Field Operations Glossary

Field operations borrows words from sales, logistics, billing and regulation, and several of them mean different things depending on who's saying them. Each entry here is one line and a link to where the volume explains it properly.

The Business#

Account: the household or business relationship that holds agreements, payment methods and history; not the same as a person (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
Branch, service center: the local office that owns a territory, its technicians and its routes; the unit most operations are run and reported by (The Field Operations Business).
Density: how many customers sit on a route per mile; the economics of recurring service are mostly density (The Field Operations Business).
Domain: one area of the platform (CRM, sales, field service, billing, communications, licensing, people, platform) that owns its data and talks to the others through events (Platform Architecture).
Flag, account alert: a note on an account that demands attention, with a category, an owner and an expiry (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
Household role: what a person may do on an account: owner, manager, editor or viewer (Customer Self-Service).
Property: the place the work happens, with its own geocode, time zone, hazards, access notes and regulatory status (Customers, Accounts & Properties).
Projection: a read-only copy of another domain's data, kept current from its events (Platform Architecture).
Region, division: the layers above branches that roll up reporting and management.
Service address, mailing address: where the work is done and where paper goes; often the same, never assumed to be.

Agreements and Plans#

Add-on: a product sold with a plan, such as a specialty pest or an extra service, priced on its own (Pricing & Sales Rules).
Agreement, service agreement: what the customer signs: plan, price, term, frequency and terms of cancellation (Service Agreements & Plans).
Billing frequency: how often the customer is charged (per service, monthly, quarterly, annually), separate from how often they're served.
Frozen: a subscription with future service and billing stopped, usually for non-payment, that can be unfrozen without a new sale (Service Agreements & Plans).
Initial service: the first visit, longer and priced higher than a recurring one, that usually starts billing (Billing Recurring Service).
Phase: a stage of an agreement's work: inspection, installation, initial, recurring, reservice, deinstallation, end of life.
Plan: a tier of service (for example basic, pro, premium) with its products, interval and price levels.
Reservice: a free return visit between scheduled services, when the problem came back (Recurring Schedules).
Service frequency, service interval: how often a plan is serviced, possibly varying by season.
Snapshot: a copy of the plan, price or product data taken when it's used, so later catalog changes don't rewrite history.
Subscription: the running instance of an agreement, whose status decides whether work is scheduled and billed.
Term: the agreement's length; with automatic renewal, the period after which it renews.
Upgrade, upsell: moving a customer to a higher plan, or adding a product; recorded as a new agreement linked to the original.
Work order: one piece of contracted work, scheduled onto an appointment and completed or deferred there.

Scheduling and Routing#

Anchor: the date a recurring schedule counts from, normally the last regular completion (Recurring Schedules).
Appointment request: an asynchronous "book me as soon as possible" that the system fills when it can (Booking Appointments).
Area, zone: polygons inside a branch that decide who sells, who services and which team covers an address (Territories & Capacity).
Arrival window: the span the customer is told to expect the technician in.
Backlog: work due or overdue that isn't on a route yet, tiered by urgency.
Batch scheduling: a recurring job per branch that books due work onto routes and records why it skipped what it couldn't.
Cancellation disposition: who cancelled a visit, why, and what happened to the cycle: rescheduled, waived, or declined.
Capacity: how much work a shift or route can take, in stops or hours.
Dispatcher, route planner: the person who builds, balances and adjusts routes (Dispatch & the Day of Service).
Effective-dated: a record valid from one date to another, so territory and team changes take effect on a schedule and history stays true.
Explain mode: an availability search that returns why no slots were found, not just that none were.
Input fingerprint: a hash of an optimization's inputs, checked before its result is applied, so a plan built on stale data is thrown away (Route Optimization).
Lock: a route closed to scheduling and optimization, usually because it's been dispatched.
Pinning: fixing a stop to a route or time so the optimizer works around it.
Recurrence rule (RRULE): the iCalendar format for a repeating schedule.
Release: taking an appointment off its route without cancelling it.
Reservation, hold: a slot held for a short time while a sale or booking completes.
Shift: a technician's availability for a day, with a type, a start and an end location.
Skill: a qualification a technician has and a product requires.
Stand-down: stopping a day's work, for weather or another incident, and moving it.
Travel matrix: drive times and distances between every pair of stops, from a routing engine.
Vehicle routing problem (VRP): assigning and ordering stops across vehicles to minimize cost, here with time windows.
Window, tolerance: the days around a target date a recurring visit may happen and still count as on time.

In the Field#

Check in, check out: the technician starting and finishing work at a stop; checkout enforces the completion rules (Proof of Service).
Command queue: the app's persisted list of changes made offline, replayed in order when the device is online (The Technician App).
Materials of trade: small quantities of hazardous materials carried for the work, under lighter federal transport rules (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).
Not serviced: a visit that didn't happen, with a reason on the customer's side, the company's side or the conditions.
Service compliance log: each completed visit classified as on time, late, early with consent, early in violation, or a reservice.
Service slip: the record left with the customer: what was done, what was applied, by whom, and under which license.
Shift gate: the rule that work can't be changed unless the technician is clocked in.
Telematics: devices in vehicles reporting location, mileage and driving events.
Trainee: a technician riding along who can record work but not complete it.

The Rules#

Capability: what a person may do in a place, derived from compliance: for example, set an appointment, close a sale, or service (Licenses & Permits).
Certified applicator: a person certified to use or supervise the use of restricted use pesticides (Regulated Materials).
Compliance: whether a person meets every enforced requirement of a jurisdiction for a role, computed from licenses and exemptions.
Cooling-Off Rule: the FTC rule giving buyers three business days to cancel many sales made at their home (Consumer Protection).
EPA registration number: the number identifying a registered pesticide product, recorded with every application.
Exemption: a time-limited waiver of a requirement for a person.
FIFRA: the federal law that governs pesticide registration and use.
Green River ordinance: a local law restricting door-to-door solicitation.
Hypersensitivity registry: a state list of people who must be notified before pesticide applications near them.
Jurisdiction: a state, county or municipality with its own rules and boundary; an address is in several at once.
Label: the pesticide label, which is legally binding on how a product may be used.
Negative option, automatic renewal law: rules on agreements that continue or renew unless the customer acts.
Requirement: a license, permit or registration a jurisdiction demands for a role.
Restricted use pesticide (RUP): a product that may only be applied by or under a certified applicator.
Safety data sheet (SDS): the hazard document for a chemical product.
Signal word: the label's toxicity word: caution, warning or danger.
Solicitor permit: a municipal permit to sell door to door.
TCPA: the US law governing automated and marketing calls and texts, including calling hours.

Selling#

Brochure price, floor price: the list price and the lowest a rep may go (Pricing & Sales Rules).
Canvass area: the polygon a rep or team works, carved out of a territory (Door-to-Door Sales).
Clawback: taking back commission when a sale cancels or is rescinded (Sales Teams & Commissions).
Contract value, first-year value: what an agreement is worth over its term, or its first year.
Dealer: a sales organization or partnership that recruits and runs reps under the company.
Decision maker: the person at a door who can agree to buy.
Disposition: the outcome recorded for a knock, final or not.
Downline: the reps under a leader in the sales hierarchy, whose data the leader can see.
H3: a hexagonal grid for summarizing map data, used to plan canvassing.
Knock, pin: one visit to a door, and the address on the map it's recorded against.
Pass: one sweep through an area, after which the map resets while history is kept.
Plan mix cap: a limit on what share of a rep's sales can be on one plan.
Rescission date: the last day the customer may cancel under a cooling-off right, computed in their time zone (Signing the Agreement).
Season, roster: the selling period, and which reps are on which team during it.
Set, close: booking a customer for someone else to sign, versus signing the sale.

Customers and Billing#

Aging report: receivables grouped by how long they've been overdue (Collections & Retention).
Billing anchor: the day and time recurring billing is computed from, in the service address's time zone (Billing Recurring Service).
Cancelled before initial: a sale that cancels before the first service; it never earned revenue (Operating Metrics).
Consent: permission per contact point, channel and purpose: marketing, transactional, or calls (Customer Communications).
Impersonation: staff seeing the portal as a customer, recorded and limited.
Involuntary churn, voluntary churn: customers lost to failed payments, versus customers who chose to leave.
MRR, ARR: monthly and annual recurring revenue.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): a survey score of how likely customers are to recommend the service.
Quiet hours: when automated texts and calls may not be sent, by law and state.
Regulation F: the CFPB rule implementing the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
Save: a cancellation turned around, usually with an offer.
Short code, 10DLC: a short dedicated number for high-volume texting, and a registered ten-digit long code.
Uncollectible, void, write-off: an invoice given up on for now, one cancelled, and the loss booked.

Running the Platform#

Cutover: the moment a group of customers moves from the legacy system to the new one (Migrating Off a Legacy System).
Fix forward: correcting migrated data with idempotent patches instead of rolling back.
Global data: reference data (products, users, branches) migrated before any customer.
Migration state: where an account is in its move: not migrated, migrating, migrated.
Outbox: a table written in the same transaction as a change, relayed to the event bus afterward (Platform Architecture).
Services per hour, revenue per route hour: productivity measures for routes and technicians (Operating Metrics).
Strangler fig: replacing a system piece by piece while it keeps running.
Wave: a set of branches or regions migrated together.

References#

Reference

EPA: Introduction to Pesticide Labels, the label as law, registration numbers and signal words
FTC: Buyer's Remorse: The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule, the three-day right to cancel home sales
RFC 5545: iCalendar, recurrence rules

The Business#

Account: the household or business relationship that holds agreements, payment methods and history; not the same as a person (Customers, Accounts & Properties).

Branch, service center: the local office that owns a territory, its technicians and its routes; the unit most operations are run and reported by (The Field Operations Business).

Density: how many customers sit on a route per mile; the economics of recurring service are mostly density (The Field Operations Business).

Domain: one area of the platform (CRM, sales, field service, billing, communications, licensing, people, platform) that owns its data and talks to the others through events (Platform Architecture).

Flag, account alert: a note on an account that demands attention, with a category, an owner and an expiry (Customers, Accounts & Properties).

Household role: what a person may do on an account: owner, manager, editor or viewer (Customer Self-Service).

Property: the place the work happens, with its own geocode, time zone, hazards, access notes and regulatory status (Customers, Accounts & Properties).

Projection: a read-only copy of another domain's data, kept current from its events (Platform Architecture).

Region, division: the layers above branches that roll up reporting and management.

Service address, mailing address: where the work is done and where paper goes; often the same, never assumed to be.

Agreements and Plans#

Add-on: a product sold with a plan, such as a specialty pest or an extra service, priced on its own (Pricing & Sales Rules).

Agreement, service agreement: what the customer signs: plan, price, term, frequency and terms of cancellation (Service Agreements & Plans).

Billing frequency: how often the customer is charged (per service, monthly, quarterly, annually), separate from how often they're served.

Frozen: a subscription with future service and billing stopped, usually for non-payment, that can be unfrozen without a new sale (Service Agreements & Plans).

Initial service: the first visit, longer and priced higher than a recurring one, that usually starts billing (Billing Recurring Service).

Phase: a stage of an agreement's work: inspection, installation, initial, recurring, reservice, deinstallation, end of life.

Plan: a tier of service (for example basic, pro, premium) with its products, interval and price levels.

Reservice: a free return visit between scheduled services, when the problem came back (Recurring Schedules).

Service frequency, service interval: how often a plan is serviced, possibly varying by season.

Snapshot: a copy of the plan, price or product data taken when it's used, so later catalog changes don't rewrite history.

Subscription: the running instance of an agreement, whose status decides whether work is scheduled and billed.

Term: the agreement's length; with automatic renewal, the period after which it renews.

Upgrade, upsell: moving a customer to a higher plan, or adding a product; recorded as a new agreement linked to the original.

Work order: one piece of contracted work, scheduled onto an appointment and completed or deferred there.

Scheduling and Routing#

Anchor: the date a recurring schedule counts from, normally the last regular completion (Recurring Schedules).

Appointment request: an asynchronous "book me as soon as possible" that the system fills when it can (Booking Appointments).

Area, zone: polygons inside a branch that decide who sells, who services and which team covers an address (Territories & Capacity).

Arrival window: the span the customer is told to expect the technician in.

Backlog: work due or overdue that isn't on a route yet, tiered by urgency.

Batch scheduling: a recurring job per branch that books due work onto routes and records why it skipped what it couldn't.

Cancellation disposition: who cancelled a visit, why, and what happened to the cycle: rescheduled, waived, or declined.

Capacity: how much work a shift or route can take, in stops or hours.

Dispatcher, route planner: the person who builds, balances and adjusts routes (Dispatch & the Day of Service).

Effective-dated: a record valid from one date to another, so territory and team changes take effect on a schedule and history stays true.

Explain mode: an availability search that returns why no slots were found, not just that none were.

Input fingerprint: a hash of an optimization's inputs, checked before its result is applied, so a plan built on stale data is thrown away (Route Optimization).

Lock: a route closed to scheduling and optimization, usually because it's been dispatched.

Pinning: fixing a stop to a route or time so the optimizer works around it.

Recurrence rule (RRULE): the iCalendar format for a repeating schedule.

Release: taking an appointment off its route without cancelling it.

Reservation, hold: a slot held for a short time while a sale or booking completes.

Shift: a technician's availability for a day, with a type, a start and an end location.

Skill: a qualification a technician has and a product requires.

Stand-down: stopping a day's work, for weather or another incident, and moving it.

Travel matrix: drive times and distances between every pair of stops, from a routing engine.

Vehicle routing problem (VRP): assigning and ordering stops across vehicles to minimize cost, here with time windows.

Window, tolerance: the days around a target date a recurring visit may happen and still count as on time.

In the Field#

Check in, check out: the technician starting and finishing work at a stop; checkout enforces the completion rules (Proof of Service).

Command queue: the app's persisted list of changes made offline, replayed in order when the device is online (The Technician App).

Materials of trade: small quantities of hazardous materials carried for the work, under lighter federal transport rules (Fleet, Inventory & Safety).

Not serviced: a visit that didn't happen, with a reason on the customer's side, the company's side or the conditions.

Service compliance log: each completed visit classified as on time, late, early with consent, early in violation, or a reservice.

Service slip: the record left with the customer: what was done, what was applied, by whom, and under which license.

Shift gate: the rule that work can't be changed unless the technician is clocked in.

Telematics: devices in vehicles reporting location, mileage and driving events.

Trainee: a technician riding along who can record work but not complete it.

The Rules#

Capability: what a person may do in a place, derived from compliance: for example, set an appointment, close a sale, or service (Licenses & Permits).

Certified applicator: a person certified to use or supervise the use of restricted use pesticides (Regulated Materials).

Compliance: whether a person meets every enforced requirement of a jurisdiction for a role, computed from licenses and exemptions.

Cooling-Off Rule: the FTC rule giving buyers three business days to cancel many sales made at their home (Consumer Protection).

EPA registration number: the number identifying a registered pesticide product, recorded with every application.

Exemption: a time-limited waiver of a requirement for a person.

FIFRA: the federal law that governs pesticide registration and use.

Green River ordinance: a local law restricting door-to-door solicitation.

Hypersensitivity registry: a state list of people who must be notified before pesticide applications near them.

Jurisdiction: a state, county or municipality with its own rules and boundary; an address is in several at once.

Label: the pesticide label, which is legally binding on how a product may be used.

Negative option, automatic renewal law: rules on agreements that continue or renew unless the customer acts.

Requirement: a license, permit or registration a jurisdiction demands for a role.

Restricted use pesticide (RUP): a product that may only be applied by or under a certified applicator.

Safety data sheet (SDS): the hazard document for a chemical product.

Signal word: the label's toxicity word: caution, warning or danger.

Solicitor permit: a municipal permit to sell door to door.

TCPA: the US law governing automated and marketing calls and texts, including calling hours.

Selling#

Brochure price, floor price: the list price and the lowest a rep may go (Pricing & Sales Rules).

Canvass area: the polygon a rep or team works, carved out of a territory (Door-to-Door Sales).

Clawback: taking back commission when a sale cancels or is rescinded (Sales Teams & Commissions).

Contract value, first-year value: what an agreement is worth over its term, or its first year.

Dealer: a sales organization or partnership that recruits and runs reps under the company.

Decision maker: the person at a door who can agree to buy.

Disposition: the outcome recorded for a knock, final or not.

Downline: the reps under a leader in the sales hierarchy, whose data the leader can see.

H3: a hexagonal grid for summarizing map data, used to plan canvassing.

Knock, pin: one visit to a door, and the address on the map it's recorded against.

Pass: one sweep through an area, after which the map resets while history is kept.

Plan mix cap: a limit on what share of a rep's sales can be on one plan.

Rescission date: the last day the customer may cancel under a cooling-off right, computed in their time zone (Signing the Agreement).

Season, roster: the selling period, and which reps are on which team during it.

Set, close: booking a customer for someone else to sign, versus signing the sale.

Customers and Billing#

Aging report: receivables grouped by how long they've been overdue (Collections & Retention).

Billing anchor: the day and time recurring billing is computed from, in the service address's time zone (Billing Recurring Service).

Cancelled before initial: a sale that cancels before the first service; it never earned revenue (Operating Metrics).

Consent: permission per contact point, channel and purpose: marketing, transactional, or calls (Customer Communications).

Impersonation: staff seeing the portal as a customer, recorded and limited.

Involuntary churn, voluntary churn: customers lost to failed payments, versus customers who chose to leave.

MRR, ARR: monthly and annual recurring revenue.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): a survey score of how likely customers are to recommend the service.

Quiet hours: when automated texts and calls may not be sent, by law and state.

Regulation F: the CFPB rule implementing the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

Save: a cancellation turned around, usually with an offer.

Short code, 10DLC: a short dedicated number for high-volume texting, and a registered ten-digit long code.

Uncollectible, void, write-off: an invoice given up on for now, one cancelled, and the loss booked.

Running the Platform#

Cutover: the moment a group of customers moves from the legacy system to the new one (Migrating Off a Legacy System).

Fix forward: correcting migrated data with idempotent patches instead of rolling back.

Global data: reference data (products, users, branches) migrated before any customer.

Migration state: where an account is in its move: not migrated, migrating, migrated.

Outbox: a table written in the same transaction as a change, relayed to the event bus afterward (Platform Architecture).

Services per hour, revenue per route hour: productivity measures for routes and technicians (Operating Metrics).

Strangler fig: replacing a system piece by piece while it keeps running.

Wave: a set of branches or regions migrated together.