Invoicing Glossary
Billing has a vocabulary, and half the mistakes in it start with two people meaning different things by the same word. This glossary defines the terms precisely and briefly — then points you at the guide, invoice type or tool that goes deeper.
31 terms and growing. For full explanations, see the guides and invoice types.
All 31 Terms
- Access PointA certified service provider that connects a business to the Peppol network and sends and receives structured documents on its behalf.Full definition
- Accounts Payable (AP)The money a business owes its suppliers for goods or services received and invoiced but not yet paid — the mirror image of accounts receivable.Full definition
- Accounts Receivable (AR)The money owed to a business by customers for goods or services already delivered and invoiced but not yet paid.Full definition
- ACH (Automated Clearing House)The US electronic network for bank-to-bank payments — the rail behind direct deposit, and the cheap, slightly slower way clients pay invoices from their bank account.Full definition
- ArchivingStoring invoices and their supporting records so they remain unaltered, readable and retrievable for the whole of the required retention period.Full definition
- Audit TrailThe documented chain of records that links an invoice to the underlying supply and to its settlement, in a form someone else can follow.Full definition
- Bad DebtMoney owed to you — usually an unpaid invoice — that you have concluded will never be collected, and record as a loss.Full definition
- Bank ReconciliationThe process of comparing your bookkeeping records against the bank statement and explaining every difference between them.Full definition
- Chart of AccountsThe organised list of every account a business uses to categorise its transactions — the filing system behind the ledger.Full definition
- Clearance ModelAn e-invoicing system in which the tax authority validates and registers an invoice before it is legally issued to the customer.Full definition
- Credit NoteA document a seller issues to reduce or cancel the amount of an invoice already sent — the accounting-safe alternative to editing or deleting it.Full definition
- Deferred RevenueMoney received (or invoiced) for goods or services not yet delivered — recorded as a liability until the delivery happens.Full definition
- DSO (Days Sales Outstanding)The average number of days between invoicing a sale and collecting the cash — the standard measure of how fast a business turns receivables into money.Full definition
- E-InvoicingThe exchange of invoices as structured, machine-readable data rather than as documents a person has to read and re-key.Full definition
- EN 16931The European standard that defines the semantic data model of an electronic invoice — which fields exist and what each one means.Full definition
- Factur-XA hybrid invoice format combining a human-readable PDF with structured XML embedded inside the same file.Full definition
- General LedgerThe master record of every financial transaction in a business, organised account by account — the book all reports are built from.Full definition
- GST (Goods and Services Tax)A value-added consumption tax — the name used in India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and other countries for their VAT-style systems.Full definition
- InvoiceA document a seller issues to a buyer that lists what was delivered and formally requests payment for it.Full definition
- Journal EntryThe record of a single transaction in double-entry bookkeeping: a date, a description, and debits and credits that balance.Full definition
- Matching PrincipleThe accrual-accounting rule that expenses are recorded in the same period as the revenue they helped generate — so each period’s profit means something.Full definition
- Net 30A payment term meaning the full ("net") invoice amount is due within 30 days of the invoice date.Full definition
- PeppolAn open international network for exchanging structured business documents, where connecting once to a certified provider gives you reach to every other participant.Full definition
- Purchase Order (PO)A document a buyer issues to a supplier authorising a purchase — items, quantities and agreed prices — before goods ship or work starts.Full definition
- Remittance AdviceA note the payer sends alongside a payment listing exactly which invoices — and which amounts — the payment settles.Full definition
- Reverse ChargeA VAT mechanism that shifts responsibility for accounting for the tax from the supplier to the customer.Full definition
- SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area)The European scheme that makes euro bank transfers across 40+ countries work like domestic payments, using the IBAN as the account identifier.Full definition
- Trial BalanceA report listing every account and its balance, totalled to verify that all debits equal all credits — double-entry’s built-in arithmetic check.Full definition
- UBL (Universal Business Language)An open XML standard for business documents, widely used as the syntax in which structured electronic invoices are written.Full definition
- VAT (Value-Added Tax)A consumption tax charged as a percentage of the price at each stage of the supply chain, collected by businesses and remitted to the tax authority.Full definition
- Write-OffThe accounting act of removing a worthless asset from the books — for invoicing businesses, usually an uncollectable receivable — and recording the loss.Full definition