Glossary

ChargeOver In-App Terms

Admin Role - Permissions that control what an Admin User can and cannot do and see within a ChargeOver account

Admin User - Used to refer to any anyone who has access to a ChargeOver account, regardless of their permission settings or role

A/R Aging Detail - Lists unpaid customer invoices by date ranges

Brands - A name assigned to a company or category to identify what group a customer belongs to

Cancel - The resulting action of a decision to stop a planned future event, causing it to not take place

• Ex. In ChargeOver, you can cancel a subscription, which makes it unable to create any new invoices

Contact - The person designated to receive email communication for a customer in ChargeOver.

Custom Events - A custom action that triggers an automated event in ChargeOver

Custom Field - A category that can be created by a user of ChargeOver. The category is created to carry specific information that will be filled out on an object every time one is created

• This field can be added to an invoice, subscription, quote, customer, product, discount, etc.

Customer Portal - A sign-in page that each customer can log into in order to view their current subscriptions and pay their invoices. They can also update their payment information, address and contact information, if they want

Dunning and Reminders - A series of email communications that are sent out to customers who need to make a payment on an invoice

• Most often, dunning is used to send automatic reminders or automatically retry payments that have failed after the initial payment attempt

Email Assignment - Connects a specific email template to an event in ChargeOver, which triggers a specific type of email to be sent to a recipient

• Not all email assignments are automated events

External Key - A unique identifier used to map to a specific object

• Often times this field is used when integrating ChargeOver with other systems. For example, if you are a SaaS company who has your own internal database, you can store your ID values in ChargeOver and look-up objects using your own ID

Go Live Button - A button, that, when clicked, sends a request to support, requesting that the instance be approved to start billing

Hosted Sign-Up Page - A page where customers can sign up for certain products and begin a subscription or pay a one-time invoice immediately

Instance - A ChargeOver account

Invoice Date - The date an invoice counts as revenue towards

• Ex. If the invoice date is in March 2023, it counts as revenue towards March 2023
• This is usually the date the invoice was created, unless you have the editable invoice dates feature enabled

Invoice with Scheduled Payments - An invoice that has been assigned a specific day it will be paid

• Can be a one-time invoice or an invoice associated with a subscription

Line Item - Otherwise known as the product or plan that is added to a subscription or invoice

• The product or plan has its own line on an invoice and subscription

Object - A subscription, invoice, customer, transaction or quote in ChargeOver

Pending Invoice - An invoice that is waiting for approval to be processed, from a user

• Our Pending Invoice functionality will go away eventually, and be replaced by Unapproved Invoices
• Also called Draft invoices

Pricing Models - Pricing tools that allow you to determine the price of your products or services

• Flat Pricing - A pricing option that only charges for a single fixed fee, regardless of usage used
• Tiered Pricing - A pricing option that that allows you to charge different amounts incrementally based on the usage the user utilizes
• Unit Pricing - A pricing option that charges per unit of something (per pound, per quart, etc.)
• Volume Pricing - A pricing option that charges a flat rate for usage within specific ranges

Sandbox Account - Otherwise known as a staging account or test account for developers to test how ChargeOver will work with their software

Subscription with Scheduled Payments - A subscription that has been assigned a specific day to be charged on

Test Mode - Functional Sandbox that restricts any external email communication or payment processing. It allows full integration testing and mock workflows

• When you first sign up for a free trial of ChargeOver, you’re put into this “test mode”. You can simulate payments and simulate sending emails and generally use ChargeOver without worrying about actually charging someone money or accidentally sending an email to a real customer
• When we give developers sandbox/test accounts to develop against, we put these accounts in test mode so that they can test without worrying about accidentally charging a real customer or messing up their real customer data

Unapproved Invoice - An invoice that is waiting for approval to be processed from the user

Un-Void - To un-cancel

• You can un-void a payment that you had voided previously

User - An individual who is logged in to ChargeOver and uses ChargeOver

• ChargeOver Customer

General Business Terms

Advance - Ahead of time or ahead of schedule

Arrears - To owe money for a service that has been given

Bill in Advance - When you charge a customer before they have been delivered a service or product

Billing in Arrears - When you charge a customer after they have been delivered a service or product

Child Customer - A customer who is mostly dependent upon their parent customer

Class - An industry identifier that is used to group customers together

• Examples of a class include but are not limited to: finance, consumer electronics, entertainment, etc.

Class Tracking - Allows you to track account balances by department, business office, separate properties, or any other meaningful breakdown of your business

• Any segments of your business you want to keep a close eye on, you can use class tracking for

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - Technology that is used to manage your company's relationships and interactions with potential customers

Due Date - A specific day an invoice or payment is due

• After the due date, the invoice status will change to OVERDUE in ChargeOver

Federal Employee ID Number (FEIN) - A number that identifies each unique business

Metered/Usage Billing - A pricing option where you charge the customer for their usage level of a product or service

Payment Card Industry (PCI) Compliance- Is an information security standard used to handle credit cards from major card brands

• ChargeOver is Level 1 PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) compliant

Parent Customer - A customer who has a controlling or majority interest in another company, which gives it the right to control the child’s operations. They have the ability to pay the bills of the child customer if they would like, but they mainly manage and oversee the child customers movements

• Examples of parent/child customer relationship: A Parent customer would be General Mills and examples of their child customers would be Chex Mix, Poptarts or Cheerios

Product - An item or service that is being sold to a customer

Proration - To divide a product or services cost over a period of time

Purchase Order (PO) - A document issued by the buyer to a seller that indicates all of the details (like the type, quantity and agreed prices) of a product or service that has been purchased

Quote - An estimate of how much a something is going to cost

Service Date(s) - The date range the customer is paying for

• Ex. On March 1st, you were charged for the service dates March 1 to March 31

Single Sign On (SSO) - An authentication method that enables users to securely authenticate with multiple applications and websites by using just one login username and password

Subscription - A service a customer has committed to pay for over a period of time

Two Factor Authentication - A user authentication service that acts as an extra security measure for a user so that their data/login cannot be easily compromised

• Usually this is in the form of a code that is sent to an outside device (e.g. your phone) after you have entered your login credentials. This acts as another door you need to walk through to login so that your data remains secure

Void - To cancel

• In ChargeOver, this option appears when you want to cancel a payment or invoice

Payment Related Terms

ACH Payment - A type of electronic bank-to-bank payment. The ACH system is a way to transfer money between bank accounts, rather than paying with a credit card

• Called ACH payments in the USA
• Called EFT or PAD in Canada
• Called EFT or direct debit in Australia/New Zealand

Balance - The actual amount of money in a bank account or on a credit card

Credit Card Payment - A payment card issued to customers to enable them to pay virtually for a merchants goods and services

Coupon - They offer various types of discounts, such as fixed discounts, percentage discounts, or special deals. They usually have an expiration date and are applied manually by the customer at checkout

Discount - A price reduction for products or services that are applied directly to the selling price, on a subscription or invoice

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) - When money moves from one bank account to another via the internet

Integration - Any business that is used to communicate with other systems that are involved in the business of processing the payments you are running

Late Fee - An extra charge that is demanded of the customer after they fail to make a payment on time

Micro-Deposit - Small amount of money transferred into a bank account, where the person with the bank account then verifies the amount of the deposit. Once this is done ACH payments can be made

• This is how payment processors like Stripe verify that the customers bank account is actually theirs

Payment - The transfer of money that pays something off

Payment Processor - A company that processes and approves transactions for you

• Sometimes referred to as a payment gateway

Processing Fee - An extra charge that is added on to a customer's credit card after they use it to buy something

• When you buy something with a credit card, the business accepting the card gets charged a fee of usually ~3%.
• Ex. If you buy something for $100, $3 of that goes to Visa. Businesses will often charge a processing fee of 3% then (adding 3% to what the customer pays) to help offset the cost of processing the credit card

Rewards Points - Points that can be used to pay for an invoice

Token - The result of a tokenized payment - A series of characters that acts as an identifier for sensitive payment information

Tokenized payment - A type of payment that protects vulnerable credit card and banking information by replacing valuable data with a series of characters that acts as a temporary identification number

Accounting Terms

Accounting System - A system that keeps track of and maintains all records of gained and lost revenue

• Ex.s. QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite, Dynamics, etc.

Accounts Receivable - Money owed to a company by its customers who are in debt to them

A/R Aging Summary- A report that categorizes a company’s accounts receivable by looking at the length of time an invoice has gone unpaid

Churn MRR - That months loss of recurring revenue

• This is caused by people either cancelling or downgraded their subscriptions each month

Closing Date- A date to "close the books" for a certain time period, meaning financial operations and reports of that time period cannot be adjusted

• For example, if a closing date is set to March 26, 2024, financial statements and reports generated on or prior to March 26, 2024 cannot be adjusted

• This can be helpful for tracking financial progress

Contraction MRR - The comparison of last month's Churn MRR to that month's Churn MRR

Credit - Think of it as “ghost money." It is a record that indicates a transaction was lost or gained

• This record can then be applied to a future invoice as a valid payment

Credit Memo - A document issued by the seller of goods or services to the buyer, reducing the amount that the buyer owes to the seller. It acts as a piece of evidence to prove a reduction in sales

Customer Churn - The percentage of customers that stopped using your company’s product or service during a certain time frame

Deferred Revenue - A record of money that is going to be received from a good or product in the future

Invoice - A document that is sent to a customer detailing what they are buying or have bought

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) - This is a measure of predictable revenue generated by your business, from all active subscriptions in a particular month

• MRR is a very common metric SaaS and other subscription-based businesses use to measure income and business success.
• In a nutshell, MRR is calculated as: ( average monthly revenue per customer * number of monthly customers ) = MRR
• MRR helps give subscription-based businesses cashflow and growth forecasting intelligence by “smoothing out” revenue bumps like large yearly/quarterly contracts and one-time payments
• For example:
  • If you have a $100 per month customer, they count as $100 of MRR
  • If you have a $1,200 per year customer, they count as $100 of MRR
  • If you charge a customer a one-time fee, the one-time fee does not get counted towards MRR
  • If you have a $1,200 per year customer, and you give them a yearly discount of $120, they count as $90 of MRR

New MRR - Revenue generated from new customers that joined that month

Reactivation MRR - Revenue earned from previously cancelled subscriptions that were reactivated during that month

Refund - A repayment of a sum of money to a customer who was not satisfied with goods or services bought

Revenue Recognition - A process that involves recognizing how much money your company is making and logging that data accordingly

Sales Tax - A tax applied to the amount of sales made or on the receipts created from sales

Value Added Tax (VAT) Identification Number - A unique number that identifies a business that you tax

Write-Off - A cancellation from an account that indicates a bad debt or worthless asset

Development Terms

Alias - “Formerly known as." Indicates a nickname or second name a person goes by

Beta - A testing stage

Custom Domain Name (CNAME)- A customizable label attached to your website's IP address

• Example: indulge.chargeover.com

Domain Name System (DNS) - Stores all of the domain names of every domain name ever created. It turns all the names into IP addresses

Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) - An email authentication process that allows the receiver to check that an email is legitimate

• If you do not have this set up, we strongly recommend you do so! It greatly improves your email deliverability when you are using ChargeOver

Endpoint - The full URL used to complete a REST API action

• Ex.https://example.chargeover.com/api/v3/customer is the endpoint for creating a new customer via the REST API, vs. https://example.chargeover.com/api/v3/invoice is the endpoint for creating a new invoice via the REST API

IP Address - A unique number that identifies an electronic device

• Will be listed in the Audit Log under an object in ChargeOver. Located under the “Who” column

iframe - A webpage that holds another webpage inside it

• For example, if you want to have your own website’s header/footer wrap around ChargeOver’s customer portal, you can iframe the customer portal inside your own website

Merge Tag - Code you can use to insert specific data into your emails to make them more personalized to your customers

PCI Compliance - A business requirement a company agrees to, in order to ensure the privacy of card holders. By doing this, they can accept, transmit and store private credit card data within their system

REST API - The connection that two computer systems use to exchange information securely over the internet

Root Domain - The main section of your website’s domain name

• Ex. chargeover.com

Subdomain - Indicates a separate page that is connected to your website

• Ex. help.chargeover.com

Webhook - A tool that is used to automatically send out events or notifications to other websites