Glossary
Plain-English explanations of the accounting and application terms you will meet across Sales Scribe. Terms are listed alphabetically. Where a word is written in bold inside a definition, it has its own entry here.
Product labels shown in the application (for example Organization, Invoice Design, Accounting Settings) are written exactly as they appear on screen. The surrounding explanations use British English.
A
Access profile The bundle of permissions a client grants to an accountancy practice — for example Accountant (external) or Read-only adviser (external). Profiles are fixed, adviser-specific permission sets: whatever the profile, practice staff can never manage the client's members, roles, settings or branding. Only the client can choose or change the profile, from Settings → Accountants & advisers.
Accountancy practice An accountant's or bookkeeper's firm registered in Sales Scribe. Client organisations grant the practice an access profile; the practice assigns named staff to each client; staff then work in the client's organisation through delegated access — signing in as themselves, consuming no client seats, with every action attributed to them personally.
Accounting period Strictly, the period a Corporation Tax return covers, which can never exceed twelve months. It is not the same as a financial period: a set of accounts covering fourteen months is one financial period and two accounting periods. Sales Scribe records financial periods; it does not work out Corporation Tax periods.
Accounting reference date The day and month a limited company or LLP makes its accounts up to — the term Companies House uses for what everyone else calls a year end. A sole trader or partnership has an accounting date instead, with none of the statutory rules attached. Set either from Settings → Accounting Settings; see Set your financial year end.
Accounts payable (AP) Money your business owes to its suppliers for goods or services you have received but not yet paid for. When you record a purchase invoice, Sales Scribe increases accounts payable; when you pay the supplier, it decreases again. Also called your "creditors" balance. See also AP control account.
Accounts receivable (AR) Money your customers owe you for goods or services you have delivered but not yet been paid for. When you issue a sales invoice, Sales Scribe increases accounts receivable; when the customer pays, it decreases. Also called your "debtors" balance. See also AR control account.
Accounting event The internal record Sales Scribe creates whenever a business action has a bookkeeping consequence — for example issuing an invoice, recording a payment, or voiding a credit note. Each accounting event produces one balanced journal (equal debits and credits). Events are the audit-proof link between what you did in the app and what appears in your general ledger. Most events are created automatically; you do not post them by hand.
Accounting Settings The Settings → Accounting page where an Owner or Admin chooses which ledger accounts Sales Scribe uses for each bookkeeping role — for example which account is the AR control account, the output VAT account, the realised FX gain/loss accounts and the default sales, purchase, cost of goods sold and inventory accounts. Posting an invoice or payment fails until the accounts it needs are configured here.
Allocation The act of matching a payment (or a credit note) to one or more specific invoices, so the system knows which debts have been settled. Sales Scribe records a payment first and allocates it afterwards (see Model B), which means a payment can sit unallocated until you decide which invoices it clears.
AP control account The single ledger account that holds your total accounts payable balance. Every posted purchase invoice credits it and every supplier payment allocation debits it, so its balance always equals what you owe your suppliers in total.
AR control account The single ledger account that holds your total accounts receivable balance. Every posted sales invoice debits it and every customer payment allocation credits it, so its balance always equals what your customers owe you in total.
Accrual basis Recording income and costs when they are earned or incurred — when an invoice is issued or a bill posted — rather than when the money changes hands. Your Profit and Loss and most reports use the accrual basis. Contrast cash basis.
Aged payables A view of what you owe your suppliers, grouped by how overdue each amount is (its aging bucket).
Aged receivables A view of what your customers owe you, grouped by how overdue each amount is (its aging bucket).
Aging bucket A band that groups outstanding amounts by age — typically Current, 1–30 days, 31–60, 61–90 and 90+ — used in the aged receivables and payables reports.
Appointment A period during which a person held one role in your organisation — director, company secretary, LLP member, partner, employee or other — recorded with a start date and, once it ends, an end date. Ending an appointment is how a resignation is recorded: the row stays on the register marked Former, because the person and their director's loan account outlive the office. Two appointments of the same role for the same person may not overlap.
Audit trail The record of who did what, and when, in your organisation. Sales Scribe keeps a history of material actions that you can view and filter.
B
Bad debt An amount a customer owes that you no longer expect to collect. Writing it off (see Write-off) removes the debt from accounts receivable and records the loss to a Bad Debt Expense account, so your reports stop showing money you will never receive.
Base currency See Functional currency. In Sales Scribe the currency your books are kept in is called the organisation's functional currency.
Billing account The account that owns your Sales Scribe subscription and payment method. One billing account can contain several organizations, and it has its own members and roles (Owner, Admin, Member, Billing). Your subscription tier (Starter, Pro or Enterprise) is set at the billing-account level. This is separate from an organisation's own members.
Billing profile The contact, address and tax details attached to your billing account for invoicing and paying for your Sales Scribe subscription.
Business type An organisation setting (for example general business, retail, or professional services) used to provision a suitable starting chart of accounts. Distinct from the organisation's legal type.
C
Cash basis Measuring money actually received and paid, rather than amounts invoiced. The Payments by Customer and Payments by Supplier reports are cash-based. Contrast accrual basis.
Chart of accounts The complete list of ledger accounts your organisation uses to classify every transaction — assets, liabilities, income, expenses and so on. Sales Scribe creates a starter chart of accounts for each new organisation, which you can then extend or adjust.
Client Edition The family of plans an accountancy practice can pay for on a client's behalf (a sponsorship): Client Essentials, Client Standard and Client Complete. Each covers exactly one organisation, is priced per organisation per month and is billed to the practice. They are deliberately separate from the plans a business buys for its own billing account (which cover a whole account, with several organisations and users), so the two should not be compared line by line. The current prices are always on the pricing page and on the practice's offer form.
COGS (Cost of goods sold) The direct cost of the stock you sold. When you invoice a product that is set to Track inventory and marked For resale, Sales Scribe records the item's cost price as a cost of goods sold and reduces your inventory value at the same time, so profit is measured correctly rather than being overstated.
Control account A summary ledger account whose balance equals the total of many individual sub-balances. The AR control account equals the sum of all customer balances; the AP control account equals the sum of all supplier balances. You cannot post directly to a control account by hand — Sales Scribe maintains it automatically.
Cost price What an item costs your business to buy or make, recorded on the product. It drives cost of goods sold postings for stock items and is separate from the unit price you charge customers.
Credit note (sales) A document that reduces or cancels an amount a customer owes, for example after a return, an over-charge or a goodwill adjustment. Issuing a sales credit note reverses part of the original sale in your ledger (it reduces income, reduces output VAT and reduces accounts receivable). A credit note can be allocated to an invoice to reduce its outstanding balance.
Credit note (purchase / supplier) The purchase-side equivalent: a document from a supplier reducing what you owe them. It reduces accounts payable, reduces the original expense or asset, and reduces input VAT.
Current earnings The profit or loss shown as its own line in Equity on the balance sheet. With a financial year end set it means the current financial period; without one it means all time. It sits alongside Earnings brought forward and both are worked out from the ledger each time the report is drawn — no closing journal moves anything, which is why a late entry into an earlier period corrects both figures by itself.
Currency decision source An internal note of why a document was given a particular currency — because it was inherited from a parent document, taken from the customer's or supplier's preferred currency, or defaulted to the organisation's functional currency. See Document currency.
Customer A person or business you sell to. A customer record holds contact details, one or more addresses, a preferred currency and its running accounts receivable balance. Customers are specific to one organization.
Convert (conversion) Turning a quote, estimate or proforma invoice into a draft sales invoice that copies its lines. The source document is then marked Converted, and can be converted only once.
Cost of sales The direct cost of what you sold in a period — chiefly cost of goods sold — shown on the Profit and Loss and deducted from revenue to give gross profit.
Customer purchase order A record of an order your customer has placed with you (their own purchase order). It is operational only — it does not affect your accounts — and its lines can be copied into an invoice. Not to be confused with a purchase order, which is your order to a supplier.
D
Debit and credit The two sides of every bookkeeping entry. Every accounting event records equal debits and credits so the books always balance. You rarely need to think in debits and credits when using Sales Scribe — the app translates your actions (issue, pay, void) into the correct entries — but the concept underpins every figure in the reports.
Delegated access The way accountancy practice staff work inside a client's organisation: through their own sign-in, under the client-granted access profile, with a banner naming both parties, and re-checked on every single request — so suspending or revoking access takes effect immediately. Delegated users never appear in the client's member list and never use one of the client's seats.
Derived status A status that Sales Scribe works out from the numbers rather than storing directly. A sales invoice is stored only as Draft, Issued, Voided or Write-off; whether it also shows as Partially Paid, Paid, Overdue or Overpaid is derived from its outstanding balance and due date each time it is displayed. This is why paying or crediting an invoice changes its status automatically.
Document currency The currency a single document (invoice, quote, credit note, and so on) is written in. It can differ from your functional currency. Sales Scribe chooses a document's currency in this order: the parent document's currency (if the document was created from another), then the customer's or supplier's preferred currency, and finally your organisation's functional currency.
Draft The editable, not-yet-final state of a document. Drafts have no effect on your accounts, can be freely changed or deleted, and are not visible to customers. A document only affects your ledger once it is issued (invoices/credit notes) or sent (quotes/estimates/proforma).
Default organisation The organization you land in when you sign in. You must have a default organisation, with an address, before you can create invoices.
Delivery note A document accompanying goods sent to a customer, listing what was despatched. It is operational only and does not affect your accounts.
Distributions (Dividends, Drawings) The Equity account money taken out of the business by its owners is posted to — code 3050 in every starter Chart of Accounts, named for the legal form: Dividends in a company, Owner's Drawings for a sole trader, Partners' Drawings in a partnership, Members' Drawings in an LLP. It is postable, unlike retained earnings, because taking a dividend or a drawing is an ordinary transaction and not something the year end does.
Director's loan account The running account between a company and one of its directors: money they put in, money the company pays out on their behalf, expenses claimed, and anything else that leaves one owing the other. In Sales Scribe it is an ordinary ledger account with one extra fact recorded against it — who holds it — so it can be named, grouped and stated per person. There is one per person for life, whichever way the balance points. An LLP calls it a member's loan and a partnership a partner's current account; a sole trader, having no office to hold, gets a neutrally named running account.
E
Estimate A non-binding, ballpark price you give a customer before committing. Estimates can be sent, viewed online by the customer, accepted or declined, and converted into a draft invoice. They carry an EST- number and do not affect your accounts. See also Quote and Practice ID The 26-character code that identifies an accountancy practice, shown on the practice's own Settings tab. A client uses it to send the practice a connection request from Settings → Accountants & advisers.
Proforma invoice.
Exchange rate The rate used to convert a foreign-currency amount into your functional currency for your books. Sales Scribe can source rates automatically (from the European Central Bank) and stores the rate used on each document so figures never silently change.
F
Feature (feature flag) A switch that turns a capability on or off for an organisation, often according to its subscription tier. If a feature is switched off you will see a "not available" message rather than the feature. Examples include quotes/estimates/proforma and recurring invoices.
Financial period One span your accounts are made up for, from an accounting reference date (or accounting date) to the next. Usually a year, but the first one is not, and changing your year end produces a short or long one. Sales Scribe keeps them as records rather than working them out from the date alone, which is why "Last financial year" gives you the period you really had rather than a twelve-month guess. Not the same as an accounting period.
Financial year end See accounting reference date.
Finalise (a financial period) Signing off a financial period's accounts. Sales Scribe records the period's profit, the earnings brought into it, who signed it off and when — and posts nothing: there is no closing journal, and profit is not moved into reserves. Finalising is not the same as a posting lock, which stops entries being dated into a period at all. If something dated inside a finalised period is posted afterwards, the period shows as needing re-finalising, and finalising again adds a new revision rather than replacing the first. See Finalise your year end.
Foreign currency Any currency other than your organisation's functional currency. Trading in foreign currencies introduces exchange rate conversions and can produce a realised exchange gain or loss when you are paid.
Functional currency The single currency your organisation keeps its books in — set when the organisation is created. All your reports and ledger balances are expressed in this currency, even when individual documents are in foreign currencies. Sometimes called the base or home currency.
FX gain / FX loss (realised) The small profit or loss that arises purely from currency movement between the day you invoice a foreign-currency sale and the day you are paid. If the exchange rate moved in your favour you record a realised FX gain; if against you, a realised FX loss. Sales Scribe calculates this automatically when a foreign-currency payment is allocated, and posts it to the FX gain or loss accounts you set in Accounting Settings.
G
General ledger (GL) The complete, permanent record of every financial transaction in your organisation, organised by ledger account. Everything you do that has a bookkeeping consequence ends up here as a balanced journal. Your reports are summaries of the general ledger.
Goods received note (GRN) A record confirming that goods on a purchase order have physically arrived. It is an operational document and does not, by itself, affect your accounts.
Gross profit Revenue less cost of sales, before other expenses. Shown on the Profit and Loss.
H
Handover (billing) The controlled switch of who pays for an organisation's subscription — from the organisation's own billing account to a sponsorship, or back again. A handover always activates the new payer before the old arrangement ends, so there is never a gap in the subscription, and each switch is recorded in the audit history.
I
Input VAT The VAT you are charged by suppliers on your purchases, which (if you are VAT-registered) you can normally reclaim. Recorded when you post a purchase invoice.
Inventory asset The value of stock you are holding but have not yet sold, shown as an asset on your books. When you sell a tracked stock item, its value moves out of the inventory asset account and into cost of goods sold.
Issue (issuing an invoice) The act of finalising a draft sales invoice. Issuing assigns the permanent invoice number, records the sale in your general ledger (the AR control, income and output VAT entries), captures the branding used, and makes the invoice available to send to the customer. An issued invoice can no longer be freely edited — it can only be voided or adjusted with a credit note.
J
Journal A single balanced set of debit and credit lines produced by an accounting event. Each journal's debits equal its credits. Advanced users can view the journals behind any transaction; most users simply rely on the reports they feed.
L
Ledger account One line in your chart of accounts — for example "Sales", "Bank", "VAT on Sales" or "Office Costs". Every amount you record is classified into a ledger account, and the balances of those accounts drive your financial reports. Each account has a code, a name and a type (asset, liability, income, expense and so on).
Ledger role The job a ledger account does in Sales Scribe's automatic bookkeeping — for example "AR control", "Output VAT" or "Realised FX gain". You map an account to each role once in Accounting Settings, and the app then knows which account to use when it posts a transaction.
M
Model B (post then allocate) The way Sales Scribe handles payments: it records the money received into an unapplied receipts holding account first, then allocates it to specific invoices in a second step. This lets you record a payment before deciding which invoices it settles, and lets one payment clear several invoices.
N
Net profit What remains after cost of sales and all other expenses are taken from revenue — the "bottom line" of the Profit and Loss.
Normal balance Whether a ledger account's balance is naturally a debit or a credit (assets and expenses are normally debit; income, liabilities and equity are normally credit).
O
Organization A single business (or business unit) whose customers, suppliers, products, invoices and books are kept together and separate from every other organisation. You choose an organisation's functional currency, tax settings and chart of accounts. One billing account can hold several organisations, and you switch between them from the account switcher. (Shown in the application with the American spelling "Organization".)
Output VAT The VAT you charge your customers on your sales, which you owe to the tax authority. Recorded when you issue a sales invoice.
Overdue A derived status meaning an issued invoice still has money outstanding and its due date has passed. Clearing the balance (by payment, credit or write-off) removes the overdue status automatically.
Overdrawn (loan account) Said of a director's loan account whose balance means the person owes the company — the company has paid out more on their behalf than they have put in. The opposite position is in credit: the company owes them. The same account carries both; nothing is moved or re-created when it swings. A balance owed by a person may become relevant to the s455 or beneficial-loan rules depending on the circumstances, which is a question for your accountant — Sales Scribe does not determine it.
Overpaid A derived status meaning more has been received or credited against an invoice than it was for, leaving a negative balance in the customer's favour.
P
Payment A record of money received from a customer (or, on the purchase side, paid to a supplier). A payment is recorded first and then allocated to invoices (see Model B). A payment that has not been fully matched to invoices is unallocated.
Payment allocation See Allocation.
Posting Recording a transaction into the general ledger. When you issue an invoice or record a payment, Sales Scribe "posts" the corresponding accounting event. Posting is what makes a transaction appear in your financial reports.
Proforma invoice A pre-payment request that looks like an invoice but is not yet a real one — commonly used to ask for payment up front. A proforma carries a PF- number, can be sent to the customer, and does not affect your accounts or VAT. A payment is never recorded directly against a proforma: doing so first creates and issues a real invoice, then records the payment against that invoice. See also Quote and Estimate.
Purchase invoice A bill you have received from a supplier. Posting it records what you owe (accounts payable), the expense or asset, and any reclaimable input VAT.
Purchase order (PO) A document you send to a supplier to order goods or services. It is operational and does not affect your accounts until the related purchase invoice is posted.
Payment instructions Text telling your customer how to pay you (for example your bank details), shown on invoices and proforma invoices. It has no effect on your accounts. You can set an organisation-wide default and override it on an individual invoice.
Postable A setting on a ledger account that controls whether transactions can be posted directly to it. Control accounts are not postable — Sales Scribe maintains them for you.
Posting lock A date up to and including which nothing may be posted, edited or voided. It protects figures somebody has relied on — a submitted VAT return, a filed set of accounts — and it judges the date on the entry, not the date it was typed. Independent of the financial year end: you can lock without recording a year end, and a year end locks nothing by itself. Someone holding the post into a locked period permission may post anyway, and every time they do it is recorded. So is every attempt the lock refuses — not to catch anyone out, but so that a run of refusals on one period shows up as a sign the lock was set on the wrong date. See Lock your books.
Public link A private, hard-to-guess web address that lets a customer view a document without signing in — used to view an invoice and to accept or decline a quote or estimate online. Links can expire.
Person running account The general name for a director's loan account and its equivalents, used in Sales Scribe wherever the wording has to cover every legal form — and used on its own for a sole trader, where there is no office to name it after.
Q
Quote A binding price offer you give a customer. Quotes can be sent, viewed online by the customer, accepted or declined, and converted into a draft invoice. They carry a QUO- number and do not affect your accounts. See also Estimate and Proforma invoice.
R
Reconciliation Checking that your recorded transactions agree with an external record, such as a bank statement. (Where offered, this depends on your subscription tier.)
Recurring invoice An invoice that is generated automatically on a repeating schedule. Availability depends on your subscription tier.
Revision A new version of a sent quote, estimate or proforma. Because a sent document cannot be edited, changing it instead creates a revision with a new number; the previous version becomes Superseded and its online link stops working.
Role The level of access a person has. Organization roles are Owner, Admin, Member and Viewer. Billing account roles are Owner, Admin, Member and Billing. A separate platform Admin role controls the internal administration area. Roles decide which actions a user can perform.
Reverse (reversal) Undoing something already in your ledger by recording an equal and opposite entry, rather than editing or deleting it. What date the reversal carries depends on what it is saying:
- This should never have happened — a void, removing an allocation, or a payment (a customer's or a supplier's) undone as a mistake. The reversal takes the original's date, so the period ends up as though the entry had never been made. This is why voiding a document dated inside a locked period is refused (see Posting lock).
- Something new has happened that undoes it — a refund to a customer, or a supplier refunding you. The reversal takes today's date, because the money really did move today.
Undoing a posted payment, customer or supplier, asks which of the two it is, and the answer decides both the date and the resulting status (Reversed or Refunded). Nothing is chosen for you.
S
Sales invoice A demand for payment you send a customer for goods or services supplied. Issuing it records the sale, the VAT and the accounts receivable in your ledger. See Issue.
Snapshot A frozen copy of information taken at a moment in time so it cannot change afterwards. Sales Scribe snapshots the addresses and branding used on a document when it is issued or sent, and can snapshot an aged receivables/payables report so you can prove what a balance looked like on a given date.
Sponsorship An arrangement where an accountancy practice pays for a client organisation's subscription on the practice's own card, on a Client Edition plan. It covers one organisation (a client with several organisations has one sponsorship per organisation). It is offer-first — nothing exists or is billed until the client explicitly accepts and the practice completes checkout — and it never changes the practice's access to the client's books. The client can take billing back at any time (see Handover (billing)).
Subscription tier Your plan level — Starter, Pro or Enterprise — held on the billing account. The tier determines which features are available.
Supplier A person or business you buy from. A supplier record holds contact details, addresses, a preferred currency and its running accounts payable balance.
Superseded The state of a quote, estimate or proforma that has been replaced by a newer revision.
Seat A user allowance included with your subscription. Adding or reactivating a member uses a seat; deactivating one frees it.
Settlement date The date on which allocating a payment to an invoice (or a supplier payment to a bill) is posted: the later of the payment date and the document date. A receipt dated before the invoice it settles is applied on the invoice's date. Any exchange gain or loss on the allocation is recognised on this date, which is when accounting standards say the transaction is settled. The allocation dialog names it before you confirm.
SKU "Stock-keeping unit" — a short code identifying a product, unique within your organisation.
Subscription status The state of your billing account's licence — Trial, Active, Past due, Suspended, Expired or Cancelled — which governs your access. Distinct from your subscription tier (the plan level).
Supplier invoice Another name for a purchase invoice — a bill received from a supplier. Some screens read "Supplier Invoice" and some "Purchase Invoice"; they mean the same thing.
T
Tax profile A set of tax rates shared by several organizations, so they can be set up once and kept in step. Assigning a profile gives each organization its own copies of the rates, which it then owns; when a rate later changes, you choose which organizations follow and when. An organization can override a rate it received, and the profile then stops changing that one. Used by owners of several companies, and by accountancy practices across their clients.
Tax rate A named percentage (for example "Standard 20%", "Zero 0%") applied to invoice and purchase lines to calculate VAT. Tax rates can have start dates so you can schedule changes. See VAT and tax profile.
Time zone The zone your organisation keeps its calendar in, set on Organization details (or taken from your country). It decides what "today" is: the date new documents, payments and journals default to, the latest date a write-off may carry, what counts as overdue, and the day an online refund or dispute is posted on. The dates you type on a document are never changed by it.
Track inventory A setting on a product that tells Sales Scribe to treat it as stock: selling it records cost of goods sold and reduces inventory asset value. Combined with For resale.
U
Unallocated (payment) A recorded payment that has not yet been fully matched to invoices. The money is held in an unapplied receipts (customer) or unapplied payments (supplier) account until you allocate it.
Unapplied receipts / unapplied payments Holding ledger accounts where money sits between being recorded and being allocated to specific invoices under Model B. Unapplied receipts holds customer money received; unapplied payments holds money paid to suppliers, in each case not yet matched to a document.
Unit price The amount you charge a customer for one unit of a product or service, before VAT. Distinct from cost price.
V
VAT (Value Added Tax) A tax charged on most sales of goods and services. If your business is VAT-registered, you charge output VAT on your sales and can reclaim input VAT on your purchases, paying the difference to the tax authority. Sales Scribe calculates VAT from the tax rate on each line.
VAT-registered A status indicating your business is registered to charge and reclaim VAT. It affects whether VAT is applied and how documents are labelled. Set on the organization.
VAT territory The tax jurisdiction that governs how VAT is treated for a customer or supplier (for example domestic, EU or outside the scope of your VAT system). Sales Scribe can infer it from addresses.
Void (voiding) Cancelling an issued invoice or credit note by posting an equal and opposite journal, so its effect on your accounts is fully reversed while a permanent record of both the original and the reversal is kept. A voided invoice displays with the status Voided. Voiding is the correct way to cancel a finalised document — you cannot simply delete it. A draft is deleted, not voided.
Valid-until date The expiry date on a quote, estimate or proforma invoice. After it passes, the document becomes Expired and any public link stops working.
W
Write-off Formally giving up on collecting an outstanding invoice balance and recording it as a bad debt expense. This clears the amount from accounts receivable and marks the invoice Write-off. It requires a Bad Debt Expense account in your chart of accounts.
See also: Understand invoice statuses · How Sales Scribe records your transactions · Working with foreign currency