Glossary

The terms, defined once.

What each measure means, how it is computed, and where it is usually got wrong. 315 terms. Every article on the blog links back here.

Access statusFormulary or payer access on a pharma account, dated: open, restricted, blocked or unknown. Reach, frequency and share are computed among open and restricted accounts; calls on blocked accounts are their own list.Account funnelOpened, first purchase within thirty days, still buying at six months, per branch and per account opener, from the account master and the ledger. Measured on the last step, not the first, so that opening effort produces customers rather than records.Account planOne page per account, computed monthly: revenue and trend, share against norm, missing lines valued, contact recency against cadence, dormancy state, share of the rep's book, and pipeline with slip count. Three actions follow by rule; the rep's judgment is a dated box on top, never typed over the numbers.AccrualAn entry that records revenue or expense in the period it is earned or incurred, before the cash moves.Activity-based costingAssigning overhead to customers or products by the activities they consume, each at its own rate per cost driver.Activity-weighted coverageCoverage weighted by current activity rather than by account count: active rigs of served operators over all active rigs in the basin, or the equivalent measure of demand in another market. Two thirds of operators can be a third of the rigs.Addressable spendAddressable spend is total spend minus what procurement cannot influence: payroll, taxes, intercompany, fees. The denominator of spend under management.Adviser concentrationThe share of an office's assets or revenue attached to one adviser as primary, read against the expected share of one over the number of advisers. High concentration with clients who have no second relationship is succession risk.Advisory triggerAn event in a client's compliance data, revenue crossing a threshold, R&D costs appearing, overseas income, a property purchase, that maps by a written rule to an advisory service the firm sells. Trigger present and service not held in two years is an opportunity, valued at the firm's own median fee, listed per partner in the season it appeared.Aftermarket attachParts and service revenue from a customer's installed units over what those units would generate at the rate the OEM's fully-contracted customers pay per unit per year, by model and age band.Answer-firstThe seven-part template for a measure page: the answer in one paragraph, the formula in a line, the rows needed, one worked table, the roll-up and identity, four mistakes, three questions answered in full. The order an analyst needs on Monday and the shape an answer engine can quote. A measure that cannot fill all seven is not yet defined.Asset turnoverRevenue divided by average total assets: how many dollars of sales each dollar of assets supports.AttainmentRevenue divided by quota, per person, per period. Rolled up by summing revenue and quota, never by averaging attainment percentages across people.Attrition by tenureThe annualized rate at which reps leave, measured per tenure band from the roster's end dates. First-year attrition is usually several times the mid-tenure rate, and a single flat rate hides it.Augmented analyticsThe use of AI and automation to assist data preparation, finding patterns and explaining analytical results, with people retaining judgment.Axe hit rateThe share of axes a client received that the client then traded, matched from the axe log to the blotter by client, instrument, side and window.

BandA range on a sizing measure, revenue, balances, sites or headcount, that defines a segment. Customers near a boundary are shown with both segments' norms and a gap range.BaselineAn account's own normal level for a measure, usually the median over a trailing window of twelve weeks or months. Surges and silences are measured against it, not against a global figure.Behavioral segmentationGrouping customers by what they do, such as how recently, how often and how much they buy, rather than by who they are.Bid ruleFor a professional services firm, the rule that says which proposals to pursue: bid where fees won per hour of pursuit in that cell of practice, source and fee band exceeds a stated floor; require a partner's written case where it does not. From the proposal log, engagement letters and pursuit-coded time entries.Billing cycleDays from a shipment's delivery to its invoice, per customer and branch. Delivered and unbilled past a stated age is the aging list, with the cause per shipment: carrier cost pending, accessorial dispute, or a customer batch rule. Each cause has a different fix and a value waiting.Billing realizationFees billed divided by time recorded at standard rates: what the firm gave away before the bill went out.Bookings, billings and revenueThree measures of the same contracts at three timings: contract value at signature, invoices issued, and value recognized as earned. They differ by deferral and release, and a bridge between them is published with the numbers. Every report names which of the three it shows.Break-even pointThe sales volume or revenue at which total contribution exactly covers fixed costs, so profit is zero.BridgeA table that walks from one figure to another through named lines: last month's forecast to this month's deal by deal; bookings to billings to revenue through deferral and release; opening ARR to closing through expansion, contraction, churn and new. The lines sum, and each is attributable.

CAC paybackThe number of months of gross profit from a new customer it takes to recover what it cost to win them.CAGRCompound annual growth rate: the steady yearly rate that takes a starting value to an ending value over a number of years.Capacity planThe arithmetic that says how many salespeople, calling how often, can cover which accounts at what cost, and where the gap between capacity and demand sits.Carrier concentrationThe share of loads on a lane, or premium in a line, held by the largest carrier. Assessed against a threshold set per volume band and paired with the carrier's acceptance trend, because concentration is a fact and falling acceptance is the warning.Cash conversion cycleThe number of days between paying suppliers and collecting from customers: days inventory plus days sales outstanding minus days payable.Cash flow forecastA projection of cash coming in and going out, period by period, to show the cash balance ahead.Cash runwayHow many months the cash on hand lasts at the current net burn rate.Catalog fitFor a manufacturer or distributor, the product lines a customer buys against the lines customers of the same type and size buy from you. The gap, valued, is the cross-sell list.Cause attributionAssigning each hold, rejection or failure to one cause by a stated rule, so the split by cause has an owner per row.Change backlogRegulatory obligations added or amended that have no control mapped yet, with the days since each became effective, per business unit. Every obligation is mapped, in progress with an owner and a target date, or unmapped with the days counted.Chargeable weightThe greater of an air shipment's gross and volumetric weight, which is what air freight revenue is charged on. The air-mode volume unit, never added to TEU or pallets.Chargeback splitRetailer deductions grouped by reason and joined to the brand's own shipment and delivery records, into valid, disputable and unmatched. Cost per case shipped by retailer ranks the problem; a reason recurring at one retailer is that retailer's rule or the brand's process for it.Churn rateChurn rate is the share of customers, or of recurring revenue, lost over a period: what was lost from the starting base divided by the starting base. Where there is no subscription, a customer is lost when silence exceeds a stated multiple of its own order cadence, and churned revenue is the run rate before the silence.CitationThe five parts that make a figure checkable: the table, the row, the period cut, the definition version and the upload it was computed from. A link to a dashboard is not a citation, because the dashboard has moved on. A figure without one is a claim.Claim rateWarranty claims per unit per year, per model, age band and production batch, from the claims file joined to the installed base register. A batch at three times the model's rate across many customers is the product; one customer at three times the rate across batches is the application.Claims bandA stated range of loss ratio per line, with the broker's own historical non-renewal rate and median rate change at renewal for policies in that band. It turns a client's loss ratio into a renewal risk with a number behind it.Close rateDeals won divided by all opportunities created in a cohort, including those still open or abandoned.CohortThe customers who first signed in the same period, usually a quarter. Fixed at signing: a customer never moves cohort. Retention per cohort reconciles to the ARR bridge because every movement belongs to exactly one cohort.Collection realizationCash collected divided by fees billed: what clients refused, disputed or never paid after the bill went out.Column roleWhat a column in an export is for in the roll-up: a level (region, team, person, account), a dimension (product, date), the value, or nothing. A numeric amount cannot be a level; two columns cannot share a role.Common-size statementA financial statement with every line shown as a percentage of one base figure, usually revenue or total assets.Comparable setThe properties, sites or customers of the same type and market that a unit is measured against, drawn from the company's own portfolio. A resort is never compared to an airport hotel. The set is stated on the line.Comparison groupSimilar accounts, same tier, segment and access state, that did not receive the effort in the same period. Their change carries the season, the market and the product change; subtracting it leaves what is associated with the effort. It removes noise, not the selection of who got the effort.ConcentrationThe share of a total held by a few members: a partner's fees from three clients, a site's inbound from one supplier, a desk's revenue from its top five accounts. Risk expressed as a fraction.Concentration ratio (CR-n)The combined revenue share of the n largest customers: CR1, CR5, CR10.ConsolidationCombining the financial statements of a parent and its subsidiaries into one set, with transactions between them removed.Constant currencyGrowth computed at a fixed exchange rate, shown beside reported growth at each period's rates, so a currency move is not read as a sales result. Conversion happens once at the entity ledger at the stated rate, never in the report.Contact recencyDays since the last logged two-way contact with a client, measured against the contact interval the client's tier requires. Silence on a top-tier client is the earliest signal of an outflow.Contract calendarUnits, sites or agreements by the month their warranty, contract or agreement ends, per customer, with whether an offer or renewal activity is logged. The manufacturer's or provider's own attach and renewal history says what the call is worth, and the list is the customers with expiries in the window and no offer.Contract complianceIn procurement, the share of spend in a category that went to the supplier and price the contract specifies. Its opposite is off-contract or maverick spend.Contracting entityThe organization whose signature is on the order: a trust rather than a school, a district rather than a campus, a health system rather than a hospital. Coverage, renewal and fit are measured here; sites are a dimension beneath.ContributionGross margin per account minus cost to serve. Ranked, it shows the large accounts that earn least and the components, drops, returns, lines, that a conversation can change.Contribution marginContribution margin is revenue minus variable costs: what is left to cover fixed costs and profit. Per customer, it is gross margin less the costs the customer's own behavior causes: rebates, delivery, order handling, sales time, returns and credit.Control totalThe figure the source system shows for the same period and filter as an export, noted before exporting. The file's total should equal it; if not, the export is filtered, truncated or double-counted, and that is found before any analysis is.Correction sourceWho corrected a held or rejected entry: the customer, the broker or nobody, which attributes the cause.Cost driverThe countable activity that causes a cost to rise, such as orders, order lines, deliveries or support tickets.Cost per net unitTrade spend on a promotion at an account divided by the net lift it produced there. The figure that decides where next year's trade spend goes.Cost per touchLoaded cost of a channel's reps over their qualifying touches, by channel, inside or field, at stated rates. With revenue per touch by tier and channel, it shows the tiers where an expensive touch returns more and the tiers where it returns the same as a cheap one.Cost to serveCost to serve is the cost of serving a customer beyond the goods themselves: delivery drops, returns and credits, order and pick lines, each at a stated rate. Subtracted from gross margin to give contribution per account, which ranks accounts differently from revenue.Count to halfThe number of customers, largest first, needed to reach half of revenue. The customer concentration measure a sales leader can act on: it is how many relationships carry the business.CoverageThe share of accounts a team is responsible for that were actually reached in a period: visited, called, or sold to. Measured per person and rolled up.Coverage intelligenceThe measurement, from a company's own ledger and CRM exports, of which accounts it reaches, how much of each account's spend it holds against a norm from its own best customers, and where the valued gaps are, with every figure rolled up and reconciled to invoiced revenue.Credit headroomCredit limit less outstanding balance per trade account. An account with little headroom whose purchases flattened, or whose orders were held for credit, is constrained by credit rather than demand. Good payers get a limit review; slow payers get a collections conversation.Credit identityThe rule that credited revenue reconciles to the ledger: split shares per invoice line sum to one, overlay credit sits in its own column and is never added to the split total, and the rep credited is the one assigned on the invoice date. Failures are an exception list, not a quarter-end dispute.Cross-sellRevenue on a product line the customer did not buy in the prior period. Split into new lines and returning lines. Its gap is the lines similar customers hold that this one does not, valued at their median spend.Current ratioCurrent assets divided by current liabilities: whether what turns to cash within a year covers what falls due within a year.Customer acquisition cost (CAC)Sales and marketing spend in a period divided by the new customers won in that period.Customer lifetime valueThe customer lifetime value formula: annual contribution per customer (revenue less cost of goods less cost to serve) times expected remaining life from the company's own churn by segment and tenure, discounted at a stated rate and reported as a range. Not revenue, not one churn rate, not an infinite horizon.Customer masterThe file that says what each account is: a stable identifier, a dated parent, two or three segment fields from what the customer is, a size measure not derived from sales, an owner, a status and effective dates. One named source per field. Names, contacts and notes stay in the CRM.

Data mapThe assignment of each column in an export to a role: region, team, person, account as nesting levels; product and date as dimensions; value as the measure; the rest dropped. Checked by the roll-up identity before anything is computed, and reused on every later export of the same shape.Data modelThe tables an analysis uses and the relationships between them, joined on keys, so measures can be sliced by any related field.Data quality scorePer rep, the share of CRM records passing ten checks on five fields: owner, close date, stage, activity date and account identifier, each for completeness and validity. Measures computed on a rep's data under a stated floor are shown greyed with the score beside them.Day-of-month profileThe share of a normal month's revenue that has usually landed by each day, from the company's own history. Month-to-date divided by the share landed is the projection, and the range of the share gives the range. Scaling by days elapsed projects a miss that is not there.Days inventory outstandingThe average number of days inventory sits before it is sold: average inventory over cost of goods sold, times the days in the period.Days payable outstandingThe average number of days a company takes to pay its suppliers.Days sales outstandingThe average number of days it takes to collect payment after a credit sale.Deadline loadHours of work due per manager per week, from each engagement's deadline, its hours from last year's time entries, and a stated lead time over which the hours spread. Against roster capacity less leave, the excess is visible months out, and reassignments and early starts flatten it.Decision levelThe level of a customer's hierarchy at which the contract is signed and the renewal decided: the group, the entity, the site or the store, per customer and per product. Measures are computed there; levels beneath are dimensions that explain them. Too low and one customer becomes forty; too high and forty buyers become one.Definition versionA dated version number on a measure's written definition, cited on every table and answer that uses it. When the definition changes, the version changes, and prior periods are restated under the new one or marked as under the old. Without it, a definition change reads as a movement.Deflection listRecurring how-to questions in the ticket export, clustered and named, with the handling hours each consumes and whether a help article exists and was viewed before the ticket. Ranked by hours a month; the fix per cluster is write it, place it, rewrite it, or change the product.Delivery ratioFor a sponsorship partner, inventory delivered at rate card over contract value paid, compared to the ratio the package discount implies. Below it, make-goods are owed; well above it, the partner has received more than it paid for and the renewal should price it in.Deposit flightOperating balances at a banking relationship falling below a stated share of their own baseline for consecutive months, not explained by the prior year's pattern, while the accounts stay open. Split by the transaction data into moved elsewhere, business shrinking and seasonal.DepreciationThe spreading of a long-lived asset's cost over the years it is used, recorded as a non-cash expense.Depth gapFor the lines an account already holds, the norm's median spend on each line less the account's spend, floored at zero, summed. The upsell half of the share of wallet gap; whitespace is the breadth half. An account with every expected line and a low share has a depth gap and no whitespace.Deterministic toolsFunctions that compute a figure the same way every time from the same rows: aggregation, ranking, penetration, growth. In an AI analytics product, the code that does the arithmetic so the model never has to.Discount clusterThe share of invoiced lines whose discount sits within a point below the approval threshold. A large cluster means reps price to the threshold rather than to the deal, and the threshold has become the price. Read with the win-rate curve by discount band, which usually flattens well below it.Distribution listThe set of clients a salesperson sends axes or runs to, with the date it last changed.Distribution voidIn consumer goods, a store that carries the category but not your product, or carries some of your range and not the rest. A gap in retail distribution, listed per store and per SKU.Dormant accountAn account with no purchase inside a window, ninety days being usual, or longer than three times the account's own typical interval between orders. Ranked by past value, the list is the reactivation plan.Driver-based budgetA budget built from the operational drivers behind each line, such as headcount, volume and price, rather than from last year's totals.

EBITDAEarnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization: operating profit with the non-cash charges added back.Effective number of customersOne divided by the Herfindahl index: the number of equal-sized customers that would give the same concentration.Effort ratioSupport handling hours per dollar of an account's revenue, over the norm for accounts of the same tier and product. Far above it with one persistent category is a product fault or a commercial mismatch; far below it with falling tickets may be disengagement.EstateThe list of sites a customer operates, used as the denominator in site penetration. Sourced from the tender, the account review or a public register, dated per customer, and reconciled to billing so closed sites are retired.Estate currencyThe share of services that the estate record and the billing file agree on, over every distinct service on either file.Exception listThe rows that failed a check, with the check, the value and the owner: an account under two reps, a split summing to 1.4, a claim with no policy, an invoice with no contract price. Produced on every load, worked to a deadline, and never silently adjusted.Excess dropsDeliveries per week to an account above the norm for accounts of the same size and type, from the delivery log, times a stated cost per drop. The list is accounts with no stated delivery constraint, and the offer is the schedule that similar accounts already run on.Exit criterionA verifiable fact a deal must have before entering a pipeline stage: a contact with the economic buyer role, an attached dated proposal, a signed order form. Mapped to a CRM field so the stage can be audited weekly. Stage probabilities are then derived from history, not set in a workshop.Expected basketThe categories and spend per cover a kitchen of a given menu type buys, from the distributor's own fully-supplied kitchens of that type, applied to a kitchen's covers. The gap per category is the route rep's question at that door.Exponential smoothingA forecast that blends the latest actual with the previous forecast, so weights on older periods decline geometrically.

Facility utilizationDrawn balance over committed limit per credit facility, trended over four quarters. Persistently low with a commitment fee is a customer paying for unused capacity; persistently high with growing revenue is a customer about to need more; high with shrinking revenue is a credit question.Favorable varianceA difference from budget that improves profit: revenue above plan or costs below it.Fee marginFor a wealth or advisory client, fees earned less the cost of the service actually delivered in adviser and support hours at stated rates, against the segment's own median. Read with held-away assets and tenure, so a first-year investment is not confused with a decade of service above fee.Fee walletFor an investment banking client, the fees it paid all banks across products in the period, estimated from public deal data with stated fee assumptions per product and size band. The denominator of the bank's share per client.Fill rateQuantity shipped over quantity ordered, measured at unit, line or order level.Fixed costA cost that stays the same in total over a period whatever the volume sold, within a normal range of activity.Flash reportA short, early estimate of the period's key results, issued days after period end, before the books are fully closed.Fleet utilizationRental days over available days per equipment class per basin, where available days exclude maintenance and transit. Rental days times rate reconciles to invoiced rental revenue. Per operator, rental days against the operator's own history beside its rig count separates lost share from lower activity.Flexed budgetThe budget restated at actual volume, so variable costs are compared like for like and a cost that fell only because sales fell is not reported as a saving.Flow shareOn a trading desk, the volume you executed for a client divided by the client's total volume in that product, where the total can be estimated. Hit ratio counts requests; flow share counts size.Forecast accuracyOne minus the absolute forecast error over the actual, at a stated horizon, per rep and for the team.Forecast biasA rep's mean signed forecast miss across quarters, measured at the same week each quarter. Distinct from error, which ignores direction. A rep with low error and high bias is predictably wrong and can be adjusted; one with high error and low bias cannot.Forecast bridgeThe decomposition of the difference between a run rate, or the prior forecast, and the current forecast into named components: new deals, expansion, slipped, pushed, lost.Forecast floorRun rate, as the reference a forecast is compared to rather than a forecast itself. The gap between the floor and the forecast is five lines with evidence: new business at historical conversion, expansion at pursuit share, churn from the lists, seasonality from the index, and dated known changes.Forecast horizonHow long before period end a forecast was made; accuracy is only comparable at the same horizon.Forecast snapshotThe forecast per rep saved every week, so accuracy can be measured at a stated horizon rather than on the day the period closes.FP&AFinancial planning and analysis: the finance team that builds budgets and forecasts and explains results against them.Free cash flowOperating cash flow less capital expenditures: the cash a business generates that is free for debt, dividends or growth.Free cash flow marginFree cash flow as a percentage of revenue: the share of each sales dollar left in cash after operating costs and capital spending.

Gap valueThe figure beside a gap: what a missing product, lane or account is worth, at list price, at the customer's own rate, or against an external wallet, with the basis stated.Ghost serviceA service on the estate record that is not on the billing file: ceased and never removed, or ordered and never provisioned.Grace windowThe stated number of days after expiry within which a late renewal still counts as a renewal.Gross marginGross margin is revenue minus the cost of goods sold, usually shown as a percentage of revenue: the share of each sales dollar left after the direct cost of what was sold. Computed per line, customer or business.

Handoff leakageAt each of the four revenue handoffs, lead to meeting, meeting to opportunity, opportunity to closed, closed to renewed, the items dropped valued at the expected revenue of those that passed. Per source and segment. The largest figure is where the revenue operation is fixed first.Hard thresholdOne of the few measures where the level, not the trend, is the finding: SLA attainment against a contracted target, a credit limit, an asset's capacity, a control's testing window. Everywhere else the level is read against the company's own history and the trend is the signal.Health scoreA computed account score from five inputs, run-rate trend, contact recency against cadence, products used against norm, ticket signal and pipeline slip, with weights set from the company's own churn history and stated. Shown with its inputs, recomputed monthly by one rule, and validated each quarter against what happened to the low-scoring accounts.Held-away assetsWhat a wealth client holds at other firms, from the financial plan or fact-find with a date, or estimated from the firm's own fully-held clients of similar profile. The denominator of share of wallet minus assets here.Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI)The sum of the squared revenue shares of all customers: near 0 for a fragmented base, 1 for a single customer.Hit ratioOn a trading desk, requests for quote won divided by requests received, per client and product over a window. The desk's version of share of wallet, counted in requests.Hold rateCustoms entries held over entries filed, per customer and lane, against the broker's own rate on the same lane and commodity group. The cause split, customer data, broker entry, authority selection, says whose problem it is, and the cost in storage and delay is the customer's own number.Hold-out testFitting a forecasting method on earlier data and measuring its error only on later data it has not seen.Hospitality yieldSeats used, from access scans or check-in, over seats held per partner per fixture, and across the season. A partner using a third of its seats will ask for a smaller package at renewal; unused seats per fixture are inventory the organization already owns.

Identifier mapA dated table of old identifier to new, applied on every upload before any measure, so a migration, a merge or a re-key joins history instead of breaking it. Old identifiers are never reused. Proposed pairs from pattern matching are confirmed by a person, never applied automatically.IdentityA sum that must hold on every computed table, such as parts equal the whole, checked every time the table is produced.Inferred out-of-stockA zero-sales run at a store for a SKU that is too long to be chance at the SKU's own sales rate there. Lost sales are the run times the rate. Labeled inferred on every line, because the brand does not see the shelf; the pattern by distribution center is the conversation with the buyer.IntercompanyRevenue from one group entity to another: real in the selling entity's ledger, not revenue to the group. Excluded from the commercial roll-up by an affiliate flag on the customer, listed, so the entity's local total bridges to its contribution.Inventory agingDays since a SKU's last issue at a site, banded, with value per band per site. Days since last issue, not since receipt, because a slow line that issues weekly is not aged. The same SKU aged at one site and issuing at another is a transfer; the bands above the policy's age are the write-down exposure.Inventory turnoverHow many times a company sells through its average inventory in a period.Issue agingDays an open finding is past its remediation date, against both the current date and the original one, with the count of extensions. Per owner and unit, ranked by rating. Three extensions on one finding is a finding about the owner.

Key accountA customer important enough, by revenue, potential or strategic value, to get a named owner, a plan and its own review.KPI (key performance indicator)A defined metric with a named owner, a target or threshold, and a decision that changes when it moves.

Lagging indicatorA measure of an outcome after it has happened: revenue, churn, win rate, margin.Lane shareIn freight, loads or volume you carried for a shipper on an origin-destination pair divided by everything the shipper moved on that lane. A shipper rarely gives one provider every lane.Lead time variabilityThe spread of actual lead time, receipt date minus order date, per supplier per site per item: interquartile range or standard deviation. It drives safety stock more than the mean does, and it is invisible on an on-time scorecard.Leading indicatorA measure that moves before an outcome, far enough ahead to act on, and that someone can change.Lending-only relationshipA borrower with an active facility and no operating account, treasury product, card or deposits at the bank. The bank carries the credit and another bank has the relationship. Excludes syndicate participations and acquired portfolios by flag.Level assertionThe check that every level of a roll-up sums to the same total: region equals teams equals people equals accounts. The single test that catches a member under two parents, a blank level or a mixed source, at the level where it happens.Leverage driftThe difference between the fee-earner mix a matter or engagement was priced on and the mix delivered, at cost rates per grade. Partners doing associate work is the commonest form, and it costs the difference between the grades' cost rates on every hour. Read with hours, because the partner who did it in half the time broke even.License utilizationActive seats over purchased seats, per program per institution, from the license register joined to the usage export. Under a threshold with a renewal inside six months is the retention list; over a ceiling is the expansion list.List ageThe time since a distribution list, call plan or target list last changed.Loan-to-deposit ratioA bank's total loans divided by its total deposits: how much of its deposit funding it has lent out.Lock-upFor a professional firm, work-in-progress days plus AR days (debtor days in the UK) per client: the time between work done and cash received. The split says whether the delay is billing cadence, the partner's lever, or collection, the client's. In cash, unbilled WIP plus accounts receivable.Lost at renewalPremium or contract value that did not renew, split by line, carrier, account executive, competitor category, stated reason and whether the placement was remarketed first. Losing on price without remarketing is a process finding; losing remarketed placements to one competitor is a proposition finding.Lost lineAn order line canceled for stock, short-shipped or substituted, from the fulfillment export joined to the order. Valued at the line's price, per branch, item and account. Items that recur on the list are the stocking decision; accounts whose order frequency fell after a run of lost lines are the customer cost.

Management accountsThe internal monthly financial pack for managers: results against budget and last year, with commentary. The US equivalent is the monthly management reporting package.Margin of safetyHow far actual or budgeted sales can fall before the business reaches its break-even point.Margin per loadCustomer rate less carrier cost per load, including accessorials on both sides, rolled up by shipper, by lane and by the pair. The pairs at or below zero hide inside profitable shippers and profitable lanes. The contract-versus-spot split on each side says whether the price is stale or the carrier was bought badly.Market shareMarket share is a company's sales divided by the total sales of its market, as a percentage: one number about the company, from research or an industry body. Distinct from share of wallet, which is one number per customer and rolls up. The two can move in opposite directions.MarkupThe amount added to cost to set a price, expressed as a percentage of cost.Materiality thresholdThe size of variance, as both a percentage and a dollar amount, that a report treats as worth explaining.MedianThe middle value when the numbers are sorted: half are at or below it, half at or above.Meeting conversionFirst meetings followed by a qualified opportunity on the same account within a stated window, over first meetings held, per rep and per source. Meetings with no opportunity and no follow-up are the list. Source is split so cold-outreach reps are not blamed for the source.MetricA measure with a written definition: formula, sources, period, inclusions, level and the identity that checks it.Mix effectThe part of a change in average margin or price caused by a shift in which lines sold, with each line's own margin held constant.ModeOcean, air, road or rail, carried as a dimension on every booking row. Each mode has its own volume unit and its own reconciliation. Revenue is the only figure that sums across modes.Model readingA sentence the language model writes about computed tables: what moved, where, and what the table says about why, with a citation on every figure. Labeled as the model's, shown beside the table, never given the table's weight. The model reads and explains; deterministic code computes.Monday briefA short list, per salesperson, of the accounts to act on this week and why, with the figure behind each line. The output of coverage and share analytics, delivered before the week starts.Month-end closeThe routine of recording, reconciling and reviewing a month's transactions so the books can be locked and reported.Movements pageThe page of a reporting pack that lists every measure that moved past its stated threshold since the last period, each line citing the table and row it came from. It replaces the narrative; the other tables are evidence.Moving averageThe average of the most recent N periods, recalculated each period, used to smooth out noise and show the trend.

Natural concentrationHow much of a customer's wallet the largest supplier usually holds in a category, from the company's own customers where wallets are known. The ceiling a share of wallet can reasonably reach; 45 percent is excellent where the ceiling is 50 and poor where it is 90.Net interest marginA bank's interest income less its interest expense, as a percentage of average earning assets.Net liftA promotion's gross sell-out lift over the account's own baseline, minus the dip in the weeks after when stocked-up shoppers stay away. The volume the promotion actually added, per account.Net marginNet income as a percentage of revenue: what is left of each dollar of sales after every cost, interest and tax.Net of creditsEvery revenue measure is invoiced value less credit notes, returns and rebates. A credit belongs to the period it was issued and reduces the customer, product and rep of the original invoice it references. Credits with no reference are uncoded, listed, and a leak in their own right.Net present valueThe value today of a project's future cash flows, discounted at the cost of capital, minus what it costs up front.Net realizationBilling realization multiplied by collection realization: cash collected over time recorded at standard rates.Net revenue retentionNet revenue retention (NRR) is recurring revenue now from a set of customers over their recurring revenue twelve months ago, including expansion, so it can exceed 100 percent. Decomposes into expansion, contraction, churn and reactivation. Gross retention is the same without expansion, capped at 100.NormWhat customers of the same type and size usually buy from you: every product bought by more than half of a band of similar customers. The denominator behind penetration, fit, whitespace and range.Norm penetrationThe share of comparable accounts that buy a category at all, which decides whether the category is expected of an account.

Off-contract spendIn procurement, spend in a category that went to a supplier or at terms the contract did not specify. Also called maverick spend. It clusters by site and requester, which is where the finding is.OLAP cubeA data structure that stores a measure pre-summed across several dimensions, such as month, region and product, so any slice is quick to read.On-time deliveryReceipts on or before the promised date divided by receipts, per supplier, per month. With quality from rejections, the performance trend that warns before a supplier fails.Operating leverageHow much operating profit changes for a given change in revenue, driven by the share of costs that are fixed.Operating profitRevenue less cost of goods sold and operating expenses: what the core business earns before interest and tax.Order fill rateOrders shipped complete, every line in full, divided by orders shipped.Order guide complianceThe share of a kitchen's order lines that are items on the order guide it was set up with, at agreed prices. Off-guide lines are priced at list and miss rebates. Low compliance with a guide untouched for a year is a stale guide, not a customer problem.Order to activationDays from a signed service order to the service being live, per order, against the provider's own median per service type. The stage split says whether the delay is the provider's, the wholesale carrier's or the customer's site. Customers with long-delayed activations non-renew at a higher rate, stated as an association.Orphan serviceA service on the billing file that is not on the estate record: billed revenue the account team does not know it sells.OTIF (on time in full)The share of orders, or lines, delivered both inside the date window and at the full quantity.Outlier flagAn order beyond a stated multiple of the account's own median order, or beyond a stated percentile of the segment's distribution, flagged with a reason and shown, never removed. Affected measures are shown with and without it. Norms are medians so one order cannot move them.

PaceRooms and revenue on the books for a future month against the same month at the same point last year, per property and per segment, from reservation snapshots. Behind in one segment while the comparable set is ahead is that segment's sales problem, not the market's.PenetrationOf the products or services a customer could reasonably buy from you, the share they actually do. A customer buying three of nine lines is at 33 percent penetration.Percentage pointThe arithmetic difference between two percentages, as distinct from the percentage change between them.Period cutThe calendar convention an export or report uses: calendar month, 4-4-5 fiscal period, week ending Sunday, invoice date or ship date. Stated on every export; inherited by every report from its ledger of record; compared like to like, with a 53-week period flagged.Pipeline coverageOpen pipeline closing in the period over the remaining target. The multiple a team needs is one over its own historical conversion at this week, per stage, not a rule of thumb of three.Pipeline hygieneFive weekly checks on the open pipeline: close dates in the past, no activity in a window, stuck in stage past the team's own median by a multiple, late-stage value unchanged since creation, and duplicates on one account. Each with the count, the weighted value and the rep.Pitch conversionMandates won over pitches made, by sector team and product, by count and by estimated fee, from the pitch log joined to the mandate register within a stated window. With senior hours per pitch at a stated rate, fees won per senior hour by cell is the bid discipline.Pivot tableA spreadsheet summary that groups rows by one or more fields and totals a value for each group.Plan versionThe dated version of a compensation plan, rates, thresholds and accelerators, effective for a period. Every rep's commission calculation cites the version in force for that period, and a mid-year change applies from its effective date, not to the whole year.Price realizationInvoiced value over the same lines at list price on the invoice date. Against the agreed discount from the price agreement, the remainder is the unagreed discount, given line by line through overrides. Per customer, per product, per rep.Price varianceInvoiced price minus the contracted price the customer was entitled to on the invoice date, per line. Over is overbilling that becomes credits and findings; under is margin given away. Both usually trace to a wrong tier or an undated price file.Price volume mixSplitting a change in revenue or margin into what came from price, what came from volume and what came from the blend of products sold.Primary tender shareThe share of a shipper's loads on a lane tendered to the broker first, from the routing guide where shared or inferred from tender timing. A backup position that accepts nearly everything it sees, on time, is the case for primary; a primary position that rejects is a lane about to be lost.Private label penetrationThe share of an account's volume on paired SKUs that is the distributor's own label rather than the branded equivalent, per category, against the norm for accounts of the same type. A margin-mix measure as much as a sales one; the gap is valued at the margin difference on the branded volume at a stated conversion.Product depthProduct depth is how many of your products a customer buys, compared with what similar customers buy. In financial services: products held per client.Product lineThe top level of a product taxonomy, ten to thirty of them, at which whitespace, products per customer and cross-sell are computed. Families sit beneath, SKUs beneath those. Every SKU has one family and every family one line, dated, and revenue sums identically at every level.Production shareFor a corporate rate agreement, room nights consumed on the negotiated rate over the volume the rate was priced on, per account and per property. Under-producers are a compliance conversation; over-producers have a rate priced for less business than they bring.Products per customerThe count of distinct product lines a customer bought or holds in the period. Lines, not SKUs. The norm is set per segment from the company's own customers who buy most, and the gap per customer is the norm minus its count.Profile matchA customer who shares the profile of the company's own regular buyers of a product, on tenure, spend band, attendance or the desk's equivalent, and has never bought it. Valued at what the regular buyers with that profile spend. The prospect list from the base the company already has.Pseudonymized dataData in which identifying fields, such as client names, have been replaced with identifiers, and the mapping from identifier to name is kept separately by the data owner.Pull-throughAfter a formulary or access win, the change in prescriptions at the accounts whose access opened, less the change at comparable accounts whose access did not, split by whether the field called them in the window. Territories where access opened and nobody called are the list. An association, stated as one.Purchase cohortCustomers grouped by the year of their first purchase, fixed. Per cohort: retention, products held now against year one, revenue now against year one. A cohort that retained but did not expand stalled, and the year it started is where onboarding, product or sales changed.Pursuit sharePer rep, the whitespace value with an open expansion opportunity against it, capped at the whitespace, over the rep's total whitespace. Accounts with whitespace and no opportunity are expansion nobody is working; opportunities on accounts with no whitespace are either a grid gap or optimism.

Quiet clientA client whose inquiry or order count has fallen below a stated fraction of its own baseline in a product, where the product is not down desk-wide. Ranked by the flow at stake. Inquiries down and trades down is a relationship signal; inquiries steady and trades down is a hit-ratio signal.QuotaThe revenue or volume a salesperson or territory is expected to deliver in a period. Set from the territory's potential, not from the person.Quote conversionOrders placed against quotes issued, by count and by value, per customer, product family, estimator and turnaround band, from the quote log joined to the order book on the quote reference. Price-check customers, priced-out families and slow quotes each show as a cell.

R-squaredThe share of the variation in a measure that a regression line explains, from 0 to 1.Ramp curveAttainment against a full quota by month of tenure, measured from the team's own past hires with the range. The input that turns headcount into productive capacity per month.RangeIn distribution and consumer goods, the SKUs a store buys against the SKUs on the list for its channel. A store stocking three of nine is at a third of range.Reach and frequencyIn pharmaceutical and field sales, reach is the share of target accounts called at least once in a cycle; frequency is calls per target against the plan.RealizationBilled fees over the value of time worked at standard rates, per client or per partner. Write-downs reduce it before billing; write-offs after. Drift is realization that fell without a rate agreement changing.Realization factorThe stated discount applied to universe accounts' value at norm in a territory potential, because not every prospect converts. The company's judgment written down, the same for every territory, and on the report.Realized rateFees billed or collected divided by hours worked: the rate per hour the firm actually received, independent of the rate card.Reason codeThe coded field on a hold, rejection, return or credit that says why it happened, and the input to cause attribution.ReconciliationConfirming that a figure computed one way equals the same figure computed another way, most often that a sales roll-up equals the number finance reports for the same period and definition.Redemption watchIntermediaries whose net flows in a strategy have turned negative for a stated number of consecutive months against their own buying history, while the strategy overall is still gathering. Flows turn months before assets fall, and the list ranks by assets at risk with runway.Referral shareFor a professional services partner, the fee value of their clients' matters worked by other practices over the fee value of all their clients' matters. Read beside the client gap against the firm's norm, never alone.Refresh cadenceHow often a measure is recomputed, set by how fast it moves and how often it can be acted on: weekly for coverage and pipeline, monthly for share of wallet and concentration, quarterly for norms and tiers, annually for definitions. Faster than the cadence is noise the reader learns to ignore.Renewal calendarContracted value ending per month per owner, from the contract register's end dates, with the accounts inside their notice window that have no logged renewal activity. Its total over all months equals the contracted base.Renewal numberHow many times a contract has renewed before this one: first renewals lose most, and the rate is compared within the number.Renewal rateContracts renewed over contracts due in the period, by count and by prior value, with a stated grace window.Rep loadThe accounts and open opportunities assigned to a rep, weighted by the touches each tier and stage typically takes, read against the band carried by the team's own quota attainers. Above the band with low coverage is overloaded; below it is a book that cannot reach number.Repeat contactA ticket reopened, or a new ticket in the same category within a stated window of a closed one, per account. The account-level repeat rate against the team's base finds the customers for whom the average first-contact-resolution figure is not true.Reporting rateIncidents and near-misses reported per thousand units of activity, per business unit, against the firm's own median. Read beside the findings rate from audit and monitoring: a low reporting rate with normal findings is under-reporting, a culture measure, and reports per finding is the number on the table.Return on assetsNet income divided by average total assets: how much profit each dollar of assets produces.Revenue intelligenceA revenue intelligence platform is software that captures and analyzes calls, emails and CRM activity to inspect deals, coach reps and forecast.Revenue per employeeRevenue for a period divided by the average number of full-time equivalent employees in it.Role pageA page on this site that lists the ten questions a specific leader asks, the computed table that answers each, the identity behind it, and the answer to send back. Written so a CFO, CRO, CPO, COO, managing partner or desk head can find their questions and the tables in one place.Roll-upThe hierarchy a sales measure is summed through: account to person to team to region to company. A roll-up is trusted only when every level sums to the same total.Rolling forecastA forecast that always looks a fixed number of months ahead, usually twelve, and is extended by a month each time a month closes.Run rateThe revenue a period would produce if the current pace continued: the trailing period's revenue, or the average of recent periods, projected forward. The baseline a forecast bridge starts from.Running shareThe cumulative percentage of a total held by the items so far in a list sorted from largest to smallest; the column behind every Pareto chart.

Sales intelligenceAs a vendor category, third-party data about companies and contacts for prospecting; in plain usage, insight into your own sales.Sales velocitySales velocity is the revenue per day a sales pipeline produces: qualified opportunities times win rate times average won value, divided by sales cycle length in days. Each factor comes from snapshots and outcomes, not the CRM summary. When it moves, the decomposition says which factor did; usually cycle length.Scope gateThe rule that a person's permissions are applied in the data layer before any row is read, so a salesperson's question is answered from their own accounts only and the assistant cannot leak what it never saw.Season watchFor accounting and education, the list of clients or institutions with a deadline in the window and no engagement or contact opened. Driven by the filing calendar or the academic year rather than the sales quarter.Seasonal indexEach month's share of annual revenue against an even twelfth, from three years of the company's own history, per segment and per account where the account's pattern differs. A trailing figure divided by the index is deseasonalized. Same period last year is the default comparison; the index is for when it is unavailable or the in-year trend matters.Seat utilizationActive seats in the trailing 30 days over contracted seats, per SaaS account, trended over two quarters and joined to the renewal date. Under threshold inside 120 days of renewal is downgrade risk; over cap is expansion with the evidence attached.Second relationshipA second named person at the firm who has had a logged contact with the client in the last twelve months. A name on the record with no contact does not count.Segment migrationA customer crossing a segment boundary between periods, so the norm it is measured against changes. Reported as its own list with the old and new norm side by side, so the gap that appears is explained.Semantic layerA shared set of business definitions between raw data and reports, so every tool computes a measure the same way.Semantic modelA business description of data: what measures mean, which records relate, and how figures are grouped and computed for an answer.Send backA leader's response to a figure that cannot be checked: an average where the table has rows, a percentage with no denominator, a claim with no identity, a portfolio described by its manager from memory. The table is requested instead. Each role page on this site lists the answer to send back beside the table that replaces it.Sensitivity analysisChanging one input of a plan or forecast at a time to see how far the result moves.Share of potentialThe quota method that sets each territory's quota as the same share of its potential, the company target over total potential, so two reps with the same quota have the same reach. Quotas sum to the target by construction, and a rep can check the quota account by account.Share of walletThe portion of a customer's total spend on a category that you hold. Your revenue from the customer divided by everything they spend on what you sell.Single-source riskA part, service or category with only one qualified supplier, or one supplier in actual use, so that a supplier's failure stops production or service.SLA attainmentSLA attainment is the percentage of eligible support tickets that met their service-level agreement's response and resolution targets. Support leaders and account managers use it to review service against each account's own contract, by priority.Slip countThe number of times an open deal's close date moved to a later period, from weekly pipeline snapshots. The team's own close rate by slip count discounts multi-slip deals in the forecast; a deal that slipped three times closes at a fraction of the rate of one that never moved.Slipped dealA deal whose expected close date has moved to a later period at least once. A deal that has slipped twice or more is the strongest single predictor that it will slip again.Source gradeFor a figure the company does not hold, a wallet, an estate, a held-away balance, a project value: stated by the customer with a date, a norm from the company's own similar customers, or scaled from a public figure. On the line, always. Stated figures age into estimates past a stated age; estimates rank and size and never produce a claim.Space utilizationSold hours over saleable hours per function room per property, with revenue per available square meter beside it, cut by day of week. Saleable hours exclude turnaround and closures; twenty-four-hour availability makes every property look empty. Space-only bookings, events with no rooms block, are shown separately.Spend under managementThe share of third-party spend that procurement sourced, contracted or approved, from payables joined to the contract register and the approved supplier list. Three buckets, on contract, approved off contract and unmanaged, sum to addressable spend. The denominator that makes a savings claim honest.Stage ageDays a deal has spent in its current stage, read against the normal age for that stage from the team's own closed deals.Stage conversion rateThe share of records that reached one stage and went on to reach the next.Stage probabilityThe chance that a deal at a given stage is eventually won, measured from closed deals or, more often, left at a CRM default.Stalled dealAn open opportunity past a stated multiple of its stage's normal age with no activity in a stated window, counted as lost for the win rate.Standard rateThe rate card value at which time is recorded before any discount, fixed fee or write-off.Standardization gapWithin a health system or multi-site customer, a facility whose share with the supplier in a category is far below the median across its sister facilities on the same contract. Valued at the system's own norm applied to the outlier. The sister facility is the evidence; the value analysis committee is the conversation.Substitution pairA guide or contracted item that stopped being ordered and an off-guide item in the same category that started, at the same accounts. Aggregated across the base, the pairs are the maintenance list for guides, catalogs or contracts.SurgeA week in which an account's contact or ticket volume exceeds a stated multiple of its own trailing median. Read as a product problem when several accounts share a category, or an account at risk when one account surges alone.

Target list reviewThe periodic check of a call plan, distribution list or target list against what the accounts on it and off it actually did.Tender rejection rateTenders refused over tenders offered, per lane per week, from the broker's own tender log, against each lane's baseline. It rises weeks before spot rates do. The cost per rejection is the cover rate less the contracted rate, and the rising lanes are the shipper conversation before the lane goes to spot.Tenure bandYears since a customer's first product, banded, within a segment. Product depth typically grows with tenure, so the norm is per band. Long-tenure customers well below their band's norm have been assumed fully served and never asked; they are the cheapest cross-sell in the base.TerritoryThe set of accounts one salesperson is responsible for, defined by geography, segment, named accounts or a mix. The unit of coverage, quota and planning.Territory potentialCurrent revenue in the territory, plus the gap at norm across its accounts, plus the universe accounts not yet buying valued at the segment norm and discounted by a stated realization factor. Quota is set as a share of it, and territory potentials sum to the company's.Testing cadenceWhether each control was tested within its stated frequency plus a tolerance, from the control register joined to the testing log. Adherence per owner and unit; the slipped list ranked by the control's risk rating.Text-to-SQLTurning a question in plain English into a SQL query that runs against a database and returns the answer.ThresholdFor a measure in a digest, the size of week-to-week change that counts as a movement: a stated multiple of the measure's own trailing variability, with a floor on the denominator and a cap on items per digest. Reviewed quarterly from the share of alerts acted on.TierAn account's class, set from two figures, current revenue and gap at norm, with stated boundaries per segment. Four tiers follow: keep, grow, develop, maintain. Each tier carries a touch cadence, and coverage is measured against it.Time to first touchDays from an account's assignment to a rep to the first qualifying touch, from assignment history and the activity log. The median per rep is the pace; accounts past a threshold with no touch are the waiting list, ranked by prior revenue.Time to valueDays from contract start to the onboarding milestone that most separates renewed from churned accounts at this company, found from the usage export, the onboarding log and renewal outcomes. Accounts past the milestone's typical day without reaching it are the success team's list.Tool registryThe single set of functions, revenue, coverage, penetration, ranking, opportunity, risk, that every screen, the planner and the assistant call. Adding a tool gives every surface the capability at once.Top-n shareRevenue from the largest n customers over total revenue, usually for n of 1, 5 and 10. The board's customer concentration figure; reported with the trend and split per segment and per rep.Touch ratioDays since an account's last qualifying touch divided by its tier's cadence interval. Over one is past cadence. Beside the order ratio, days since last order over the account's own order cadence, it gives four readings: covered and buying, buying untouched, touched and not buying, neither.Trade normThe category shares and penetration typical of full-supply accounts of one trade, used as the norm for that trade's accounts.Traded unsentA client who traded the desk's axed instrument on the right side in the window without having been sent the axe.Training coveragePer person and required module from the role matrix: complete and in date, overdue, or not yet due. Completion per business unit and module excludes not yet due. The matrix is versioned, because a module added to a role makes everyone in it overdue on the day, and that is a requirement change, not a compliance fall.Trial balanceA list of every general ledger account and its balance at a date, with total debits equal to total credits.

Unit economicsRevenue and cost per unit of the business, usually per customer: what it costs to win one and what it earns before overhead.Untouched accountAn account with no two-way logged activity in a window. Distinct from a dormant account, which has not bought: an untouched account has not been spoken to, whatever it bought.Uplift realizationAt renewal, the price increase realized over the increase proposed, per customer, account manager and customer type. The board's average uplift is a few full increases and many given back, and the customers below last year's price are their own list. It correlates with utilization: customers using what they bought pay the increase.UpsellingUpselling means selling an existing customer more of, or a higher tier of, what it already buys. Measured as the increase in revenue on a line the customer already bought, period against period, floored at zero. Downsell is the decrease. Where quantity is held, upsell splits into volume and price, because a price rise counted as upsell flatters the team.UtilizationIn hospitality and sports, seats attended against seats sold, per fixture or event, per account. An empty box for half a season is a renewal that will not happen unless someone calls first.

Validation reportThe output of the checks run on a file before any figure from it is shown: what parsed, what is missing, what is duplicated, and whether the roll-up reconciles, with the rows behind each line.Variable costA cost that rises and falls with volume: materials, freight, commissions and card fees paid per unit, order or dollar sold.

Walk-in customerA repeat counter customer with no trade account, identified by grouping point-of-sale transactions on a card token or phone hash. Uncovered by every measure until it has an identifier; valued at what account customers in the same spend band buy.Weeks of coverImplied channel inventory, cumulative sell-in less cumulative sell-out per retailer per SKU, divided by the trailing weekly sell-out rate. Rising for a quarter means the channel is holding stock already booked as revenue, and next quarter's shipments fall by it.Weighted averageAn average in which each value counts in proportion to its weight, such as units, revenue or headcount.Weighted pipelineOpen in-flight value times the historical conversion of its state at this point in the period, from the desk's own outcomes. Opportunities by stage, renewals by band, proposals by cell, rooms on the books by pickup. Never times a CRM probability someone set in a workshop.WhitespaceThe products a customer does not buy from you but that customers like them do, listed per customer and valued. Share of wallet's gap, written as a list.Win rateWon over won plus lost, among opportunities that reached an outcome in the period. Never from open pipeline probabilities. Split by segment, source and deal size band with a minimum count per cell; no-decisions reported separately, because they are a qualification finding, not a competitive one.WindowThe period over which a measure is computed: trailing three months for a run rate, twelve weeks for a baseline, eight weeks for an acceptance trend. Stated with every figure and the same for every account in a comparison.Window functionA SQL function that computes across a set of related rows, such as a running total or a rank, while keeping every row in the result.Worked exchangeA short dialogue on a role page: the leader's question, the answer read from a named table with its row and citation, and the next question it prompts. It shows what an answer with a table behind it sounds like, and how few words it needs.Working capitalCurrent assets minus current liabilities: the short-term cash cushion a business runs on.Write-offRecorded time removed before or after billing, with a reason code, which reduces billing realization on that client and matter.

Z-scoreHow many standard deviations a value sits from the average of its own history; used to flag a measure that moved beyond its normal range.Zero-based budgetingA budgeting method in which every cost is justified from zero each period instead of starting from last year's figure.