Glossary

Plain-English definitions of every term used elsewhere in these docs. If something's unclear in another doc, it's probably defined here. Cross-linked back to the modules where each term is most relevant.

A

Accountant Copy — A snapshot of your .solid file with a dividing date. Your accountant works in the snapshot for adjustments to the closed period; you keep working in the live file. Their changes merge back via a .solidchanges file. See Accountant Copy module.

Accounts Payable (AP) — What you owe vendors. A liability account; balance grows when you receive a bill, shrinks when you pay it. See Accounts Payable module.

Accounts Receivable (AR) — What customers owe you. An asset account; balance grows when you invoice, shrinks when they pay. See Accounts Receivable module.

Accrual basis — Recognizing revenue when earned and expenses when incurred, regardless of cash timing. The opposite of cash basis. What GAAP requires for material AR/AP.

Adjusting entry — A journal entry posted at period close to record accruals, deferrals, depreciation, or reclassifications. Marked is_adjusting = 1 so reports can show pre-close vs. post-adjustment views.

AES-256-GCM — The authenticated encryption used for Cloud Backup blocks. The "GCM" part means tampering with the ciphertext is detectable.

Allowance for Doubtful Accounts — A contra-asset that reduces AR for invoices you don't realistically expect to collect. Posted as an adjusting entry.

Amortization — The schedule of payments on a loan, with each payment split into principal + interest. See Loans module.

Append-only — A data model where rows are inserted but never updated or deleted. Solid's audit log is append-only. See Audit Log module.

Argon2id — The key-derivation function used to derive your KEK from your login password for Cloud Backup. Memory-hard; resistant to brute force.

Asset — Something the business owns. Cash, AR, inventory, fixed assets, intangibles. Debit-normal balance.

Audit trail — The append-only log of every meaningful change to your books. Makes the file trustable to a CPA, auditor, or regulator. See Audit Log module.

B

Balance Sheet — A point-in-time report showing assets, liabilities, and equity. The fundamental equation: Assets = Liabilities + Equity. See Reports → Balance Sheet.

Bank Feeds — Solid's optional add-on that connects to your bank/credit card via Plaid for daily automated transaction sync. See Banking → Bank Feeds.

BEK (Block Encryption Key) — The 256-bit key used to encrypt every Cloud Backup block. Generated once at setup; never changes. See Cloud Backup → Encryption.

BIP39 — The standard 24-word mnemonic format used to encode your Cloud Backup BEK as a recovery phrase you can write down on paper.

Bookkeeper role — Solid's middle role: full data-entry access (invoices, bills, payments, reconciliations), no user management or company-settings access.

Budget — Per-account, per-period targets for revenue and expense, scoped to a fiscal year. Variance reports compare actuals against. See Budgets module.

C

Cash basis — Recognizing revenue when paid and expense when paid out, ignoring AR/AP timing. Opposite of accrual basis. Used by smaller businesses and for some tax purposes.

Chart of Accounts (COA) — The full list of accounts in your file, organized by type. Customizable per business. See General Ledger → Chart of Accounts.

Class — A dimension for tagging transaction lines by department, segment, or profit center. See Dimensions module.

Cleared status — Whether a transaction has been confirmed against a bank statement. Set during reconciliation.

Closing entry — A year-end journal entry that moves the period's net income to Retained Earnings and zeros out income/expense accounts for the new year.

Cloud Backup — Solid's encrypted offsite backup. Block-level dedup, end-to-end encrypted, 24-word recovery phrase. See Cloud Backup module.

COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) — The direct cost of what you sold during a period. For inventory, posted automatically when items leave stock.

Compound tax — A tax that's calculated against an amount that already includes other tax. Example: Quebec QST applied on top of (price + GST). See Sales Tax → Compound taxes.

Contra account — An account that reduces another account's balance on the balance sheet. Accumulated Depreciation is a contra-asset that reduces Fixed Assets.

CTA (Cumulative Translation Adjustment) — An equity account that accumulates the difference between average-rate and closing-rate translation in multi-currency consolidation. See Multi-Company → Currency handling.

Currency code — Three-letter ISO 4217 currency code (USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, etc.) stored on accounts and transactions for multi-currency tracking.

D

Debit / Credit — The two sides of every journal entry. Some accounts grow on the debit side (assets, expenses); others on the credit side (liabilities, equity, revenue). See General Ledger → Debits and credits.

Debit-normal — An account whose balance increases with debits. Assets, expenses, COGS.

Dedicated Server — A headless Solid Accounting build that runs on an always-on machine (NAS, VM, server) hosting the .solid file for multi-user access. See Multi-User → Dedicated Server.

Depreciation — Spreading the cost of a fixed asset across its useful life as periodic expense. Three methods: straight-line, declining-balance, sum-of-years. See Fixed Assets module.

Dimension — Optional classification fields on journal-entry lines (class / location / project) that let reports filter or group beyond the chart-of-accounts level. Pro/Accountant tier. See Dimensions module.

Dividing date — The date that splits an Accountant Copy. Transactions on or before this date belong to the accountant; after, to you.

Drilldown — Clicking a number on a report to navigate to the underlying journal entries, then to the source transactions. Every number in Solid is clickable.

E

Equity — The owner's residual claim on assets after liabilities. Equity = Assets − Liabilities. Credit-normal.

Estimate — A proposed invoice. Doesn't post to the GL until converted. Has its own status flow: draft → sent → accepted/rejected → converted/expired. See Estimates module.

External ID — An identifier from another system (FITID for OFX, TRNSID for IIF, Realm ID for QuickBooks Online) stored on imported entries for round-trip referencing.

F

FastCDC — Content-defined chunking algorithm used by Cloud Backup so changing one transaction in a 100 MB file only re-uploads the few affected chunks.

FIFO (First In, First Out) — Inventory cost method that consumes the oldest cost layer first when items sell. See Inventory → FIFO.

FITID (Financial Institution Transaction ID) — Per-transaction unique identifier in OFX/QFX bank exports. Used for duplicate detection on re-imports. See OFX/QFX format reference.

Fixed Asset — Long-lived business property — vehicles, computers, machinery, buildings — depreciated over its useful life. See Fixed Assets module.

G

General Ledger (GL) — The complete record of every journal entry organized by account. The foundation underneath every other module. See General Ledger module.

GFS retention (Grandfather/Father/Son) — A backup retention scheme keeping daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly snapshots. Solid's default: 7 daily / 4 weekly / 12 monthly / 5 yearly.

H

Host Mode — Multi-user mode where one regular Solid Accounting install hosts the file for other clients on the LAN. Alternative to a Dedicated Server. See Multi-User → Host Mode.

I

IIF (Intuit Interchange Format) — QuickBooks Desktop's tab-separated text format for moving lists and transactions. Read but not written by Solid. See IIF format reference.

Income Statement — Same as Profit & Loss. Revenue minus expenses for a period.

Integer cents — Solid stores all monetary values as i64 integer counts of cents. 12345 means $123.45. Avoids floating-point rounding errors.

Intercompany elimination — A consolidation adjustment that nets out transactions between member companies of a group. See Multi-Company → Intercompany eliminations.

Inventory adjustment — A journal entry that changes on-hand inventory quantity without a normal sale or purchase. Used for shrinkage, breakage, found-stock, year-end count differences.

Item — A reusable record describing something you buy or sell. Three types: service, inventory, non_inventory. See Items module.

J

Journal entry — A record of a transaction with two or more lines that balance (sum of debits = sum of credits). Every transaction in Solid is a journal entry. See General Ledger → Journal Entries.

K

KEK (Key Encryption Key) — The 256-bit key derived from your login password (via Argon2id) that wraps the BEK for Cloud Backup. Rotating your login password re-wraps the BEK in O(1).

L

Ledger — Same as General Ledger.

Liability — Something the business owes. AP, loans, payroll-tax payable, sales-tax payable. Credit-normal balance.

License key — The 32-character alphanumeric string that identifies your Solid Accounting purchase. See License keys.

M

MACRS (Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System) — The IRS tax-depreciation method. Solid doesn't run MACRS schedules natively — book vs tax depreciation often deliberately differ; tax-prep software handles MACRS. See Fixed Assets → What about MACRS?.

mDNS (Multicast DNS) — The auto-discovery protocol Solid uses on LAN multi-user. Lets clients find the host without entering an IP. Works on the same network only.

Memorized transaction — Same as Recurring transaction. A template that auto-generates journal entries on a schedule.

Multi-User mode — Multiple users connecting to the same .solid file from their own computers. See Multi-User module.

N

Net income — Revenue minus expenses for a period. The bottom line of the Income Statement.

Normal balance — The side of an account that increases its balance. Debit for assets/expenses; credit for liabilities/equity/revenue.

O

OFX (Open Financial Exchange) — Standard bank-data interchange format. See OFX/QFX format reference.

OAuth 2.0 — The authorization protocol Solid uses for QuickBooks Online, Xero, and FreshBooks integrations. Your provider credentials never touch Solid's servers.

Opening balance — A starting balance posted when a file is created or an account is added mid-fiscal-year. Posts to Opening Balance Equity as the offset.

P

Pagefind — The static-site search library used by Solid's docs. Build-time index, no runtime dependency.

Payment application — A row linking a payment to a specific invoice (or pay-bill to a specific bill) for a specific amount. Lets one payment partially pay multiple invoices.

Period — A span of time treated as a unit, typically a month or quarter. A fiscal year is a year of periods. See Period Close walkthrough.

Period close — Locking a period so no new entries can post to it without an Admin override. Followed by adjusting entries and the trial balance check.

Perpetual license — A software license that doesn't expire. Solid Accounting is sold on a perpetual license model + optional annual Updates plan.

Plaid — Third-party bank-data aggregator that powers Solid's Bank Feeds.

Profit & Loss (P&L) — Income statement: revenue minus expenses for a period. See Reports → Income Statement.

Project — A dimension for tagging transactions to specific client work or internal initiatives. Has start/end dates and optional budget. See Dimensions → Project-specific behavior.

Q

QFX — Intuit's flavor of OFX. Functionally identical to OFX for parsing purposes; different magic-bytes header.

QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) — Legacy Quicken bank-export format. Older banks still produce it. See QIF format reference.

R

Reconciliation — Confirming that every transaction on a bank statement matches one in your books, and vice versa. See Banking → Reconciliation.

Recurring transaction — A transaction template that auto-generates journal entries on a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). See Recurring transactions.

Retained Earnings — An equity account holding cumulative net income from prior years, after the closing entry moves each year's net income into it.

Reversing entry — A journal entry that posts the opposite of an earlier entry, neutralizing it. Solid uses reversing entries to void posted transactions while preserving the audit trail.

S

Sales tax — Tax collected from customers on behalf of the tax authority. A liability you owe; tracked in Sales Tax Payable. See Sales Tax module.

Schedule C — IRS tax form filed by sole proprietorships. Solid's TXF export maps accounts to Schedule C lines.

Service-Sent Events (SSE) — The protocol Solid uses for real-time sync between multi-user clients. HTTP-based; works through standard firewalls.

SQLCipher — The encrypted SQLite library Solid uses to store every .solid file. Encryption is real; without the password the file is opaque bytes.

Stripe — The payment processor Solid uses for license sales and Updates plan billing.

T

Tax code — A definition of one tax for one jurisdiction (rate + type + jurisdiction code). See Sales Tax → Tax codes.

Tax group — A combination of multiple tax codes applied as a unit (e.g. NYC Sales = State + City + MTA). See Sales Tax → Tax groups.

Tax line — The IRS tax-form line each account maps to, used by the TXF export for tax-prep software.

TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number) — A vendor's SSN or EIN used for 1099 filing. Stored AES-256 encrypted in Solid; access logged in the audit trail.

Trial balance — A report listing every account with its current balance in the debit or credit column. The two columns must equal. See Reports → Trial Balance.

TXF (Tax Exchange Format) — The standard interchange format between accounting software and tax-prep software. See TXF format reference.

U

Undeposited Funds — An asset account between Receive Payment and Make Deposit for batching customer payments before depositing as one transaction at the bank. See Banking → Undeposited Funds.

Updates plan — Solid Accounting's optional annual subscription that includes new features, bug fixes, OS-compat updates, third-party integrations, Cloud Backup, and email support. See Renewal & maintenance.

V

Variance — The difference between actual and budgeted amounts for an account in a period. See Budgets → Variance reports.

Vendor credit — A journal entry crediting AP back to a vendor — for refunds, overcharges, or pre-payments. Same model as a customer's credit memo on the AP side. See Accounts Payable → Vendor Credits.

W

W-9 — IRS form a 1099-eligible vendor fills out with their TIN and tax classification. Collect at vendor onboarding; transcribe to the vendor record.

Weighted-average cost — Inventory cost method where each purchase blends into a running average across all units on hand. Alternative to FIFO.

Cross-references

• General Ledger module — most of the foundational accounting terms have their long form here
• Cloud Backup module — encryption-related terms in detail
• Modules overview — the full module index
• FAQ — for definitions in conversational form