Help Center › Getting Started › Maxio Platform Basics › Important Concepts

Glossary of Key Maxio Core Terms

··

Last updated on Aug 31, 2026

Use this glossary to understand the key financial and platform terms used in Maxio Core. Advanced Billing uses a partly different vocabulary for subscription and catalog objects, defined in Glossary of Key Advanced Billing Terms; where the same concept carries a different name on each side, Key Terms Across Maxio Core and Advanced Billing maps them to each other. It defines essential concepts like MRR, ARR, deferred revenue, and unbilled AR, helping finance and operations teams interpret reports, manage contracts, and navigate common SaaS accounting terminology across Maxio features.

For the identifier that names your own Maxio instance in URLs and integrations, see Understanding Your Maxio Namespace.

Industry terms

Term	Definition	Common Synonym(s) & Acronyms
Automated Clearing House	Automated Clearing House (ACH) is an electronic network for financial transactions in the United States.	ACH
Exchange Rate	The rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another. The Maxio Core Multi-currency functionality allows you to manage all of the currencies in which you do business.	FX rate
Monthly Recurring Revenue	A measure of your predictable revenue stream. A primary purpose of MRR is to permit performance reporting across dissimilar subscription terms.	MRR
Annual Recurring Revenue	A key metric used by SaaS or subscription businesses that have term subscription agreements, meaning there is a defined contract length. It is the value of the contracted recurring revenue components of your term subscriptions normalized to a one-year period. ARR is the less frequently used alternative normalization method of the two common ones, ARR and MRR. It is used almost exclusively in B2B subscription businesses.	ARR
Customer Acquisition Cost	The cost of acquiring a new customer in your business. The metric is used in a variety of industries but is perhaps most common in SaaS and other subscription businesses. It is essential in many resource allocation decisions.	CAC
Churn	The percentage rate at which SaaS customers cancel their recurring revenue subscriptions. While there are many variations of churn as a phenomenon in SaaS companies, it is typically separated into a gross churn rate and a net churn rate.
Dunning	The process of collecting payment from your customers.

Subscription management

Term	Definition	Common Synonym(s) & Acronyms
Auto-Renewal Profile	Auto-Renewal Profiles function as customizable Transaction renewal rules that can be assigned to Transactions; such that when the auto-renew background process takes place, the Transactions assigned an Auto-Renewal Profile are automatically renewed in accordance with the rules specified in that profile.
Cancel	You cancel a recurring transaction if it is not going to be renewed.
Chart of Accounts	A record in your Chart of Accounts that can be synced in from a connected general ledger or created and managed in Maxio Core directly.
Closing date	Closing Dates impact the ability to add, edit, and delete Revenue and Invoicing information in Maxio Core. There are a number of independent closing date settings in Maxio Core. Working together, they prevent changes to data in the close period (any time prior to the dates you configure).
Contract	Contracts serve as containers for key records like transactions and invoices. A customer can have one or more contracts and each contract can hold one or more transactions and invoices. The contract is the object around which deferred revenue and unbilled AR calculations are performed in all finance reports. A contract belongs to only one customer, and a contract exists in only one register. If you don't use contracts in your business, Maxio Core will automatically create them for you during the transaction creation process.
Credit Memo	A credit memorandum is used to reduce the amount a customer owes from a previously-issued Invoice.
Customer	The entities that subscribe to and purchase your products. Customers can also be your distributors and resellers.
e-Bill	An electronic invoice sent to your customer from Maxio Core.
Expire	If you do not renew or cancel a recurring transaction, it will eventually expire at the end of its term.
Invoice	Invoices are fundamentally groupings of invoice line items, which Maxio Core assembles based on their customer and invoice date. Invoices represent the accounts receivable aspect of transactions and provide the means of collecting payment from the customer (via e-Bill).
Invoice line item	The individual elements that Maxio Core groups together to make invoices. They are essentially individual lines from an invoice.
Item groups	Item Groups are simply aggregations of Items that can be used in certain Analytics reports.
Items	A solution or product you license or sell. Each Transaction and Invoice Line Item must have an associated Item.
Out-of-balance	Maxio Core checks the balance of invoices, revenues, and transaction amounts for customers, contracts, and transactions to help ensure your financial reporting is accurate. An out-of-balance contract indicates a potential invoicing or revenue reporting problem. Maxio Core uses the following logic to define balanced vs out-of-balance: Σ Transaction Amount(s) = Σ Invoice Line Items = Σ Transaction Revenues
Recast revenue	Making changes to an Item's configuration may require you to recast the revenue of the corresponding transactions.
Refund receipt	QuickBooks Online users use a Refund Receipt to record a refund to a customer for a previously paid balance on an Invoice.
Register	A container for Contracts, which in turn hold Transactions and Invoices.
Renew	Renewing a transaction indicates that the customer renewed their subscription to the product/service and creates a brand new transaction with a link to the previous one.
Revenue Recognition	Revenue recognition is an accounting principle and a process for reporting revenues by recognizing the monetary value of a transaction or contract over a period of time as the revenue is “earned.” The method of allocation and the period of time are determined by rules, guidelines, and findings from organizations such the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the SEC.	“rev rec” or “revenue rec”
Revenue schedule	Each Transaction in Maxio Core has an associated revenue schedule. The revenue schedule is created using the Transaction's start date, end date, and the selected recognition method.
Sales Order	Maxio Core's CRM integrations are able to import order information and process it into customers, contracts, transactions, revenues, and invoices. Note that while sales orders themselves are not financial records, they do contain all of the information necessary to create these records.
Transaction	A specific type of financial record that represents a contract element in Maxio Core. You add and manage transactions to record subscriptions and non-recurring purchases and, in so doing, produce revenues and invoices as a byproduct.

Reporting

Term	Definition	Common Synonym(s) & Acronyms
CLV	CLV is an estimate of the projected total value of a customer over its lifetime.
Cohort	A Cohort is a "like group" of customers.
Contraction	The net decrease in the total across Customers for those Customers that had less aggregated "amount" (MRR/ARR, etc) across all their Transactions in this period than in the last period.
Dashboard	The Report Dashboards function allows you to create customizable Dashboards for use as your system home page.
Deferred Revenue	A current liability account used in financial reporting. Deferred Revenue appears on the balance sheet and is calculated as follows: The sum of (the total of invoices for all contract elements for a single contract minus the total of recognizable revenue for all contract elements for a single contract). If the calculation for a contract produces a negative number, the value is included in Unbilled AR, a balance sheet current asset.
Expansion	The net increase in the total across Customers for those Customers that had more aggregated "amount" (MRR/ARR, etc) across all their Transactions in this period than in the last period.
Lost	Lost is an interpretation of Transaction information. Lost includes those customers that did not renew in this period as evidenced by a lack of transaction information, and not by an explicit "lost" field or setting.
Net Dollar Retention	With Net Dollar Retention, you can run an Advanced Subscription Momentum report that calculates the change in existing Customers' total MRR/ARR for the previous one-year period.
New	The total across all Customers that had one or more Transactions with a Start Date as of the first day of this period through the last day of this period, but nothing prior to this period.
Periodic Amount	On the Add Transactions screen, you can easily calculate the total amount of a Transaction by using the Periodic Amount feature. When enabled, Maxio Core automatically calculates the total Transaction amount.
Opening	The total with a Transaction Start Date prior to the first day of this period and a Transaction End Date on the last day of the previous period or later.
Unbilled Accrued Revenue	Unbilled accrued revenue occurs when a transaction's recognized revenue exceeds the amount that has been invoiced.	Unbilled AR

Advanced workflows

Term	Definition
Cadence	Cadences are a feature of Maxio Core's Collections functionality that generates and sends emails to customers to remind them to pay their outstanding invoices.
Collection note	With Collection Notes, you have the ability to systematically keep track of why a customer is not paying you and add much-needed context to your collection efforts.
Contract change	Contract Changes let you change the amount or dates of your active transactions.
Customer Statement	A customer statement enables you to generate a list of all the unpaid invoices within a customer or contract. Send a statement to your customers if they have more than one invoice that is unpaid and you want to send a summary showing each invoice and the amount due.
Early Termination	Your customer cancels their contract but agrees to pay for part of it.
Expense obligation	Expense obligations are expense-related items (such as earned and paid commissions) that are synced into Maxio Core from other systems. You must process each obligation to amortize the expense and create the necessary financial records.
Multi-currency	Multi-currency is a feature that allows you to generate revenues, invoices, and reports in the various currencies in which you do business.
Project	Projects in Maxio Core allow you to gradually build out Contracts for any Sales Orders that have been booked with incomplete or yet-to-be-determined elements. As real-life events take place and solidify the values for those incomplete elements, you can mark complete the corresponding Milestones for those events within the Project. Completion of such Milestones then triggers Revenue, Invoicing and Transaction actions as specified, thus allowing the Revenue and Invoicing schedules to be built out over time as events take place and contract details become available.
Project Milestone	Milestones are configurable markers that correlate with specified contract events. When marked complete, milestones fire actions that trigger required invoicing, revenue recognition and subscription dates.
Revenue Book	An advanced feature of Maxio Core that allows users to re-allocate revenue across their contract population using flexible, fixed and dynamic formulas. Users can set up one, or multiple, standalone selling price ("SSP") lists within a single revenue book.
Reversal	Your customer cancels their contract and pays nothing.
SSP List	SSP lists determine the methodology for allocating revenue in a contract.

Still need help?
Reach out and our support team will take it from here.

Contact support