Accounting terms defined in the Atlas context
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Accounting and Atlas-specific terms defined for quick reference.
Accounts Payable (AP) — Money your company owes to vendors for goods or services received but not yet paid.
Accounts Receivable (AR) — Money owed to your company by customers for goods or services delivered but not yet paid.
Accrual Basis — Accounting method where revenue is recognized when earned and expenses when incurred, regardless of when cash changes hands.
Adjusting Entry — A journal entry made at period end to update account balances for accruals, prepayments, depreciation, and other timing differences.
Aging Report — A report that categorizes outstanding receivables or payables by how long they have been overdue (current, 1-30 days, 31-60 days, etc.).
Audit Trail — A chronological record of all changes to transactions and settings, showing who made each change and when.
Balance Sheet — A financial statement showing assets, liabilities, and equity at a specific point in time. Assets = Liabilities + Equity.
Bank Reconciliation — The process of matching bank statement transactions to book transactions to ensure they agree.
Base Currency — The primary currency of a company, set during creation. All reports are ultimately expressed in the base currency.
Cash Basis — Accounting method where revenue is recognized when cash is received and expenses when cash is paid.
Chart of Accounts (COA) — The complete list of accounts used to categorize all financial transactions. Organized by type: Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue, Expense.
Credit Note — A document issued to reduce the amount a customer owes, typically for returns, discounts, or billing errors.
Consolidated Report — A financial report that combines data from multiple companies within an organization.
Debit — An entry on the left side of a journal entry. Increases assets and expenses; decreases liabilities, equity, and revenue.
Credit — An entry on the right side of a journal entry. Increases liabilities, equity, and revenue; decreases assets and expenses.
Deferred Revenue — Payment received for services not yet delivered. A liability until the revenue is earned.
Depreciation — The systematic allocation of a fixed asset's cost over its useful life.
Dimension — A tag applied to transactions for segmented reporting (e.g., Department, Project, Location) without creating separate accounts.
Double-Entry Bookkeeping — The fundamental accounting principle that every transaction must have equal debits and credits.
Dunning — The process of sending reminders and collection notices for overdue invoices.
Equity — The owner's residual interest in the company after subtracting liabilities from assets.
Fiscal Year — The 12-month period a company uses for financial reporting, which may or may not align with the calendar year.
Fixed Asset — A long-term tangible asset used in operations (equipment, vehicles, buildings), depreciated over its useful life.
FX Revaluation — The process of adjusting foreign currency balances to current exchange rates at period end, recording unrealized gains or losses.
General Ledger (GL) — The complete record of all financial transactions for a company, organized by account.
GAAP — Generally Accepted Accounting Principles — the standard framework for financial accounting in the United States.
IFRS — International Financial Reporting Standards — the global framework used in most countries outside the US.
Intercompany Transaction — A transaction between two companies within the same organization, eliminated in consolidated reports.
Journal Entry (JE) — A record of a financial transaction with balanced debit and credit lines, posted to the general ledger.
Net Book Value (NBV) — The value of a fixed asset after subtracting accumulated depreciation: Cost - Accumulated Depreciation = NBV.
Period Close — The process of finalizing and locking a month's financial data, preventing further changes to that period.
Profit & Loss (P&L) — A financial statement showing revenue and expenses over a period, resulting in net income or net loss. Also called an Income Statement.
Purchase Order (PO) — A document sent to a vendor committing to purchase specific goods or services at agreed prices.
RBAC — Role-Based Access Control — a security model where permissions are assigned based on user roles (Owner, Admin, Accountant, Bookkeeper, Viewer, Employee).
Realized Gain/Loss — A foreign currency gain or loss that occurs when a payment is made or received at a different exchange rate than the original transaction.
Recurring Invoice — An invoice that is automatically generated on a schedule (weekly, monthly, etc.) for repeat billing.
Reversing Entry — A journal entry that reverses an adjusting entry at the start of the next period, typically for accrued expenses.
Row-Level Security (RLS) — Database-level isolation ensuring that each tenant's data is completely separate and inaccessible to other tenants.
Trial Balance — A report listing all account balances at a point in time. Total debits must equal total credits.
Tenant — In Atlas, each organization is a tenant with completely isolated data enforced by row-level security.
Unrealized Gain/Loss — A foreign currency gain or loss on open balances that have not yet been settled, recorded during FX revaluation.
Vendor Credit — A credit issued by a vendor reducing the amount you owe, applied against future bills.
Void — Cancelling a transaction by creating a reversal entry. The original and void entries remain in the ledger for audit purposes.
W-2 — Annual tax form provided to employees showing total wages and tax withholdings for the year.
W-4 — Employee's Withholding Certificate — used to determine federal tax withholding from paychecks.