The Ultimate Ecommerce Glossary

The big list of helpful terms for enterprising online retailers

A Guide by

commerce is complicated enough without having to guess your way through a whole new language. Here’s Webgility’s glossary for the

online retail industry, whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned seller.

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Accrual A system of accounting under which revenue is recorded when earned, and expenses are recorded when incurred. At the end of the accounting period, total revenue and total expenses are reported. Essentially, accrual tracks your revenues and expenses at the time they occur.

Alternative Lookup number (ALU) An additional item identifier. This is a rarely used identification, only necessary in situations in which the SKU, item name or number, and UPC are unavailable or inappropriate.

API A set of clearly defined syntax and methods of communication between software components.

Assembly build A product that is made from individual components which are committed to the final item.

Automation Movement of data without manual entry.

Cash Money on hand (e.g., a bank account balance, petty cash, and customer checks). This is how much money you can access immediately from non-credit resources.Child item The product that derives from the parent item after the attributes, variants, or options are applied—most commonly a size and/or color. This is the item that the customer actually buys (e.g., if someone selects “t-shirt,” they are presented with color and size options. The item specified by the selection of those options is the the child item.Clearing account A virtual bank account

Categories

Retail and Ecommerce Terms Accounting Terms Technical Terms

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BBrick-and-mortar store A physical store location where customers can enter and purchase a product.

Brick to click The transition from operating only physical (brick-and-mortar) stores to selling online (either solely or in addition to brick-and-mortar stores).

Bundles (aka multi-packs) Groups of specified items that are sold together—but are also sold in other configurations, such as individually or as parts of other bundles.

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a designated decrease in price. The item usually shows a negative price in the transaction and thus applies the discount.Dropshipping The selling of inventory the seller doesn’t own directly from a third-party vendor (aka dropshipper) to the buyer, so that fulfillment is handled by the dropshipper.

Fulfillment The process of receiving, packaging, and shipping orders.

Gross The amount preceding the subtraction of deductions or adjustments (e.g., your gross receipts is the total amount of money you received in a day. The gross expenses would be the amount of money spent, with no adjustments for any other consideration).

used to temporarily keep funds from a specific source separate (e.g., an Amazon clearing account) for accounting clarity.

The cloud An offsite server (and often multiple, redundant servers) where data is securely stored—for gated access from any site. Access is granted using logins, passwords, and other means of

secure user authentication. Compliance Meeting the requirements of a governing body (e.g., paying sales tax to the local government).

Consolidated post Sales data grouped into a single accounting transaction based on a specified frequency (e.g., daily, weekly, or monthly).

DDirect connection Online channel

directly connected to Webgility’s Unify software.

Discount code A specified code for an

online store (like Amazon, eBay, etc.) that decreases the price of individual items or entire orders by a designated amount (e.g., when the buyer enters a word like “HOLIDAY” into the discount code section during checkout to receive 25% off).

Discount itemA specific item used for discounts in certain shopping carts, like Magento or BigCommerce, that initiates

EEcommerce platform A service that

allows individual sellers to create hosted websites using their own business name and web address (e.g., Magento, Shopify, X-Cart, BigCommerce). Typically, ecommerce platforms include everything needed for an ecommerce website, such as website hosting, payment processing, and a shopping cart.

Etail A snappy term for ecommerce retail.

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Kits See assembly build

Local tax Municipality or county tax, usually charged at a separate and additional percentage from the state tax. This is almost always a sales tax (e.g., If you are selling something in San Francisco to someone in San Francisco, you would have to pay both the sales tax for California and the local sales tax for San Francisco).

Manufacturer Part Number (MPN) The number a manufacturer uses to denote their items. This is often stored in the item information for easy reordering.

Mapping The process of linking items with different names or IDs across systems.

Margin The difference between the cost of an item and its selling price.

Marketplace A branded website (like Amazon, eBay, or Etsy) that allows third-party sellers to offer their own products within the branded site. The primary advantages of selling through marketplaces are their easy setup and use—and their large, built-in customer bases.

Matching criteria Data used to recognize a product in the online store and its corresponding twin in QuickBooks. The most common pair to match are the SKU and the item name or number.

Merchant The seller or retailer of a product.

Multichannel business A business that utilizes more than one venue or vehicle (i.e., multiple channels) for selling (e.g., through a Shopify store, Amazon, and a brick-and-mortar location). This allows sellers to reach a much wider group of customers and utilize several marketing and outreach strategies.

Inventory asset An income account

that reflects the total value of inventory purchased and held within a company. This would be the value of your inventory, usually expressed as how much you will charge for the product (e.g., If you have 10 $100 troll dolls in inventory, your inventory asset account has a value of $1,000).

Inventory part Items with a quantifiable

availability (and therefore limited at any given time). Any physical object would be classified as an inventory part.

Invoice A bill (paid or unpaid)

issued by a seller to a buyer. Invoices are often used for business-to-business transactions.

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Packaging The physical wrapping of merchandise in order to

Net The amount after the subtraction

of deductions or adjustments. Net is generally the key number to realize because it reveals profitability.

Non-inventory part Items with no set

limit on availability. These items can be purchased indefinitely (e.g., a service or a download).

OOrder status The current state or location of an order along its fulfillment (or processing) path—from the moment an item is purchased until it is delivered (e.g., You might make a sale “pending” when it is first ordered and then “shipped” after a shipping label is generated).

Other charge A term used for miscellaneous charges (e.g., shipping charges).

Out-of-state tax Tax charged to buyers outside of the state where goods were purchased.

Overselling When a seller doesn’t have have enough inventory to fulfill current orders (this commonly occurs when selling from multiple channels).

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N contain, identify, protect, display, and ship inventory.

Parent item The parent item is the base item to which variants, options, and attributes are applied (e.g., if you’re selling a t-shirt in multiple sizes and styles/colors, you would create a parent item, “t-shirt” that encompasses all “child item” variations—like size and color). The parent item specified by its “child” variants is the actual item selected.

Partial order An order that has at least one in-stock item and one out-of-stock item which must be fulfilled later.

PHP A coding language primarily designed for web development.

Pick list A list of purchased items, used to select inventory to fulfill orders.

Post 1-way upload or push to an accounting (e.g., QuickBooks, Xero) company file.

Profit The amount left over after costs are deducted from revenue. Profit is used to measure a business’s success.

Purchase order An offer issued by a merchant to a vendor which indicates quantities and prices for items being ordered.

RReconciliation Procedure for confirming

that the balance or activity in various financial accounts matches the

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Shopping cart A software component or extension that creates items and sells those items within its interface on any website (e.g., Zencart, Ubercart, osCommerce). Shopping carts are used when selling from one’s own website without using a platform or a marketplace and are considered a cost-effective solution for new sellers.SQL Programming language that allows information contained within a database to be modified, queried (located and viewed), updated, and deleted.Stockkeeping unit (SKU)An identifier, usually alphanumeric, of a particular product in a store or catalog that allows it to be tracked for inventory purposes.Subchannels Multichannel businesses contained within a directly connected channel (e.g., Amazon, Skubana, ShipStation, ChannelAdvisor, ShippingEasy, SkuVault).Sub-item A designation of a product. In QuickBooks, the sub-item is always associated with and combined with the parent designation and separated by a colon (:).Sync 2-way data update.

Tax code The body of law which determines the rules and amounts of taxation.

corresponding bank statement.

Retailer A seller or merchant that markets and distributes products to the end user.

Revenue The amount earned from a sale of goods before costs or expenses are deducted.

SSales order An order for items or services to be paid for by the customer and then fulfilled by the business.

Sales receipt A written proof of a completed sale which includes taxes, discounts, and adjustments for a paid sale. A receipt requires goods or services to have been exchanged.

Sales tax Tax that applies to the sale of goods to the final user.

Scale The process of adjusting the size and scope of a business (e.g., adding new sales channels, closing a physical location, growing a customer base, or adjusting the number and variety of products offered).

Scheduling Automation on a regular, pre-set cadence (e.g., nightly, hourly).

Shipping charges The amount a customer pays the seller for shipping an order.

Shipping cost The amount a seller pays a shipping provider (like FedEx or the U.S. Postal Service) to transport an order to a customer.

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Tracking Status updates throughout the workflow of a sale.Transactional accounting Recording the financial events of the business according to acceptable practices.

Value-Added Tax (VAT) Similar to a sales tax, this is tax added to the market value of an item—used in Canada, the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand.

Vendor A supplier of inventory, products, or services.

Wholesaler A seller that markets and distributes products—often in larger quantities—to middlemen like retailers or other wholesalers.Workflow The series of processes by which a business completes a task.

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