Glossary · terms & frameworks

Every term, one canonical home.

The working vocabulary of small-business books, two kinds at once: plain-English definitions of the terms every operator meets — repair jobs, proof steps, the taxes that ride a Texas bar's register — and the named frameworks we coined inside the guides, indexed here and linked to the exact spot where each one is defined. A term is defined once on this site; everywhere else links to that home.

Updated July 2026 · 26 entries — 7 definitions, 19 frameworks — every one with a real page behind it. This is deliberately not a 500-term dictionary.

Defined once, linked everywhere Every entry earns its page

How this glossary works

Definitions — 7 full pages

Public accounting vocabulary, defined the way an operator actually uses it — definition first, failure modes included.

Frameworks — 19 named concepts

Ideas we coined and named inside the guides. Indexed here, defined at their source — never duplicated.

One home per term

Two definitions of one idea are two half-authorities. Each term lives at one canonical URL; everything else points there.

The definitions

The repair vocabulary — the four jobs behind books gone wrong.

Catch-up bookkeeping

The repair for books that stopped — missing months entered, proven, and brought current.

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Bookkeeping cleanup

The repair for books that are present but wrong — errors found, fixed, and re-proven.

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Financial records reconstruction

Rebuilding books when the records themselves are gone — working from what survived.

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Undeposited Funds

QuickBooks' holding account for payments awaiting deposit — and why the balance balloons.

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The operating vocabulary — the terms that keep healthy books healthy.

Bank reconciliation

Proving the books against the bank's own record to an honest $0.00 difference.

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Month-end close

The cutoff that makes a month final — complete, proven, reviewed, locked.

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Texas mixed beverage taxes

The two Texas taxes on on-premises alcohol — and their opposite paths through the books.

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The frameworks

Nineteen named concepts — each defined at its source.

These are ours: ideas that kept surfacing in real files until they needed names. Every link below lands on the exact anchor where the framework is defined and taught — this index never re-defines them.

Repair & cost

The vocabulary of fixing books — what neglect costs, and the order repair runs in.

The term	What it names	Defined in
Compounding Reconciliation Drift	The cost curve of months left unproven	Bookkeeping cleanup cost
Historical Accounting Debt	What a neglected file owes before it can be current	Bookkeeping cleanup cost
Financial Visibility Lag	The gap between today and the latest month the books can show	Bookkeeping cleanup cost
CPA-Ready Threshold	The bar books clear before tax work can start	Bookkeeping cleanup cost
The Oldest-First Rule	The order a cleanup runs in	Bookkeeping cleanup checklist
The Moving-Target Rule	Where catch-up starts while the pile is still growing	Behind on bookkeeping
The Third-Party Rule	Where reconstruction evidence has to come from	Reconstructing financial records

Proof & rhythm

The vocabulary of books you can trust — proving, closing, and reading the result.

The term	What it names	Defined in
The Statement-First Rule	Which record wins when books and bank disagree	QuickBooks Online reconciliation
The Locked Month	What "closed" protects after the close	Month-end close checklist
The Tie-Out	How the three statements prove each other	How to read financial statements
Variance Review	The month-over-month question that catches quiet errors	How to read a P&L

Setup & structure

The vocabulary of books built right — by business, by industry, by habit.

The term	What it names	Defined in
The One-Door Rule	How money is allowed to enter a chart of accounts	Chart of accounts template
The Contract-Mirror Rule	How a contractor's books follow the job paperwork	QuickBooks setup for contractors
The Which-Property Test	The allocation discipline that keeps rental books honest	Rental property bookkeeping cleanup
The Whose-Money Test	The first question a bar's dollar gets asked	Bar bookkeeping in Texas
The Owner's Minimum	The smallest monthly routine that keeps books decision-grade	Small business accounting guide

Choosing & switching

The vocabulary of hiring the work out — vetting, leaving, and landing safely.

The term	What it names	Defined in
The Paper Test	The proof-of-work ask before you hire	Choosing a bookkeeper in Texas
The No-Gap Handoff	The switch that leaves no month uncovered	How to switch bookkeepers
The Before-Notice Rule	What to secure before you give notice	Switch bookkeeper checklist

Vocabulary is the easy part — the hard part is a file that actually holds up to it. The free review reads your books against these standards and says plainly what's solid and what needs repair, fixed-fee.

Free books assessment

Glossary FAQ · Updated July 2026

How the glossary is built.

Why do some terms here link to a guide instead of getting a glossary page?

Because a term should be defined exactly once, at the place with the most context — and for the frameworks we coined, that place is the guide that teaches them. The Locked Month means most inside the month-end close checklist; the Whose-Money Test means most inside the bar bookkeeping method. Giving each of those a separate glossary page would create two half-authorities for one idea, and both would be weaker for it. So this glossary works as an index for coined terms — every entry links to the one canonical spot where the term is actually defined — and reserves full pages for the public vocabulary.

What's the difference between the definitions and the frameworks on this page?

The definitions cover public vocabulary — terms like bank reconciliation or catch-up bookkeeping that every bookkeeper uses. Nobody owns those words; our pages earn their place by defining them more honestly and more usefully than a generic dictionary entry, with the method behind each one a link away. The frameworks are different: they're concepts we named ourselves — the Statement-First Rule, the Owner's Minimum — because the ideas kept coming up in real files and had no standard name. Definitions get full glossary pages; frameworks live where they were coined and are indexed here.

Will more terms be added to this glossary?

Only when a term clears the same bar every page on this site has to clear: a real question people actually ask, and something genuinely useful we can add beyond what already exists — here or anywhere else. We triaged sixteen candidate terms before building this glossary and cut nine of them, mostly because an existing page already answered the question better than a standalone definition could. A glossary padded to look comprehensive is a glossary you can't trust; a short one where every entry earns its page is the version worth bookmarking.

Every framework above is taught in full inside the guides — the vocabulary's working context, method included.

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Where the vocabulary goes to work.

The guides

Nineteen flagship guides — the methods these terms come from, each framework defined in its working context.

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Small business accounting guide

The Owner's Minimum lives here — the guide that anchors the whole vocabulary to a monthly routine.

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