The words the back office runs on.

Reconciliation is checking the books against an outside record, usually a bank, card or payment processor statement, line by line, until the two agree and every difference has an explanation. A reconciled account is one where the balance in the books is known to be right, not assumed to be. Done weekly, the exceptions are small and recent; done once a year, they're a project.

Where we do this: Bank and credit card reconciliation

The month end close is the fixed set of steps that turns a month of transactions into statements that can be relied on: every feed complete, every account reconciled, accruals and adjustments posted, a review by a second person, and the period locked so nothing moves afterwards. The useful measure of a close is the business day it lands on, because every decision made before that day is made on last month's picture.

Where we do this: Bookkeeping

The chart of accounts is the list of categories every transaction is coded to: income lines, cost lines, assets, liabilities and equity. It decides what the reports can ever show. A chart copied from a template reports a generic business; one built around how the company actually earns and spends reports that company.

Cash basis books record a sale when the money arrives and a cost when it's paid. Accrual basis books record the sale when it's earned and the cost when it's incurred, whether or not money has moved yet. Cash is simpler; accrual shows what the business actually did in the period, which is why lenders, investors and anyone comparing months usually expect it.

A three way match checks three documents against each other before a supplier is paid: the purchase order that said what was ordered and at what price, the receiving record that says what actually arrived, and the invoice that asks for payment. When all three agree, the bill is paid; when they don't, the difference is resolved first. It's the control that stops a business paying for things it didn't order or didn't receive.

Where we do this: Accounts payable

Catch up bookkeeping records the months or years that were never entered, from bank and card history forward. Clean up bookkeeping corrects what was entered wrong: miscoded transactions, duplicates, balances that never reconciled. Most behind books need both, in that order, and the work ends with a set of statements a tax preparer or lender will accept.

Where we do this: Catch up and clean up bookkeeping

A fractional controller is a senior accountant who owns the accuracy of the books and the close for part of their week, instead of being hired full time. A fractional CFO works a level up: cash forecasting, pricing, financing decisions, what the numbers mean for the next quarter. The word fractional only describes the hours; the accountability is the same as the full time role.

Where we do this: Fractional controller and CFO support

Days sales outstanding is the average number of days between invoicing a customer and being paid, calculated as receivables outstanding divided by sales on credit, multiplied by the days in the period. A rising DSO means cash is arriving later than it used to, and it usually shows up in the books before anyone notices it in the bank.

Where we do this: Accounts receivable

Economic nexus is the obligation to register, collect and remit sales tax in a US state because sales into that state crossed its threshold, even with no office, staff or stock there. It dates from the Supreme Court's 2018 Wayfair decision. Every state sets its own threshold and its own measuring period, and many start around a hundred thousand dollars of sales in a year, so a growing online or multi state business usually crosses one before anyone is watching for it.

Where we do this: Sales tax and multi state compliance

A Form 1099 reports what a business paid someone who isn't an employee during the year: a contractor, a freelancer, a landlord. One copy goes to the IRS and one to the person, by the end of January. The dollar threshold that triggers one is set by the IRS and has changed, so the current figure is worth checking each January rather than remembering. The work behind the form is collecting a W-9 from every payee before the first payment, not after.

Payroll filings are the returns and deposits that go with paying people: federal withholding and employment tax deposits on a schedule set by the size of the payroll, a quarterly federal return, state withholding and unemployment returns, and the annual W-2s. Each has its own date, and the penalties are for lateness as much as for error, which is why the calendar is the control.

Where we do this: Payroll

Audit readiness means every number in the books can be answered with a document rather than a memory: the invoice behind a cost, the contract behind a receivable, the statement behind a balance, the approval behind a payment. It isn't a project done before an audit. It's how the records are kept all year, so that an audit, a lender's review or a buyer's due diligence is a matter of sending files.

Where we do this: Tax prep support and audit readiness

Job costing is assigning every cost a contractor incurs to the job it belongs to, under a cost code that says what kind of cost it is: labor, materials, subcontractors, equipment. Done as the costs arrive, it shows each job's margin while the job is still running. Done at the end, it only explains what happened.

Where we do this: Construction

A work in progress schedule lists every open job on one row each: contract value, estimated total cost, cost to date, percent complete, revenue earned to date, amount billed to date, and the difference between the last two. That difference is the over or under billing. Sureties and banks read the WIP schedule before anything else, because it's where a job that's quietly losing money shows up first.

Percentage of completion is the method of recognizing a job's revenue in step with its progress, usually measured by cost incurred against total estimated cost. A job that has spent sixty percent of its budget is treated as sixty percent earned, whatever has been billed. It's what makes a contractor's statements comparable month to month and what a WIP schedule is built on.

A job is over billed when the amount invoiced to date is more than the revenue earned to date, and under billed when it's less. Over billing is cash received ahead of the work and will have to be worked off; under billing is work done that hasn't yet been invoiced, or an estimate that was wrong. Both are normal in small amounts and a warning in large ones.

Profit fade is a job's margin falling from what was estimated at the start to what it turns out to be at the end. It's usually discovered late, when the final costs land, and by then it has already happened on the next three jobs too. The fix is operational rather than accounting: a WIP schedule reviewed every month, with estimated costs updated as the job changes, so the fade is seen while it can still be stopped.

Retainage is the share of each progress payment a customer holds back until the job, or a defined stage of it, is complete and accepted. Five to ten percent is common, and the terms are set by the contract and by state rules. It has to be tracked as its own receivable, because it's money earned, not yet collectible, and easy to forget to bill for at the end.

Certified payroll is the weekly report a contractor files on public works projects subject to prevailing wage law, showing each worker, their classification, hours, rate and deductions. On federal projects it's Form WH-347 with a signed Statement of Compliance. The signature is the contractor's, and a false one is a federal matter, which is why a back office can prepare it every week but only the contractor signs it.

A lien waiver is a document a contractor, subcontractor or supplier signs giving up its right to place a lien on the property in exchange for a payment. There are four kinds: conditional and unconditional, each for a progress payment or a final one. Conditional waivers take effect only once the payment clears. Collecting the right waiver from every tier before releasing each payment is a paperwork discipline, and it's the discipline that keeps a finished project free of surprise claims.

A certificate of insurance is the one page document an insurer issues to show that a policy exists, what it covers, and when it expires. General contractors collect one from every subcontractor before they start and need a current one for as long as they're on site. Tracking expiry dates and chasing renewals is routine work that stops being routine the day an uninsured sub has an accident.

Cycle counting is checking a portion of inventory against the records on a rolling schedule, so that every item is counted several times a year without stopping production for a full count. Items are usually grouped into classes by value, the costliest counted most often. The point isn't the count itself but the variances it finds, each of which is a process error somewhere that can be fixed.

Where we do this: Manufacturing

Inventory variance is the gap between what the records say is on the shelf and what is actually there, in quantity or in value. Small variances are noise; a pattern of them points at the cause: receipts booked late, scrap not recorded, a bill of materials that doesn't match what the floor actually uses. The books can't be right while the variance is unexplained, because inventory is usually the largest number on the balance sheet.

A bill of materials is the list of every part, material and quantity that goes into one unit of a product, often with the labor steps alongside. Costing, purchasing and inventory all run off it. When the floor builds the product differently from how the BOM describes it, every one of those three is quietly wrong, and quotes go out priced on a product that isn't the one being made.

Rework is the labor and material spent fixing units that failed inspection so they can be shipped rather than scrapped. In most small shops it hides inside normal production cost, because nobody books it separately. Given its own work order code, it becomes visible by product and by cause, which is the only way to find out whether it's a supplier problem, a process problem or a training problem.

A Buy Here Pay Here dealer sells the car and finances it, so the dealer is the lender and collects the payments. A Lease Here Pay Here dealer leases the car instead, keeping title and taking it back at the end of the term. In both, the dealer is the creditor, which means the collections, the compliance and the credit reporting are the dealer's responsibility, not a bank's.

Where we do this: Buy Here Pay Here and Lease Here Pay Here

Recency is the share of open accounts that have made a payment within a recent window, usually the last thirty days. It's the leading measure of a portfolio's health because it moves before delinquency does: an account can be only a few days past due and still be counted as current by recency, or technically current and already quiet. Dealers who track it watch it weekly.

Delinquency buckets group past due accounts by how far behind they are, commonly one to twenty nine days, thirty to fifty nine, and sixty and over, with many dealers splitting the first bucket again at ten days. Each bucket gets its own contact cadence and its own decisions. The dollar total in each, and how it moves week to week, is the first page of any portfolio report.

Roll rate is the share of accounts in one delinquency bucket that move into the next worse one in a period, rather than curing or staying put. A rising roll rate from the first bucket to the second is the earliest sign that contact isn't reaching people, and it predicts charge offs months before they happen.

A right party contact is reaching the borrower themselves, as opposed to a voicemail, a relative or a wrong number. Collections desks measure attempts, contacts and right party contacts separately because only the last one can produce a promise to pay. The ratio between them says whether the phone numbers on file are any good.

A promise to pay is a commitment from the borrower, recorded with a date and an amount, to make a specific payment. Promises made against promises kept is one of the few collections numbers that measures the quality of the conversation rather than the volume of calls, and a broken promise is the trigger for the next contact.

Payment allocation is the order in which a payment is applied to what the borrower owes: fees, interest and principal, in whatever sequence the contract states. A servicing system set up to apply payments in a different order than the contract makes on time customers look late and charges fees that were never earned, which federal examiners have cited across auto servicing. The contract decides; the system has to be configured to match it.

Regulation F is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule, at 12 CFR Part 1006, that implements the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. It sets limits on contact frequency, including a presumption that more than seven call attempts in seven days on one debt is harassment, rules for texts and emails, and record keeping requirements. It binds third party debt collectors. A dealer collecting its own accounts is usually outside its reach, but state collection laws and the ban on unfair, deceptive and abusive practices still apply, and many in-house desks adopt Regulation F's limits as their standard because it's the one an examiner will recognize.

A right to cure is a borrower's chance to catch up a defaulted loan within a set number of days before the lender can repossess, created by state law in the states that have it. Where it applies, the lender must send a notice in a prescribed form and wait out the period. The notice, its date and the proof it was sent are part of the file that makes a later repossession defensible.

Under the Uniform Commercial Code a lender may repossess collateral without going to court only if it can do so without a breach of the peace. What counts as a breach is decided by state law and by courts, and it generally includes any confrontation, entry into a closed garage, or proceeding over the borrower's objection. A repossession that breaches the peace exposes the lender to damages regardless of the default, which is why the recovery agent's record of each pickup matters.

An SCRA check is a search of the Department of Defense's Defense Manpower Data Center database before a repossession, to find out whether the borrower is on active military duty. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act requires a court order to repossess a vehicle from a servicemember whose contract predates their service, and the penalties for skipping the check are severe. It's a one minute step that belongs in every repossession checklist.

A deficiency balance is what the borrower still owes after a repossessed vehicle has been sold and the proceeds, less the allowed costs of repossession and sale, have been applied to the loan. Whether it can be pursued, and the notices that must be sent first, depend on state law. A deficiency that's pursued without the right notices is usually unrecoverable.

Net recovery is what a repossession actually returns: the sale proceeds minus the costs of recovery, transport, storage, reconditioning and sale. Gross recovery flatters every repossession; net recovery is the number that says whether taking the car back was the right call, and it's the figure a lender comparing dealers will ask for.

A charge off is the point at which a loan is written off the books as uncollectible, after a set number of days past due or after the collateral has been sold. It's an accounting event, not a forgiveness: the debt may still be owed and may still be collected. The charge off rate across a portfolio, net of recoveries, is the loss rate a dealer's pricing has to cover.

A starter interrupt device lets the lender prevent a vehicle from starting after a missed payment; a GPS device reports where it is. Both are installed at the sale with the borrower's signed consent, and several states require a warning before a disable and limit when one can happen. The administrative record, consent forms, activation logs, notices sent and their dates, is what has to be in order; the decision to use the device on a particular customer's car stays with the dealer.

Metro 2 is the standard format in which lenders report account data to the credit bureaus each month: balance, status, payment history, dates. Furnishing data that's inaccurate breaches the Fair Credit Reporting Act's accuracy duties and is far more expensive to correct through disputes than to get right before it goes out, which is why the file is checked against the servicing system before every submission.

A floorplan curtailment is the partial paydown a floorplan lender requires on a vehicle's financing once the unit has sat on the lot for a set number of days, with further curtailments at later intervals until it's sold or paid off. Missing one is a default under the floorplan agreement. Tracking the dates by unit is dull work and the kind that's easily lost when the person who did it leaves.

A deal jacket is the file for one sale: the retail installment contract or lease, the required disclosures, the title and lien documents, proof of insurance, the device consent forms, and every notice sent since. A thin deal jacket is invisible until a funding review, a dispute or a state examination asks for the one page that isn't there.

A business associate agreement is the contract HIPAA requires between a healthcare provider and any vendor that handles protected health information on its behalf, setting out what the vendor may do with the data, how it must protect it, and what happens when something goes wrong. It's signed before access is granted, not after, and it's signed at the company level, so the obligation sits with the firm rather than with one individual.

Where we do this: Healthcare

Days in accounts receivable is how long a practice waits, on average, to be paid for the care it has billed, calculated as the receivable balance divided by average daily charges. It's read alongside the aging of the receivable by payer, because a good average can hide one payer that isn't paying at all.

A clean claim is one that passes the payer's edits and pays on the first submission with no correction, resubmission or appeal. The clean claim rate measures how much of the billing work is done right the first time, and every claim that isn't clean costs staff time twice: once to find out why, and once to send it again.

The denial rate is the share of submitted claims a payer refuses on first pass. Denials have reasons, and the reasons cluster: eligibility not checked, authorization missing, a code the payer doesn't accept. A denial rate tracked by reason and by payer is a list of fixable process errors; tracked only as a percentage, it's just bad news.

Credentialing is the process of enrolling a provider with an insurance payer so that claims for that provider's services will be paid, which involves verifying licenses, education and history and can take months. A provider who sees patients before credentialing is complete generates claims that can't be billed, which is why the paperwork starts before the first day, not on it.

A standard operating procedure is a written description of how a recurring piece of work is done, in enough detail that a competent person who has never done it could follow it, including the exceptions and what to do when the rule doesn't fit. The test of an SOP isn't whether it exists but whether someone has run the work from it while the usual person stayed silent.

Where we do this: SOP and workflow design

A runbook is an SOP for an operational task that runs on a schedule: the steps in order, where each thing lives, which login is needed, and what to check at the end to know it worked. Where an SOP explains, a runbook is followed, which is why it lists the exceptions by name rather than by principle.

Where we do this: Documentation and systemization

A trained backup is a second person who already knows an account and has run its work at least once from the documentation, before anyone needs them to. It's the difference between cover and a promise of cover: when the usual person is ill, on leave or gone, the work continues the same week, from the same runbook, without the client explaining anything.

Where we do this: Dedicated remote staff

Dedicated staff are named people who work only on one business and are managed by the provider rather than the client. A managed team is a group of them, across roles, running a whole function under one account manager who answers for the outcome. The distinction matters for what the client has to do: with dedicated staff they direct the work; with a managed team they set the standard and read the report.

Where we do this: Managed operations team

An operations review is a short, structured look at how a back office actually runs, as opposed to how it's described: where the hours go, which steps have no owner, which problems are symptoms of a different cause, and what would be cheaper to remove than to staff. It ends in an ordered plan, which the business can run itself or hand back.

Where we do this: Operations review and roadmap