Glossary

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A

Accounts Payable - AP

Accounts Payable is an accounting entry that represents an entity's obligation to pay off a short-term debt to its creditors. The accounts payable entry is found on a balance sheet under the heading current liabilities.

AP refers to a business department or division that is responsible for making payments owed by the company to suppliers and creditors.

Accounts Recievable - AR

Accounts Recievable is the money that customers (individuals or corporations) owe a company in exchange for its goods or services. Accounts Recievable usually come in the form of operating lines of credit, and are usually due within a relatively short timeperiod, ranging from a few days, weeks up to one year.

Asset

1) A resource having economic value that an individual, corporation or country, owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide future benefit.

2)A balance sheet item representing what a firm owns.

Audit

A review or examination of an individual's or organisation's records to determine legal compliance or proper record keeping.

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B

Backlinks

Hyperlinks which link to a particular web page (or website). Also known as inbound-links. Google PageRank and Yahoo! WebRank are methods of enumerating this. Outbound links are the origination point of backlinks.

Balance Sheet

A company's financial statement that reports the assets, liabilities and net worth at a specific time.

assets = liabilities + shareholders equity.This equation is true for all balance sheets.

Break Even Point

In general, the point at which gain equals losses.

In options: the market price that a stock must reach for option buyers to avoid a loss if they exercise. For a call, it is the strike price plus the premium paid. For a put, it is the strike price minus the premium paid.

For business, reaching the break even point is the first major step towards profitability.

Burn Rate

The rate at which a new company uses up its venture capital to finance overhead before generating positive cash flow from operations. In other words, it's a measure of negative cash flow.

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C

Capital

1. Wealth in the form of money or property, used or accumulated in a business by a person, partnership, or corporation.

2. Material wealth used or available for use in the production of more wealth.

3. Human resources considered in terms of their contributions to an economy.

Cashflow Forecast

An estimate of the timing and amount of a comapny's inflows and outflows of money measured over a specific period of time, typically monthly for one to two years then annually for an additional one to three years.

Cashflow Statement

One of the quarterly financial reports any publicly traded comapny is required to disclose to the SEC (Security and Exchange Commission) and the public. The document provides aggregate data regarding all cash inflows a company recieves from both its ongoing operations and external investment sources, as well as cash flows that pay for business activities and investments during a given quarter.

Cookie

A small piece of information a web site leaves on a visitor's computer when the visitor visits a site. Cookies are used to remember information about a visitor to be used at a later time.

Creditor

A creditor is a person (or institution) who extends credit by giving permission to borrow money if he/she promises to pay it back at a later date.

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D

Daily Unique Visitor

A visitor that comes to your site for the first time in a day. All subsequent visits during the day by the visitor are not considered unique.

Debtor

A debtor is a company or individual who owes moeny. If the debt is in the form of a loan from a financial institution, the debtor is referred to as a borrower. If the debt is in the form of securities, such as bonds, the debtor is referred to as an issuer.

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E

Elevator Pitch

A slang term used to describe a brief speech that outlines an idea for a product, service or project. The name comes from the notion that the speech should be delivered in the short time period of an elevator ride, usually 20-60 seconds.

Entrepreneur

One who assumes the financial risk of the initiation, operation, and management of a given business undertaking.

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F

Franchise

License granted by a company (the franchisor) to an individual or firm (the franchisee) to operate a retail, food, or drug outlet where the franchisee agrees to use the franchisor's name; products; services; promotions; selling, distribution, and display methods; and other company support.

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G

Gap Analysis

A marketing technique used to identify gaps in market or product coverage. In gap analysis, consumer information or requirements are tabulated and matched to product categories in order to identify product or service opportunities or gaps in product planning.

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H

HTML

HTML is a collection of platform-independent styles (indicated by markup tags) that define the various components of a World Wide Web document.

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I

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J

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K

Key phrase, keyword

A keyphrase is a group of keywords which appear in the content of a page on a web site. In order for a search engine to return a page that is a suitable match to the search terms that have been entered, it is necessary for the targeted search terms to appear in the form of key phrases, suitable weighted, in the copy of the page.

A good SEO will have experience in ensuring the copy of the page is optimised for the targeted search terms while still providing useful and informative copy for the user. Staisfying both the search engine and human visitors.

"Key phrase" is often (incorrectly) used interchangeably with "search term".

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L

Lead Time

In terms of a supply chain, the total time needed for an order to be processed.

Lead time starts when the order is recieved by the sales department and ends when the client pays the invoice.

Liability

A liability is a legal debt or obligation estimated via accrual accounting such as loans, accounts payable, mortgages, deferred revenues and accrued expenses.

Link Popularity

An assessment of page quality based on the number of inbound or backlinks.

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M

Margin

The difference between the cost of a product to a business organisation and the revenue gained from selling it to a customer.

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N

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O

Outsourcing

Term used in business to identify the process of sub-contracting work to outside vendors. The transfer of the provision of services previously carried out by in-house personnel to an external organization, usually under a contract with agreed standards, costs, and conditions.

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P

PageRank

Google's trademarked approach to assess the value of a web page based on the number of inbound links or backlinks.

Profit and Loss (Income Statement)

A financial report that - by summarizing revenues and expenses, and showing the net profit or loss in a specified accounting period - depicts a business entity's financial performance due to operations as well as other activities rendering gains and losses. Also known as the "profit and loss statement" pr "statement of revenue and expense".

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Q

Qualify

The information-gathering process that salespeople use to determine a prospect's buying potential.

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R

Revenue

The amount of money generated from orders.

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S

Search Engine Opitmisation

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of increasing the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines. This entails optimising the the page/s of the site to ensure that a site is accessible to search engines and improves the chances of the site being found will be found by the search engines.

The higher a web site ranks in the search results the more likely it is that the site will be visited by the user.

Small and Medium Enterprise - SME

A business that maintains revenues or a number of employees below a certain standard. Every country has its own definition of what is considered a small and medium-sized enterprise.

In the United States, there is no distinctive way to identify SME - typically it depends on the industry in which it competes. In the European Union, a small-sized enterprise is a company with less than 50 employees while a medium-sized enterprise is one with fewer than 250 employees.

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T

Turnover

1. In accounting, the number of times an asset is replaced during a financial period.

2. The number of shares traded for a period of time as a percentage of the total shares in a portfolio or of an exchange.

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U

URL

The Universal Resource Locator for an item on the internet, which includes the protocol, path, page and other items that fully identify an item. For example: http://www.freshthinkingbusiness.com.glossary.html

Usability

An approach to website design intended to enable the completion of user tasks and to improve the user experience. Typically measured by increasing task completion rates and decreasing completion time (number of clicks).

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V

Venture Capital

Money used to support new or unusual commercial undertakings; equity, risk or speculative capital. This funding is provided to new or existing firms that exhibit above-average growth rates, a significant potential for market expansion and the need for additional financing for business maintenance or expansion.

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W

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X

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Y

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Z

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