Field Operations Glossary

Field operations borrows words from sales, logistics, billing, telematics and regulation, and vendors name the same thing differently: one platform's job is another's work order, visit or service appointment. Each entry here is one line and a link to where the volume explains it, or to the playbook chapter that owns the general idea. The volume's own names (account, property, agreement, work order, visit) are the ones in The Core Data Model.

The Business and the Market#

• Branch, region, brand: the layers of an org tree; a branch owns a territory, its technicians and routes, and is the unit most work is run and reported by (The Field Operations Business; the general shape is in Tenant Hierarchies).
• Dead time: paid time that is neither driving to work nor doing it: loading, waiting, paperwork (The Field Operations Business).
• Enterprise field service: field service built on a general business platform (Salesforce, Dynamics 365, ServiceNow, Oracle, SAP, IFS) and extended per customer (The Software Landscape).
• FSM (field service management): software that runs the customer, scheduling, technician and billing side of a field business (The Software Landscape).
• Horizontal SMB platform: a field service product for small businesses across many trades, such as Jobber or Housecall Pro (The Software Landscape).
• Org unit: one node of the org tree (org_units: a brand, region or branch), carrying the time zone that sets the branch's business date for billing and generation runs (The Core Data Model).
• Route density: how many customers sit close together on a route; the economics of recurring service are mostly density (The Field Operations Business).
• Staff member: an employee or contractor who logs in or does the work (staff_members); a worker is always a staff member, never a people row (The Core Data Model).
• System of record: the one system whose copy of a record wins when systems disagree (The Software Landscape).
• Vertical platform: a product built for one trade's rules, such as FieldRoutes or PestPac for pest control, or Skimmer for pools (The Software Landscape).

Customers, Properties and Agreements#

• Account, customer: the party that pays (accounts), kept separate from the place served and the people involved (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
• Add-on: a product sold alongside a plan and priced on its own (Service Agreements & Plans).
• Agreement: the contract for a plan version at a property (agreements); vendors say membership, maintenance plan, subscription or service agreement (Service Agreements & Plans).
• Agreement states: draft, out for signature, signed (cancellation window open, not billable), active, paused, on hold, terminated; or void (never signed) and cancelled (ended before it became active) (Service Agreements & Plans).
• Allowance: a number of included visits an agreement grants, used on request rather than on a schedule (Recurring Schedules).
• Amendment: a change to a live agreement recorded as a new terms version, such as an add-on joining mid-term, effective on its first added visit and prorated by day (One-Time Services & Upsells).
• Asset, equipment: a serviced thing at a property (a furnace, a backflow assembly, a pool pump, bait stations) with its own history, serial number and warranty terms (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Cancelled versus terminated: an agreement that ends before it ever became active (including in the cooling-off window) is cancelled and emits agreement.cancelled; ending an active agreement is terminated, with a churn type and a reason, and emits agreement.terminated (Service Agreements & Plans).
• CASS: the USPS certification for address-matching software (Addresses & Geocoding).
• Contact role: what a person may do for an account or property: pay, approve work, receive reports, grant site access (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
• Geocode: coordinates for an address, with a precision that matters (rooftop, parcel, street, postal code) (Addresses & Geocoding).
• Hold (agreement): the company stopping service on an agreement (on_hold) for non-payment or a dispute; no new visits or charges while collection continues. The status is the current state, driven by dated suspension intervals the generator reads. FieldRoutes separates its hold from a freeze, which ends the subscription and maps to terminated. Not the same as a held visit or a work order's hold reason (Service Agreements & Plans).
• Initial service: the first visit, usually longer and priced separately from recurring ones (Service Agreements & Plans).
• Membership: the trade suites' name for an agreement, usually a maintenance plan with tune-ups and member pricing (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• One-time agreement: an agreement of kind one_time for one-time work that needs signed terms (authorizations, a cancellation window, a guarantee, a contract with deposits or permits); it never owns recurrences and ends fulfilled (One-Time Services & Upsells).
• Pause: the customer asking to stop service for a while (travel, a pool drained for repairs) without ending the agreement (paused); a seasonal plan's planned off-season is the recurrence's season, not a pause, and the agreement stays active, recorded as a dated suspension interval so a future pause is honored (Service Agreements & Plans).
• Person: a customer-side human (people), a contact linked to accounts and properties through contact roles; staff are staff members (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
• Plan, plan version: the product sold, versioned so each agreement keeps the terms it was signed under (Service Agreements & Plans; the pattern is in Effective Dating & History).
• Property, location, site: the place where the work happens (properties), with its own service point, time zone, access notes, hazards and assets (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
• Property key: a data vendor's stable identifier for a parcel or address, stored beside your own ID to join enrichment data (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
• Renewal: extending an agreement's term, automatically or as a new sale; regulated where it's automatic (Service Agreements & Plans).
• Service point: the spot a technician drives to, stored as the property's location; a technician's pin outranks any vendor rooftop (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
• Versioned terms: an agreement as a stable identity whose terms (lines, prices, frequency) change as immutable versions, so history shows what applied when (Service Agreements & Plans).
• Warranty, guarantee: a promise about future outcomes: a company's (a renewable termite warranty, a re-service guarantee) lives on the agreement; a manufacturer's lives on the asset (Service Agreements & Plans).

Repair, Install and Commercial Work#

• Bona fide emergency: a buyer-initiated "bona fide immediate personal emergency," where the buyer waives the cooling-off right in a dated, signed statement in their own handwriting; a technician's checkbox never qualifies (Consumer Protection).
• Callback, recall, re-service: a return to fix work that didn't hold, modeled as a new work order with source = 'callback' and callback_of_work_order_id set when it's booked, usually at no charge. A part that wasn't on the truck is a hold, not a callback; repair trades say callback or recall, recurring trades say re-service (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Deficiency: a problem found on a planned or inspection visit, recorded per asset with a severity, and often turned into a quote (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Diagnostic fee, trip charge: what the customer pays for the visit and the diagnosis, whether or not they buy the repair; waived, credited or charged by rule (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Estimate, quote: a priced proposal (estimates) linked to the work order it would fill, with options and snapshotted lines; approving an option copies its lines onto the work order (The Core Data Model; options and approvals are in Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Flat rate: one price per task (labor, typical parts and markup), approved before work starts; the usual pricing for residential repair (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Hold reason (work order): why an open work order is waiting (part_needed, approval_needed, permit_needed) after a visit did what it could; the visit itself is completed (The Core Data Model).
• Not-to-exceed (NTE): a commercial client's spending cap on a work order; crossing it needs a recorded approval (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• On call: availability outside regular hours; it lets a technician be sent without counting as bookable capacity (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Personal property: movable goods, as opposed to the home itself; the Cooling-Off Rule's repair exclusion covers only buyer-initiated repair of the buyer's personal property (Consumer Protection).
• Preventive maintenance, planned maintenance: scheduled work per asset (tune-ups, inspections, filter changes), driven by a calendar, a condition or usage (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Progress billing: deposits, progress payments and a final invoice against one project, often from a schedule of values with retainage (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Purchase order (PO): a commercial client's authorization number, carried on the work order, without which the invoice won't be paid; also the order to a supplier for a special-order part (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Service type: the catalog of what work orders perform (service_types): a quarterly pest service, a drain clearing, a furnace install. Vendors' work types add a default duration and required skills (The Core Data Model).
• SLA clock: a response or resolution target on a work order (the response clock and the resolution clock), counted on a calendar in the property's zone and rebuilt from start, pause, resume and breach events (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Time and materials (T&M): labor by the hour at a rate set by when it happens, plus parts at cost plus markup (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Warranty claim: a request to a manufacturer, distributor or claim processor to pay for a covered part or labor, tracked as a receivable with a submit-by date, evidence and states (Repair, Install & Commercial Work).
• Work order: the work to be done (work_orders), from an occurrence, a request, a sale or a callback; vendors also call it a job or ticket. One work order can take several visits (The Field Operations Business).

Last-Mile Delivery#

• Attendance: whether someone must be present for the work: required, preferred or not_required. Unattended work can drop its arrival window, which is the largest density lever in routing (Last-Mile Delivery & Distribution).
• Cost per stop, cost per delivery: route cost divided by stops attempted, versus by deliveries completed; the gap is what failed attempts cost (Last-Mile Delivery & Distribution).
• Delivery instruction: a standing instruction on the property (safe place, gate code) or a one-off on the order, applied in a fixed precedence; access codes are secrets (Last-Mile Delivery & Distribution).
• First, middle and last mile: shipper to warehouse, warehouse to hub or depot, and depot to door (Last-Mile Delivery & Distribution).
• First-attempt delivery rate: the share of deliveries completed on the first attempt (Operating Metrics).
• Handoff: how a delivery left the driver: to the recipient, to a third party, a safe place, a mailbox, a locker or a garage (Last-Mile Delivery & Distribution).
• Pickup-and-delivery pair: two linked stops where the delivery can't happen before its pickup (Last-Mile Delivery & Distribution).
• Shipper, consignee: who pays for the delivery, and who receives it at the site (Last-Mile Delivery & Distribution).
• Undeliverable action: what happens after the last failed attempt (return to sender, hold at a pickup point, dispose), decided when the order is created (Last-Mile Delivery & Distribution).

Scheduling and Routing#

• Arrival window: the span the customer is told to expect the technician in, stored as local time plus the property's time zone (Booking Appointments).
• Backlog, job pool: occurrences whose window has opened (or passed) with no booked visit; FieldRoutes' Job Pool is the familiar form (Recurring Schedules).
• Capacity: how much work a territory, crew or shift can take in a period, counted in minutes, slots or jobs (Territories & Capacity).
• Effective dating: recording when a fact becomes true and stops being true (valid_during), so changes can be scheduled and history stays true (Effective Dating & History).
• Freeze window, freezing: the part of a plan before a point in time that re-optimization may not change (Route Optimization).
• Generation model: how recurring work is created: a rolling horizon of real work, placeholders booked later, the next visit on completion of the last, rules per asset, or allowances (Recurring Schedules).
• Hard and soft constraints: rules a plan must satisfy, versus preferences it is penalized for breaking (Route Optimization).
• Held visit: a visit in held, a slot reserved with an expiry while a booking completes; a hold that lapses ends cancelled with reason expired. Not the same as an agreement on hold (Booking Appointments).
• Idempotency key: a client-supplied key stored with a request's result, so a retried booking or charge returns the first result instead of creating a second (Booking Appointments).
• Lexicographic objective, weighted sum: two ways to fold routing goals into one objective: ranked levels, where a lower level only breaks ties, or one scale on which any term can be traded for another (Weighing the Routing Objective).
• Make-up: a visit owed for an occurrence that was missed or not completed (Recurring Schedules).
• Objective profile: the versioned weights (labor, mileage, lateness, skipped work, fairness) that tell an optimizer what a better route means (Weighing the Routing Objective).
• Occurrence: one promised instance of a recurring service, with its own due window: upcoming, open, booked, completed, skipped or missed (Recurring Schedules).
• Operating hours, shift: when a territory or resource can be booked; shifts are regular, on call or time off (Territories & Capacity).
• Optimistic concurrency: committing an optimizer's plan only if the visits it read haven't changed since its snapshot, checked by a row version (Route Optimization).
• Pinning: fixing one visit so the optimizer leaves it (is_locked), or fixing its technician (pinned_resource_id) (Route Optimization).
• Recurrence: an agreement's schedule rule (recurrences): an RRULE plus the window, anchor, minimum gap, season and holiday policy (Recurring Schedules).
• Recurrence rule (RRULE): the iCalendar (RFC 5545) format for a repeating schedule (Time & Date Formats).
• Resource: what the scheduler books (resources), of kind technician (pointing at a staff member), crew, contractor or equipment; vehicles are their own table (The Core Data Model; crews and shifts are in Territories & Capacity).
• Route: one resource's ordered visits for a day (Route Optimization).
• Schedule anchor, completion anchor: whether the next due date counts from the rule's start (a late visit doesn't move the next) or from the last completed visit (lateness compounds) (Recurring Schedules).
• Scheduling policy: an ordered set of work rules and weighted objectives a scheduler applies, as Salesforce Field Service names it (Booking Appointments).
• Service territory: the area, usually an effective-dated polygon, a branch or team covers (Territories & Capacity).
• Service window: the span a recurring visit may happen in and still count as on time (Recurring Schedules).
• Status reason (visit): the one catalog behind not_completed and cancelled visits: no_access, not_home, customer_declined, part_needed, weather, unsafe_condition, tech_out, customer_asked, address_not_found, id_check_failed, item_damaged, and expired for a lapsed hold. Work performed on site makes a visit completed instead (The Core Data Model).
• Travel matrix: drive times and distances between every pair of stops, from a routing engine such as OSRM, Valhalla or a hosted API (Route Optimization).
• Visit: a scheduled time plus an assignment that performs a work order (visits): held, scheduled, dispatched, en route, on site, completed, not completed or cancelled (The Field Operations Business).
• VRP, VRPTW (vehicle routing problem, with time windows): assigning and ordering stops across vehicles, under time windows in the second form, solved by tools such as OR-Tools, VROOM or Timefold (Route Optimization).
• Work rules: the pass-or-fail rules in a scheduling policy, as Salesforce names them, beside its weighted service objectives (Route Optimization).
• Work type: a vendor template for a kind of work that sets its duration and required skills; the volume's service type plays that role (Platform Architecture).

In the Field#

• Commercial motor vehicle (CMV): a vehicle the federal motor carrier rules apply to, by weight or use (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).
• Device outbox: the technician app's ordered queue of commands made offline, sent when the device is online (Offline-First Sync).
• Dispatch console, schedule board: the dispatcher's view for assigning, moving and monitoring the day's work (Dispatch & the Day of Service).
• DVIR: a driver vehicle inspection report (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).
• ETA link: an expiring, single-visit page showing the customer where the technician is (Dispatch & the Day of Service).
• Events per 1,000 miles: safety events normalized by distance driven, reported beside a vendor's safety score so long rural routes compare fairly (Operating Metrics).
• Form definition: a versioned checklist or reading form (sections, fields, units, validation), so a form filled offline stays bound to the version it was filled on (The Technician App).
• Geofence: a boundary around a property whose entry and exit mark arrival and departure (Dispatch & the Day of Service).
• Hours of service (HOS): federal limits on driving and on-duty time, with a short-haul exception (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).
• Jeopardy: a visit computed to be at risk of missing its window or SLA (Dispatch & the Day of Service).
• Manage by exception: a dispatch console that surfaces only the visits at risk rather than asking anyone to watch every technician (Dispatch & the Day of Service).
• Materials of trade: small quantities of hazardous materials carried for the work, under lighter transport rules (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).
• Offline-first: an app that works from a local store and syncs when it can, rather than caching a server it depends on (Offline-First Sync; the field scope is in The Technician App).
• Par level: the stock a vehicle should carry of each item, driving restock (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).
• Proof of service, proof of delivery: the evidence a visit happened as recorded: photos, signatures, notes, scans and location (Proof of Service).
• Service report: the document sent to the customer after the visit, rendered from the completed record (Proof of Service).
• Stand-down: one operation that stops work in an area for a time range (a storm, a heat warning), returning occurrences to the backlog and lifting as a unit (Dispatch & the Day of Service).
• Sync conflict: two edits to the same record made apart; in the field, facts from the field win, office plans win, and transitions go to review (The Technician App; the general rules are in Conflicts).
• Tank mix: two or more products mixed in one tank and applied in one pass, each still recorded as its own application (Regulated Materials).
• Telematics: devices in vehicles reporting location, mileage and driving events, from vendors such as Samsara, Motive and Geotab (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).
• Vehicle: a van or truck in the fleet (vehicles), assigned to drivers over time and treated as a stock location; not a resource kind (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).

The Rules#

• Application record: the record of one regulated product applied at a visit: product, registration number, amount, area, target and applicator (Regulated Materials).
• Audit trail: who changed what, when, from where, with before and after values (Audit Trails; field records are in Audit Trails & Records).
• Business day: the unit the cooling-off deadline counts in; under the federal rule, any calendar day except Sunday and federal holidays, so Saturday counts; states vary (Consumer Protection).
• Certified applicator: a person certified to use or supervise restricted use pesticides (Regulated Materials).
• Cooling-Off Rule: the FTC rule giving buyers three business days to cancel many sales made at home; its repair exclusion covers only the buyer's personal property (Consumer Protection).
• Consumer report, prescreening: credit-bureau information about a person, usable only for a permissible purpose (marketing isn't one); prescreening is the exception where a bureau returns consumers matching a firm offer's criteria (Door-to-Door Sales).
• Do Not Knock registry: a local list of addresses that may not be solicited, applied as a suppression list with a source and an expiry (Door-to-Door Sales).
• EPA registration number: the number identifying a registered pesticide product (Regulated Materials).
• FIFRA: the federal law governing pesticide registration and use (Regulated Materials).
• Hash chaining: linking each audit entry to the previous one's hash so tampering shows (Make It Tamper-Evident).
• Label: a pesticide's label, which is legally binding on how it may be used (Regulated Materials).
• Legal hold: suspending deletion of records relevant to a dispute or investigation (Producing Records).
• License: a business, branch or person credential from a jurisdiction, with dates (valid_during), a number and a verification source (Licenses & Permits).
• Negative option, automatic renewal: terms under which a contract continues unless the customer acts (The Law of Automatic Renewal).
• Responsible certified applicator: the certified person each Texas structural pest control license must designate, who can't serve any other licensee or location (Licenses & Permits).
• Restricted use pesticide (RUP): a product only certified applicators may apply or supervise (Regulated Materials).
• Retention schedule: how long each type of record is kept, and why (Retention Schedules by Record Type; field minimums are in Audit Trails & Records).
• ROSCA: the federal Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, which requires disclosure, consent and simple cancellation for negative-option sales online (The Law of Automatic Renewal; the field note is in Consumer Protection).
• Safety data sheet (SDS): the hazard document for a chemical product, readily accessible to employees during each shift; for employees who travel between sites it may stay at the primary workplace if they can obtain it immediately (Regulated Materials).
• Section 608: the EPA rules for refrigerants (CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs and their substitutes) and the technicians who handle them (Regulated Materials).
• Sensitivity registry: a state list of people to notify before applications near them, such as Pennsylvania's Pesticide Hypersensitivity Registry (Regulated Materials).
• Skill: what the scheduler matches, often resting on a license so it can't outlast it (Licenses & Permits).
• Skill requirement: the skills a kind of work or a sales activity needs in a jurisdiction, with dates and the rule relied on (Licenses & Permits).
• Solicitor permit: a municipal permit to sell door to door (Licenses & Permits).
• Supervision: a dated relationship under which an uncertified person works under a licensed one, with a presence rule (Licenses & Permits).
• TCPA: the federal law on automated and marketing calls and texts; calls placed with an artificial or AI-generated voice need prior express consent (Calls, Texts & Email; AI voices are in Artificial and AI Voices).

Selling#

• Area grid: a grid of cells for aggregating map data, such as door scores rolled up to neighborhoods: H3 hexagons, S2 cells, geohashes or census block groups (Door-to-Door Sales).
• Attach rate: the share of active recurring agreements whose current terms include at least one add-on, measured at period end (One-Time Services & Upsells).
• Canvass area: the polygon a rep or team works, clipped to its parent territory (Door-to-Door Sales).
• Clause library: versioned contract clauses, each tagged with the jurisdictions, trades and products it applies to, from which signing templates are resolved (Signing the Agreement).
• Clawback: a negative commission entry when a sale cancels or terminates inside the clawback period (Sales Teams & Commissions).
• Commission ledger: immutable entries from which statements and payroll are derived (Sales Teams & Commissions).
• Commission plan: a versioned, effective-dated set of rules that turns sales events into pay, so a dispute in October finds the plan in force in June (Sales Teams & Commissions).
• Conversion (one-time to plan): a one-time customer whose recurring agreement reaches active within a stated window after the one-time work, measured by cohort; the one-time price is often credited toward the plan's initial charge (One-Time Services & Upsells).
• Embedded or remote signing: signing inside your app on a device in hand, or by a link sent to the signer's own device (Signing the Agreement).
• ESIGN, UETA: the federal and state laws that make electronic signatures and records valid (Electronic Signatures & Records).
• Final checks: validations that run after every pricing rule and that no rule can override, such as a price below cost or a discount beyond any band (Pricing & Sales Rules; the general pattern is in Final Checks).
• Floor, band: the lowest price a role may sell at, and the range around list price it may move in without approval (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Good-better-best: presenting tiered options side by side (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• H3: a hexagonal grid for aggregating map data; one choice of area grid, alongside S2 and geohash (Door-to-Door Sales).
• Hard and soft exclusion: an address the sales app blocks outright (no lead or sale, even offline), versus one it only warns about (Door-to-Door Sales).
• Holdback: a share of earned commission withheld until a later date, often season end, to cover cancellations (Sales Teams & Commissions).
• Holder Rule: the FTC rule requiring a notice in consumer credit contracts a seller arranges, so the buyer's claims against the seller survive against the lender (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Knock, door status: one visit to one door with its outcome, an append-only log; and the door's current state, derived from its knocks (Door-to-Door Sales).
• Leaderboard: a ranking of reps on sales metrics, which has to count a "sale" the same way commissions do (Sales Teams & Commissions).
• Net price: the price after every stage of the waterfall, which is what tax is computed on (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Opportunity: possible work found on a visit, by the office, a campaign or a rule, with evidence, a finder and a seller; open, quoted, won, lost or expired (One-Time Services & Upsells).
• Price trace: the per-line record of which rules and versions touched a price, so "why is this price $129?" is a lookup (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Pricebook: the catalog of services, materials and prices a business sells from, flat-rate or cost-plus (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Price waterfall: the ordered stages from pricebook price to net price: member or contract price, promotions, the rep's discount, then final checks (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Promotion: a discount with a campaign around it (eligibility, dates, a code, a redemption cap, a duration); a promotion code is the customer-facing string that redeems it (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Propensity score: a model's estimate of how likely an address is to buy, built from property, household and knock history (Door-to-Door Sales).
• Regulation Z: the CFPB rule implementing the Truth in Lending Act, which governs how financing is advertised and disclosed (Pricing & Sales Rules).
• Revenue per visit: net invoiced revenue attributed to completed visits over completed visits, excluding callbacks, with periodic billing spread at the per-visit value (One-Time Services & Upsells).
• Signing packet: the agreement, addenda, disclosures and payment authorization signed as one unit (Signing the Agreement).
• Sold threshold: the minimum subtotal at which a job or estimate counts as sold, a tenant setting that changes every conversion metric (Operating Metrics).
• Trigger term: a financing detail (such as a monthly payment amount) that, once advertised, requires the full Regulation Z disclosures (Pricing & Sales Rules).

Customers and Billing#

• 10DLC: registered ten-digit long codes for business texting (Calls, Texts & Email).
• AR aging: receivables grouped by how long they've been overdue (Collections & Retention).
• Chargeback: a card payment reversed by the cardholder's bank after a dispute; field records (signatures, photos, visit times) are the evidence (Disputes & Chargebacks).
• Churn type: why a terminated agreement ended: voluntary (the customer chose to leave; a move counts unless the agreement transfers), involuntary (non-payment) or administrative (neither side's behavior explains it, such as a deceased customer or a demolished property), always with a reason (Operating Metrics).
• Collection stop: an account flag (dispute, bankruptcy, deceased) that every collection path checks: retries, notices, fees, holds and agency placement (Collections & Retention).
• Consent ledger: the record of each consent and opt-out by channel and purpose, which every send checks (The Consent Ledger).
• Consolidated invoice: several invoices grouped so a property manager or a commercial client pays once (Billing Recurring Service).
• Credit note: the correction to a finalized invoice, reversing amounts and tax at their original rates; finalized invoices are never edited (Billing Recurring Service).
• CTIA message types: conversational, informational and promotional texts, each needing stronger consent (Calls, Texts & Email).
• Days sales outstanding (DSO): ending receivables divided by credit revenue for the period, times the days in it; report residential and commercial separately (Operating Metrics).
• Deferred revenue: cash collected for service not yet performed, such as an annual prepay, released as earned, per visit or over the term, as the accountant decides (Billing Recurring Service).
• Dunning: the sequence of notices and retries after a failed payment; in the field, the technician is one of its channels (Collections & Retention; the general shape is in Dunning).
• Hard and soft decline: a failed charge that needs a new payment method (a closed account, a revoked authorization), versus one that may clear on retry (insufficient funds) (Collections & Retention).
• Hosted payment fields: a processor's fields embedded in your page so card data never touches your servers (Customer Self-Service).
• Magic link: a one-time sign-in URL sent to an email or phone already on the customer record, used by portals instead of passwords; good enough for viewing, not for changing payment methods (Customer Self-Service).
• MRR: monthly recurring revenue, the normalized monthly value of active agreements (Billing Recurring Service).
• Outbound gate: the one path every message and call goes through, checking consent, opt-outs, quiet hours and frequency caps before it sends (One Outbound Gate).
• Placement file: the record sent to a collection agency when an account is placed: debtor identity and contacts, service address, the itemized balance, invoice dates, last payment, the agreement and any dispute history (Collections & Retention).
• Production value: the amount credited to a technician for a completed service, kept separate from the billed price; callbacks and re-services carry none (Billing Recurring Service).
• Quiet hours: federal rules limit telephone solicitations to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the called party's local time, and states set stricter windows; many businesses apply quiet hours to every message by policy (Calls, Texts & Email).
• Regulation F: the CFPB rule implementing the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (Collections & Retention).
• Save: a cancellation turned around with an offer (Collections & Retention).
• Service balance: visits paid for to date against visits delivered to date, valued at the plan's per-visit price; it drives the true-up when a customer cancels (Billing Recurring Service).
• Service-driven and calendar-driven billing: billing that follows completed visits (the service clock: no visit, no invoice) versus billing that runs on its date whatever happened (the billing clock) (Billing Recurring Service).
• Staff view as customer: support seeing the portal as a customer sees it, with both identities recorded (Customer Self-Service; the general rules are in Delegation, Not Impersonation).
• Statement: a snapshot of everything outstanding on an account at a date, possibly covering several unpaid invoices, as opposed to an invoice for specific work (Billing Recurring Service).
• Win-back: a campaign to return a former customer, who comes back with history, possibly a balance, and a known property (Collections & Retention).
• Write-off: a ledger entry, with a reason and approver, recognizing a receivable as uncollectible, under the direct write-off or the allowance method; it doesn't forgive the debt (Collections & Retention).

Running the Platform#

• AI voice agent: software that answers calls and books work. Placing calls with an AI voice is an artificial-voice call under the TCPA and needs consent; answering inbound calls falls under disclosure and recording law instead (AI in Field Operations; the law is in Artificial and AI Voices, the design in AI Agents in the Product).
• Arrival window adherence: the share of visits with a promised window and a recorded arrival whose arrival fell inside the window (Operating Metrics).
• Bounded context: a part of a large system with its own consistent model, so a property can be a point to scheduling and a tax jurisdiction to billing (Platform Architecture).
• Change data capture (CDC): streaming database changes from the log into a warehouse (Change Data Capture).
• Crosswalk: the mapping from an old system's IDs to a new one's (Switching Platforms; the general pattern is in Crosswalks of External IDs).
• Custom fields: tenant-defined fields; first-class in enterprise platforms and a design decision in your own (Platform Architecture).
• Cutover: the moment a cohort of customers moves to the new system (Switching Platforms).
• Dark launch: running the new system on a cohort's real data (schedules, invoices) without sending or charging anything, to compare with the old one (Switching Platforms).
• Evals: tests that grade an AI system's behavior on scenarios (Evals).
• First-time fix rate: computed per work order: the share of completed work orders fixed on their first completed visit with no callback work order inside the window (Operating Metrics).
• Human handoff: passing a conversation from an AI agent to a person with its context (Human Handoff Is a Product Feature).
• Mapping file: the file a new processor returns after a card import, linking the old processor's customer and card IDs to its own (Switching Platforms).
• Modular monolith: one deployable with enforced internal module boundaries (Platform Architecture).
• PAN import: a processor moving stored card numbers from another processor's vault into its own (Switching Platforms).
• Parallel run: operating both systems on the same work to compare results (Switching Platforms).
• SLA compliance: the share of commercial work orders that met their response or resolution target, measured from the SLA clock's events (Operating Metrics).
• Strangler fig: replacing a system piece by piece while it keeps running (Switching Platforms).
• Technician utilization: time on field jobs divided by total time worked, kept on one clock with drive and on-site efficiency (Operating Metrics).
• Transactional outbox: a table written in the same transaction as a change and relayed to the event bus afterward (The Transactional Outbox).
• Transitional architecture: code built to be removed once a migration finishes, such as the crosswalk, the send-suppression switch and the comparison reports (Switching Platforms).
• Webhook signature: an HMAC over a webhook payload so receivers can verify the sender (Signatures).

References#

Reference

• EPA: Introduction to Pesticide Labels, the label as law and registration numbers
• FTC: Buyer's Remorse: The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule, the three-day right to cancel home sales
• RFC 5545: iCalendar, recurrence rules
• CTIA: Messaging Principles and Best Practices, message types and consent