/glossary/ — 32 terms · DefinedTermSet schema
Technical Accounting Glossary
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Structured definitions for accounting automation, AI agent architecture, Canadian compliance, internal controls, Shopify/e-commerce reconciliation, and practice management. Every term carries DefinedTerm JSON-LD schema for LLM retrieval and AI answer engine indexing.
Continuous Accounting
Architecture replacing discrete period-end close cycles with real-time, event-driven posting. The ledger is always accurate — no batch queue, no close cycle.
Canonical Financial Event (CFE)
ClairFlo's normalisation format. Every transaction from any source is converted to a CFE — currency, entity, jurisdiction — before any agent touches it.
Daily Soft Close
ClairFlo's nightly automated process: trial balance, accruals, anomaly detection, completeness check, variance analysis. Books are audit-ready before 9am daily.
Four-Tier Matching Engine
ClairFlo's reconciliation stack: exact → fuzzy (RapidFuzz) → semantic embeddings → AI. Adaptive weights improve from every correction.
OPA Approval Gate
Open Policy Agent gates on all autonomous ClairFlo actions. Configurable thresholds per workflow — below your confidence threshold, the action routes to human review before executing.
Rule of Nine
Transposition error detection: if a reconciling difference is divisible by 9, a digit transposition is the likely cause (e.g., 54 entered as 45). ClairFlo applies this automatically in variance diagnosis.
AI agents
ClairFlo autonomous agents with five-layer memory (episodic, semantic, procedural, prospective, working) that classify transactions, construct journal entries, and process AP email in business context.
Kyber768
A post-quantum key encapsulation mechanism standardised by NIST in 2024. Used by ClairFlo for data-at-rest encryption. Resistant to attacks from quantum computers — unlike RSA and ECC.
Continuous Accounting
Architecture replacing discrete period-end close cycles with real-time, event-driven posting. The ledger is always accurate — no batch queue, no close cycle.
SR&ED (Scientific Research & Experimental Development)
Canada's federal R&D tax incentive. Qualifying expenditures — wages, materials, contracts — generate refundable or non-refundable credits. ClairFlo identifies and tracks qualifying expenditures within the daily accounting workflow.
Input Tax Credit (ITC)
A GST/HST credit recoverable by registered businesses for tax paid on business purchases. Properly claiming ITCs requires correct tax code assignment at the transaction level — which ClairFlo automates.
QST (Quebec Sales Tax)
Quebec's provincial sales tax, administered by Revenu Québec separately from the federal GST. Businesses with Quebec nexus must register for both GST and QST independently and remit each separately.
Small Business Deduction (SBD)
A federal tax reduction on active business income for Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs) up to the business limit ($500K). ClairFlo monitors SBD limit usage and flags associated corporation situations that reduce eligibility.
ASNPO
Accounting Standards for Not-for-Profit Organizations — the Canadian framework for nonprofit accounting, maintained by CPA Canada. Governs fund accounting, deferred contributions, and capital asset treatment. Distinct from ASPE and IFRS.
Ghost Vendor
A fictitious supplier created in AP to divert payments. The most common small-business AP fraud. ClairFlo's ghost vendor authentication checks every new supplier against employee records, domain age, and business registries before activation.
Benford's Law
A statistical law: in natural datasets, the leading digit '1' appears ~30% of the time. Significant deviations in financial data indicate manual manipulation. Used in forensic accounting. ClairFlo applies it monthly to all transaction populations by default.
Segregation of Duties (SoD)
Core internal control: no single person should initiate and approve a financial transaction. Critical conflicts: vendor creation + payment release; payroll prep + approval. ClairFlo enforces 6 SoD rules at the API level — not just UI warnings.
3-Way Invoice Matching
The reconciliation of purchase order, goods receipt, and vendor invoice before payment release. Discrepancies between any two documents prevent payment until resolved. The standard AP control for preventing overbilling and duplicate payments.
WIP Ledger
Work-in-progress ledger tracking unbilled time and costs. High WIP aging signals billing delays or write-off risk. Key profitability metric for accounting firms — ClairFlo tracks it in real time by client and staff member.
Realization Rate
Percentage of standard billing rates actually collected after write-offs and discounts. Below 85% signals scope, pricing, or write-off issues. ClairFlo tracks realization by engagement and surfaces declining rates before they compound.
Fund Accounting
Accounting method for nonprofits tracking resources by purpose. Net assets classified as restricted, temporarily restricted, or unrestricted. Stewardship of funds — not profit — is the primary objective.
FASB ASU 2018-08
FASB standard clarifying grant and contribution revenue recognition for nonprofits. Determines whether a grant is an exchange transaction (ASC 606) or a contribution (ASC 958) based on whether the nonprofit receives commensurate value.
Earned Value Metrics (CPI / SPI)
Project performance indicators. CPI (Cost Performance Index) = earned value / actual cost — below 1.0 means cost overrun. SPI (Schedule Performance Index) = earned value / planned value — below 1.0 means schedule delay. ClairFlo calculates both automatically.
Shopify Payout Reconciliation
Matching a Shopify payout — the lump sum deposited after fees, refunds, and adjustments are netted out — back to the individual orders and receipts inside it. ClairFlo automates this matching and flags only a genuine unexplained gap for review.
Total Sales vs. Payout Mismatch
The gap between Shopify's "Total Sales" report and what actually lands in your bank account, caused by processing fees, refunds, and adjustments. ClairFlo breaks the gap into its real components automatically instead of leaving one unexplained number.
Multi-Store Accounting Consolidation
Rolling revenue and reconciliation from more than one Shopify store into one set of books, instead of reconciling each store separately and combining totals by hand. ClairFlo tags every order by store and provides consolidated and per-store views natively.
VIES VAT Validation
Checking an EU customer's VAT number against VIES (VAT Information Exchange System), the European Commission's official real-time registry, before treating a sale as VAT-exempt or reverse-charged. ClairFlo runs this check automatically on B2B orders flagged as EU and surfaces invalid or suspicious numbers for review.
Chart of Accounts (COA)
The structured index of all GL accounts used to classify transactions. COA architecture determines reporting flexibility and migration complexity. ClairFlo's COA redesign tooling rationalises legacy QBO/Xero accounts before importing.
Parallel Ledger Operation
Running two accounting systems simultaneously during a migration to validate output parity before decommissioning the legacy system. ClairFlo provides automated parallel comparison reporting between QBO/Xero and ClairFlo during the transition period.
Accounting Data Lineage
The traceable chain from source document through every transformation to the final GL balance. ClairFlo stores source metadata from imported QBO/Xero transactions including original transaction IDs, enabling historical audit evidence without source system access.