Glossary

A

Account — A company or organisation you do business with. The parent record for contacts, opportunities, contracts, cases.

Account team — A list of users (and their access level) attached to an account. Used when a pod works the account together.

ACV (Annual Contract Value) — The yearly value of a single contract, normalised. A 3-year $300K contract has ACV = $100K.

Activity — A task, event, call, or email logged against a record.

Agent (AI) — A composite AI assistant that bundles skills + knowledge bases. The Sales Copilot and Service Copilot are agents.

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) — Total revenue ÷ active users.

ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) — Sum of ACV across all active subscription contracts.

Approval process — A multi-step sign-off flow. Locks the record while pending.

B

BANT — Budget / Authority / Need / Timeline. Lead qualification framework.

Best case — Forecast category for opportunities likely (but not committed) to close.

Bookings — Closed-won contract value in a period. Includes new + expansion + renewal.

Business hours — Working days and hours used in SLA calculations.

C

Campaign — A marketing initiative with audience, budget, and outcomes (members enrolled / converted).

Case — A customer service issue. Has SLA, priority, and status.

Churn — Customer loss. Logo churn (# customers) vs revenue churn ($).

Closed won / lost — Terminal stages on an opportunity.

Commit — Forecast category for opportunities the rep is committing to close.

Contact — A person at an account.

Contract — A signed agreement. Triggers customer status; eligible for renewal.

Coverage ratio — Pipeline ÷ remaining quota. >3× is healthy; <2× is a problem.

Cube — A pre-modeled multi-dimensional dataset for analytics.

D

Dashboard — A page of analytics widgets (KPIs, charts, lists).

Detail page — The single-record view (vs the list view).

E

External ID — A foreign-system identifier you store on a CRM record for matching during import / sync.

F

FLS (Field-Level Security) — Per-field read/edit permissions per profile.

Flow — A multi-step automation. More powerful than a workflow rule.

Forecast — Predicted bookings for a period, bucketed Closed / Commit / Best Case / Pipeline.

G

GDPR — EU regulation on personal data. HotCRM supports right-to-access and right-to-erasure.

H

Hierarchy (role hierarchy) — The org chart that drives visibility — managers see their team's records.

I

ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) — The kind of customer most likely to succeed with your product.

K

Knowledge base (KB) — A library of articles. Two flavours: customer-facing support KB and AI-grounding KBs.

L

Lead — A person who has expressed interest but hasn't been qualified.

Lead source — Where the lead came from (Web, Referral, Trade Show, etc.).

List view — A filtered, sorted, columned table of records.

M

MEDDIC — Metrics / Economic Buyer / Decision Criteria / Decision Process / Identify Pain / Champion. Enterprise sales qualification.

MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) — ARR ÷ 12 (or the sum of monthly contract values).

MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) — A lead marketing has qualified for sales handoff.

N

NPS (Net Promoter Score) — Customer loyalty metric (-100 to +100).

NRR (Net Revenue Retention) — Beginning ARR + expansion - churn - contraction ÷ Beginning ARR. >100% is healthy SaaS.

O

ObjectQL — HotCRM's query language. broker.find('crm_opportunity', { filters: [...] }).

ObjectStack — The runtime that HotCRM is built on.

Opportunity (deal) — A qualified sales opportunity in progress.

OWD (Org-Wide Default) — The baseline sharing setting per object. Private / Public Read / Public Read-Write.

P

Pipeline — All open opportunities, regardless of stage.

Permission set — A bundle of extra permissions granted on top of a user's profile.

Profile — The base permissions assigned to every user.

PWA (Progressive Web App) — Install HotCRM as an "app" on your phone home screen.

Q

Qualification — Determining if a lead/opportunity is worth pursuing.

Quote — A formal price proposal sent to a customer.

Quota — A rep's or team's revenue target for a period.

R

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) — The technique behind the AI Copilot. Retrieves relevant knowledge before generating an answer.

Renewal — Extending a contract before / at its end date.

Role — A position in the role hierarchy (drives sharing).

S

SCIM — Standard for syncing users from your identity provider (Okta, Azure AD).

SDR / BDR (Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep) — A rep specialised in prospecting leads.

Sharing rule — An exception that grants visibility beyond OWD + hierarchy.

Skill (AI) — A bite-sized AI capability (qualify lead, draft email, triage case).

SLA (Service Level Agreement) — A commitment to first-respond / resolve a case within X time.

SOC2 — A security/audit standard for service providers.

SQL — We use ObjectQL instead. Don't write SQL.

SSO (Single Sign-On) — Log in to HotCRM with your corporate IdP (Okta, Azure AD, Google).

Stage — A step in the opportunity lifecycle.

State machine — Defines valid status transitions and what triggers each.

sys_activity — Platform-provided object used to record any time-stamped activity on a record (call, meeting, task completion). The "Log a Call" action writes here, and entries surface in a record's Activity tab.

sys_audit_log — Platform field-history store. Any field on an object declared with trackHistory: true (the default for every CRM object) generates a sys_audit_log row on change. Visible in the Activity tab and in admin-facing audit reports.

sys_comment — Platform-provided threaded discussion / chatter store. Comments posted on any record (case, opportunity, account…) live here. The Activity tab pulls them in along with sys_activity, sys_email and audit history.

sys_email — Platform-provided outbound email queue. The "Send Email" action enqueues here; the email-service worker handles delivery, retries and status (queued / sent / bounced / failed).

T

Tenant — A logically isolated HotCRM instance (one customer org).

TCV (Total Contract Value) — The full multi-year value of a contract (vs ACV which normalises to one year).

U

User — A person who can log in. Each has a profile + role.

V

View — Saved list-view filters/columns/sort.

View All — A profile permission that bypasses sharing rules for an object.

W

Webhook — An HTTP callback fired when CRM events happen.

Workflow rule — A simple after-save automation: condition → field update / email / task.

Win rate — Closed-won ÷ (closed-won + closed-lost). Excludes "closed without decision".

Y

YoY (Year-over-Year) — This year vs last year, same period.