque, deposit or journal entry. |
| Trial balance | Every account's debit or credit balance on one date. Total debits equal total credits. See Trial Balance. |
U – Z
| Term | Meaning |
|---|
| Undeposited Funds | A holding account for payments received but not yet deposited in the bank. See Undeposited Funds. |
| Underpayment | Less received than an invoice owed. The rest stays owing, or is written off. |
| Unrealized gain or loss | The change in value of a foreign-currency balance that has not yet been paid or received. |
| Vendor | Someone you buy from; SeroBooks sometimes says "supplier". See Vendor Centre. |
| Vendor credit | A credit from a vendor for returned goods or an overcharge, set against a later bill or refunded. See Enter Vendor Credits. |
| Void | Cancelling a transaction while keeping it on record with its number, at zero, marked VOID. |
| Write-off | Removing an amount that will not be collected, posting it to an expense account. |
| Year-end | Closing a fiscal year: net income moves to retained earnings and the year is locked. See Set Closing Date and Year-End. |
| Zero-rated | A taxable supply taxed at 0%, such as basic groceries in Canada. Input tax credits can still be claimed. Compare exempt. |
