GLOSSARY OF TERMS

A/E: Architectural/Engineering industries
AP - Accounts Payable: Accrual account. Amount owed by the firm to vendors, consultants or others for merchandise or services provided to firm.
AR - Accounts Receivable: Accrual account. Money owed by clients to the firm for services rendered or for reimbursement of expenses.
Accrual vs. Cash: Accounting methods. Methods which determines how and when revenue, cost, and expense are recognized to the general ledger. The types of accounting methods are cash and accrual. The cash accounting method reports revenues, costs, and expenses when the cash is received or disbursed, regardless of when revenues are earned and expenses are incurred. The accrual accounting method recognizes revenues and expenses at the time they are earned and incurred, regardless of when the cash transaction occurs.
Axium Users Association (AUA): AUA is a membership association designed specifically to enable you to network, support, and enhance your software needs with other Axium users.
Backlog: The value of contracts that have been secured but have yet to be billed out. The value of backlog tells a firm how many months of work they currently have contracts for.
Change Order Requests: A request made by a client to change a design or plans. This may be a chargeable activity.
CRM - Customer Relationship Management: Customer Relationship Management, the functions and programs a company uses to connect with its customers; typically divided into Operational CRM (call centers, sales force automation, supply chain management) and Analytic CRM (customer analysis, database marketing).
DPE - Direct Personnel Expense: Taxes and fringe benefits paid on behalf of employees. You can use a DPE markup to reflect these additional costs on project reports. You can use a DPE markup on your billing rate table to markup cost for invoicing.
EFT - Electronic Funds Transfer: Movement of funds between two accounts, sometimes used to make payments.
Fee: Contract Fee or Contract Amount
General Ledger (GL): The listing of entries for all accounts that appear on a company's financial reports.
Generic: Products that have been developed for a wide range of business types, with no specific target market in mind.
Legacy: Products orginally developed by companies that have been acquired or consolidated through merger and acquisition activity.
Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA): Certification certifies a user's knowledge in system administration of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The MCSA certifies a holder's ability to "implement, manage, and maintain the typically complex computing environment of medium- to large-sized companies
Multiple of Cost: A billing method that uses the employee cost marked up by one or more multipliers resulting in a billing rate based on the employee cost.
Multipliers: Used to markup costs for labor and expense to determine billing rates and/or marked up cost rates. Labor typically marked up by DPE (Direct Personnel Expense, Overhead and Profit).
Overhead: Overhead consists of general operating expenses, such as rent, utilities and indirect labor.
Percent Complete: This value can be used in several ways, the reported percent complete is the project managers estimate of how complete the project is. The calculated percent complete reflects how much of the budget has already been consumed by work completed on the project.
Profit Margin: For financial reporting, the difference between revenues and expenses.
PTD - Project-to-date: Project status or value at current time.
Retainage: Amount billed but not due until the completion of the project. Also referred to as a hold-back.
Retainer: Prepayment received for services not yet performed or billed.
Unit Billing: When an estimate or actual billing is based on a unit of measure, such as square feet or linier measurement.
Utilization: Typically Employee Utilization: An industry standard used to help track and manage time on an individual level.
Utilization Rate: The percentage of total raw staff labor (in dollars) charged to projects. Also known as chargeability.
Write Off: An amount deducted from a billing because either a maximum was exceeded, or employee time and/or expense could not be billed in full. Write-off is calculated as PTD earned - PTD billed - WIP. It is a transfer of an amount previously regarded as an asset (such as an account receivable or work-in-progress) to an expense or cost of sales account.
WIP - Work in Progress: Billable time and expenses that have not yet been included on a final client invoice

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