ERP terminology, explained in plain language.

The central book every journal entry lands in; the financial statements are all built from it, so an error in the GL is an error everywhere.

Two flows of money running in opposite directions: AP is what you owe suppliers, AR is what customers owe you.

Tracks acquisition cost, depreciation and transfers of assets; unlike EAM's physical asset register, FA looks at value.

Costing against a pre-set standard and analysing the variance against actuals, instead of waiting for period end to find out.

Matching figures between two sources — the books against the bank statement, the warehouse against accounting. This is what eats most of the close.

One posting produces several parallel sets of books (say IFRS and the local standard) without anything being entered twice.

The time unit you lock figures against. Once a period is closed, a new entry goes to the next one or through an adjustment that leaves a trail.

The external, statutory accounting layer: general ledger, receivables/payables, fixed assets, tax and period close.

The internal accounting layer that serves management: cost centers, profit centers, product costing, budgets and profitability analysis.

The unit that collects costs and the unit that measures profit — the foundation of every management report by department, plant or product line.

A code that collects costs for a time-boxed effort — a campaign, an R&D run, an event — so it can be settled and allocated to the right place.

Rolling up the reports of multiple legal entities into one picture, eliminating intercompany transactions within the group.

The principle of recording revenue as performance obligations are fulfilled — critical for service contracts and long-running projects.

International and local accounting standards. Companies with foreign ownership often have to report under both in parallel.

Managing a contract end to end: drafting from a clause library, signing routes, obligations and renewal dates.

The total time from placing an order to having the goods in hand. Underestimating it is the most common cause of a stockout.

The buffer held against demand swings and late deliveries. Set it high and cash is tied up; set it low and the line runs dry.

What you can genuinely promise a customer for a given date, once the quantities already committed to other orders are subtracted.

Two ways of identifying goods: a batch for things made in runs, a serial number for each individual unit. The basis of all traceability.

The value sitting half-finished on the line. Growing WIP is usually the signature of a bottleneck.

The sequence of operations and standard times needed to make a product; together with the BOM it is enough to release a production order.

Counting part of the warehouse on a rolling schedule instead of shutting down to count everything; keeps stock accuracy without stopping operations.

The life of physical assets: preventive maintenance, work orders, spare parts. EAM looks at the machine, FA looks at its value.

Inspection standards, inspection records, complaints and CAPA — tied back to the exact lot, machine and shift that produced the problem.

The chain from purchase request and approval, through the order and goods receipt, to the invoice and payment, with three-way matching.

The cycle that balances the sales plan against supply and manufacturing capacity, typically on a monthly cadence.

Computes material requirements from the production plan: what is needed, how much, and by when.

MRP for the distribution network: replenishing stock for each warehouse or point of sale based on demand forecasts.

A product's material recipe. The EBOM reflects the design structure; the MBOM reflects how the factory actually assembles it.

The shop-floor execution layer: work orders, scheduling and real-time shop-floor data.

Managing design versions and approved engineering changes (ECR/ECO) — the link between R&D and manufacturing.

The composite equipment performance index = availability × performance × quality. The factory's standard yardstick.

Issuing stock by nearest expiry date first — mandatory for food, pharma and cosmetics.

The nonconformance-handling process: corrective action for what already happened, preventive action for what's about to.

The ability to follow a lot or serial number across the whole chain — from incoming materials to the product in the customer's hands.

A lead is a contact whose need is still unqualified; an opportunity has cleared the bar to enter the revenue forecast.

The set of opportunities by stage, used to forecast next period's revenue instead of guessing by feel.

The rules that decide the selling price by customer, channel, quantity and timing — the most common place for margin to leak away.

A promotion run through the distribution channel; its cost has to be tied back to the right revenue to see which campaign actually paid.

The rep's call schedule across outlets; the raw data behind any measure of coverage.

Managing leads, sales opportunities and the customer journey from first contact through after-sales care.

Managing the distribution channel: distributors, sales routes, route orders and stock, promotions.

A lead judged ready to pursue, either by marketing (MQL) or by sales (SQL).

Records, contracts, time, payroll and the whole employee lifecycle on a single personnel file.

Hours worked flow straight into the payroll run and into project cost, instead of living in three separate spreadsheets.

Measuring progress by the value actually completed, so you know a project is late or over budget before it ends.

Rescheduling when the same person has been committed to several jobs at the same time.

Three management levels: a project (one deliverable) → a program (several projects sharing a goal) → a portfolio (all investments, prioritized by strategy).

The project's work decomposition tree — the unit for assigning work, measuring progress and collecting costs.

The frozen plan (scope, schedule, budget) used as the benchmark once the project is actually running.

An approval gate between project phases — resources for the next phase are only committed once the gate is passed.

A goal-setting framework: one qualitative objective paired with measurable key results.

A strategy map balancing four perspectives: financial, customer, process, and learning & growth.

Give rights to roles and put people into roles, rather than granting rights person by person — the only approach that stays controllable at scale.

One identity across many systems; revoke it once and every door closes.

The log of who changed what, when, and the value before and after. The first thing an auditor asks for.

Approval and handling flows modelled as rules, instead of living in email threads and habit.

The technique that lets AI read your own data and answer with its sources, instead of answering from the model's memory.

Managing electronic documents: storage, permissions, versions, approval flows and e-signature.

The analytics layer: dashboards, alerts and forecasting on real-time operational data.

Digitized internal administration: inbound/outbound correspondence, approval routing, meeting-room booking, electronic forms.

The pre-contract review that establishes whether the standard package really covers your operation; its outcome decides scope and price.

The day the new system starts running for real. Before it comes the parallel run; after it comes stabilization.

Running the new system alongside the old way of working for a full cycle, so the figures can be compared before the old system is retired.

Moving master data and opening balances over from the old system. The quality of the source data drives most of the project risk.

Real users running real scenarios to confirm the system does the job — not the project team signing off on its own work.

The full lifetime cost: implementation, use, maintenance, upgrades and the cost of leaving — not just the opening price.

The state where leaving costs so much that you stay. Owning your data and your source code is how you reduce it.

An enterprise resource planning system — business modules sharing one data layer.

A customer's private data space on the platform — fully isolated from every other customer.

The shared reference data of the whole system: customers, suppliers, materials, accounts — entered once, used by every module.

Contractual service commitments: uptime, and response times by incident severity.

Two post-incident recovery objectives: RTO is the maximum time until service runs again; RPO is the maximum amount of data that may be lost.

The moment of switching from the old system to the new one, within a transition window agreed in advance.