Resources · Glossary
The words on the money path.
Contract-to-cash has its own vocabulary, and half of it means something slightly different in every tool. These are the terms as Sonic uses them — each one tied to the screen where it happens.
66 terms
A
- Accounts receivableMoney customers owe you on invoices you have sent and they have not yet paid.
- Adjustment invoiceA new invoice for the extra amount a mid-period change adds, issued beside the original.
- AI agent (in finance)Software that drafts a finance action — a schedule, an invoice, a reminder, a match — for a person to approve.
- AmendmentA mid-term change to what a customer is billed — proposed, reviewed, then applied.
- Audit trailThe record of what was sent, when, by whom, and what changed since — on every document.
B
- Bank reconciliationMatching lines on the bank statement to the invoices they paid.
- Bill-to partyThe entity that receives the invoice and is expected to pay it.
- Billed vs recognisedBilled is what you invoiced in a period; recognised is what you earned in it. They are rarely the same number.
- Billing dayThe day of the month a schedule's recurring invoices are dated.
- Billing frequencyHow often a product bills — monthly, quarterly, annually, or once.
- Billing scheduleThe live plan that turns a contract's terms into invoices on cadence — the core object in Sonic.
- Billing windowThe span of days a shipment invoice groups hauls into — daily, weekly, or monthly from the contract start.
C
- Calendar-unit prorationPricing a window by walking whole units of the quoted price basis and scaling only the partial one.
- CatalogThe master list of who you bill and what you sell — customers, products, and list prices.
- Contract-to-cashThe chain from a signed agreement to a matched deposit and a posted journal entry.
- Credit noteA document that gives money back against an issued invoice instead of editing it.
D
- Days sales outstandingThe average number of days between issuing an invoice and collecting it.
- Deferred instalmentOne part of a fee that the contract lets the customer pay later, on a stated date or invoice.
- Deferred revenueCash or invoices received for service you have not delivered yet — a liability until you earn it.
- Document numberThe customer-facing invoice identifier, allocated from a per-organisation sequence when the document is finalised.
- DunningThe configured sequence of reminders that runs on an unpaid invoice until cash lands.
E
F
G
H
I
- IdempotencyProcessing the same row twice produces one event, not two.
- In advance vs in arrearsWhether a line bills at the start of the period it covers or after it ends.
- InvoiceThe document that asks a bill-to party for a specific amount for a specific period or event.
- Invoice periodThe date range a line item pays for — shown on the invoice and used by revenue recognition.
- Issued invoiceAn invoice that has been finalised or sent — and will never gain, lose, or change a line.
J
M
N
O
- One-time feeA non-recurring charge on the contract, billed once on its own commercial date.
- Organisation (multi-tenant)Your company's isolated space on the platform — every record is scoped to it.
- OverageQuantity beyond what the base price already includes, billed at the overage rate.
- OverdueA sent invoice whose due date has passed without full payment.
P
- Partial paymentA deposit that covers less than the invoice — or one invoice paid across several deposits.
- Payer matchingDeciding which customer a bank line belongs to when the payer name is not the customer name.
- Payment linkA link on the invoice that lets the customer pay by card or bank through a connected processor.
- Point-in-time recognitionRecognising the whole amount on the date the obligation is met.
- Promise to payA customer's stated date for paying an overdue invoice, which pauses reminders until then.
- ProrationCharging or crediting only the part of a period a customer actually had something.
R
- Rate cardThe carrier contract's table of what each movement costs — base rate, surcharges, and accessorials.
- Rate indexA dated table of published values — a fuel index, say — that a rate card references instead of hardcoding.
- Rated shipmentA shipment whose charges have been calculated from the contract — the unit that gets invoiced.
- Renewal clauseThe term that says what happens when the contract's end date arrives — and usually what the price becomes.
- Revenue leakageMoney you were owed under a contract and never invoiced — or invoiced wrong and never fixed.
- Revenue recognitionRecording revenue when the service is delivered, not when the invoice is sent or the cash arrives.
- Revenue waterfallThe table of how each invoiced amount is released across future periods.
S
- Schedule phaseA dated segment of a billing schedule with its own products and prices.
- Seat confirmation daysHow long an added seat stays pending before it becomes billable.
- Seat eventA dated change to a customer's seat balance — plus or minus — that billing reads.
- Seat proration policyWhich mid-period seat changes are charged or credited: none, added seats only, or added and removed.
- Seat snapshotAn absolute count of seats for a customer on a date — the shape most vendor exports have.
- Seat-based billingCharging per user, licence, or seat, with the count changing over the period.
- Shipment billingBilling per haul at a contracted rate, rather than per month at a subscription price.
- ShipperThe company that booked the freight and receives the invoice for it.
- Straight-line recognitionSpreading a line's amount evenly across the days of its period.
- Stub periodThe shortened first (or last) window when a schedule starts or ends off-cycle.
- Subscription activationThe moment a schedule starts billing — immediately, on a fixed date, or only after a gating payment lands.
U
- Unmatched depositCash that landed in the bank and has not been tied to an invoice yet.
- Usage templateA saved mapping from a file's columns to customer, timestamp, meter, and quantity — built once on a sample, then reused.
- Usage-based billingCharging for what was measured — events, volume, minutes — instead of a fixed fee.
W
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See it on your contracts
A walkthrough on the agreements and files you actually bill from — not a slide deck.