Glossary
Clear definitions of business management, accounting and compliance terms — without needless jargon.
ABC analysis classifies stock items by consumption value (the Pareto 80/20 principle) to concentrate management effort on the most important items.
ATP is the portion of stock and planned replenishments not yet committed, which can be reliably promised to a new customer.
Business Intelligence brings together the methods and tools that turn a company's data into indicators and dashboards, so decisions can be based on facts.
A CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is software that plans, tracks and optimises the maintenance of an organisation's equipment and facilities.
The critical path method (CPM) identifies the longest sequence of tasks in a project — the one that determines its minimum duration and allows no delay.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) refers to the methods and software that centralise all of a company's interactions with its customers and prospects.
A DPA is the contract required by Article 28 of the GDPR that governs the relationship between a data controller and its personal-data processor.
The DPO (Data Protection Officer) is the person responsible for ensuring compliance with the GDPR and advising the organization on its processing of personal data.
The EOQ, or Wilson formula, calculates the replenishment quantity that minimises the total inventory cost by balancing ordering cost against holding cost.
EDM (electronic document management) covers the tools used to digitise, classify, search and secure an organisation's documents throughout their lifecycle.
An ERP is a single piece of software that centralises and connects all of a company's management processes (sales, inventory, purchasing, finance, HR, and more).
EVM (earned value management) is a project control method that combines scope, schedule and cost to measure real progress and anticipate deviations.
Factur-X is a hybrid electronic invoice format: a human-readable PDF that embeds machine-readable structured data (XML).
The FEC is the standardised file containing all the accounting entries for a financial year, which any business keeping computerised accounts must be able to provide to the French tax authorities.
FEFO is a stock-rotation rule that issues first the batches whose expiry date is closest, in order to limit losses.
A fixed asset is a durable item, intended to serve the business across several financial years, recorded under assets on the balance sheet and most often depreciated.
A Gantt chart is a visual representation of a project schedule: each task is shown as a horizontal bar positioned along a time axis.
The GDPR is the European regulation, in force since 2018, that governs the processing of personal data and grants rights to the individuals concerned.
The INCO regulation (EU 1169/2011) harmonizes food information to consumers and requires the declaration of the 14 major allergens.
ITSM (IT Service Management) covers the practices for designing, delivering, and improving the IT services provided to an organization's users.
Kanban is a visual workflow-management method based on cards and columns, used in both lean manufacturing and agile project management.
A KPI (key performance indicator) is a quantifiable measure that evaluates how well an objective is being met and serves to steer an activity.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open protocol that standardizes how an artificial intelligence agent connects to external tools, data and systems.
MRP (Material Requirements Planning) is a requirements-planning method that schedules procurement and production based on demand, bills of materials and stock levels.
MTBF (mean time between failures) is the reliability indicator that measures the average operating time of a repairable piece of equipment between two failures.
MTTR (mean time to repair) measures the average time needed to bring a piece of equipment back into service after a failure; it is the key maintainability indicator.
Multi-tenancy is a SaaS architecture where a single software instance serves multiple organizations, whose data remains logically isolated from one another.
NF525 is a French standard certifying that point-of-sale software guarantees the inalterability, security, retention and archiving of sales data.
A no-show is a booking that goes unfulfilled: the customer does not turn up and did not cancel beforehand, causing a loss for the business.
OAuth 2.1 is a delegated authorization protocol that lets an application access resources on behalf of a user through a token, without sharing their password.
The Plan Comptable Général (French general chart of accounts) sets the rules of financial accounting in France and organises accounts into numbered classes.
A PDP is a private platform registered with the French tax authority, authorised to issue, transmit and receive electronic invoices between businesses in France.
The Permanent Fiscal Journal is the tamper-proof, append-only register that records every fiscal event of a point-of-sale system.
A purchase order is the contractual document by which a buyer firmly commits to acquiring goods or services from a supplier, on the agreed terms.
A quote is a detailed, priced commercial proposal that describes the products or services, their quantities and their prices, and binds the seller once accepted.
Reconciliation is the accounting operation that matches related entries — typically an invoice and its payment — in order to clear third-party accounts.
A REST API is an interface that lets two software applications communicate over HTTP by exposing resources handled in JSON format.
SCIM is an open standard that automates the creation, updating, and deletion of user accounts between a corporate directory and applications.
SCM (Supply Chain Management) is the management of the entire supply chain, from suppliers to the end customer, to optimize the flows of products, information and costs.
The SIREN (9 digits) identifies a business and the SIRET (14 digits) each of its establishments, in the SIRENE directory maintained by INSEE, the French national statistics institute.
An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a contractual commitment that defines the expected quality of service: availability, response time, and resolution time.
Stocktaking is the operation of physically counting and valuing inventory, used to reconcile theoretical quantities with the quantities actually held.
VAT (value-added tax) is an indirect tax on consumption, collected by businesses, applied in France at several rates (20%, 10%, 5.5%, 2.1%).
ZUGFeRD is the German hybrid electronic-invoice format — a human-readable PDF containing structured XML data — equivalent to and compatible with the French Factur-X.
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