Glossary

Margin is revenue minus cost, expressed as a percentage of revenue. In AtomicSam the cost side is the labour cost of recorded time (cost rate x hours) plus any job costs, and the revenue side is what you can bill.

Margin is visible only to people with the "see rates and margins" permission, so it can be shown on job and client screens without exposing it to every staff member.

Markup is expressed as a percentage of cost, not of revenue, which is why a 50% markup is not a 50% margin. Costs on a job (subcontractors, print, media) commonly carry a markup rather than a fixed sell rate.

WIP is the value of recorded time and costs on a job that has not yet appeared on an invoice. It is the bridge between delivery and revenue: high WIP means you have done work you have not billed for.

AtomicSam calculates WIP from time entries and costs that carry no invoice provenance. Once a line is included on an invoice it leaves WIP and becomes billed revenue.

Review WIP before each billing run so nothing ages past the point where the client will accept it.

A write-off is invoicing less than the recorded value — usually because the work overran the agreed scope. A write-on (or uplift) is invoicing more, typically for value-based pricing.

Recording the adjustment at invoice time keeps recoverability honest instead of quietly deleting time entries.

Recoverability = invoiced amount ÷ WIP value for the same work. Below 100% means you wrote work off; above 100% means you billed a premium.

Track it per client and per job type — a persistently low figure usually means the quote, not the delivery, is wrong.

Utilisation compares billable hours to capacity (contracted hours less leave and holidays). It measures how much of paid time is sold, not how hard someone works.

Non-billable time still needs recording — internal work, admin and business development are what make the denominator meaningful.

Cost rate is derived from salary plus on-costs, divided by the working hours available in a year. AtomicSam uses an average of 230 working days per year for the standard calculation.

Cost rates drive margin, so they are gated behind financial permissions and hidden from staff who should not see salary-derived figures.

Sell rates resolve in order: task override, job rate, client rate, role rate, then the organisation default. The first rate found wins.

Non-billable time still carries cost, so it appears in margin and utilisation but contributes no revenue. Marking a task non-billable zeroes its revenue while keeping its cost visible.

Internal work belongs on a non-billable job so it is measured rather than lost.

A job holds everything commercial about a deliverable — the accepted quote, the plan of tasks, recorded time, costs, and the invoices raised against it. Terminology can be renamed per industry in settings.

Time is recorded against tasks. Once a task has sub-tasks it becomes a container: time is recorded on the sub-tasks and the parent’s estimates and actuals are derived from them, so nothing is double-counted.

Burn rate compares spend to budget over elapsed time. Crossing a configured threshold can trigger a HeadsUp so the client hears about an overrun before the invoice does.

A quote lists tasks and costs with estimated hours and rates. Accepting a quote can apply it to a job, creating the tasks and budget in one step.

Tasks and costs added to a job after a quote has been applied are automatically flagged as variations and shown with their own subtotal, so approved scope and added scope stay separable at invoice time.

POs capture what was ordered, from whom, and against which job, and can require approval above a set limit before being sent.

Drafts stay in AtomicSam and can be edited freely. Approving (or posting) sends the invoice to your accounting app, where it takes the next invoice number and becomes the record of the debt.

Because a draft has not posted, changing it does not create an audit trail in Xero or QuickBooks — that only starts at approval.

Use a credit note when an approved invoice needs correcting after it has reached the client and the accounting system. Voiding is only appropriate before the invoice has been sent or paid.

Terms such as "20th of the following month" or "net 14" resolve to a concrete due date at invoice time. They can be set per client and fall back to the organisation default.

Progress plans split an agreed value into milestones or periods. Each release draws down the plan rather than invoicing recorded time directly.

Mapping tells AtomicSam which Xero contact or QuickBooks customer represents each client, so invoices post to the right ledger account instead of creating duplicates.

A client must be mapped before its first invoice can be posted. If the counterpart does not exist yet, you can create it from the mapping screen; if it exists under a slightly different name, map it manually rather than letting a second contact be created.

Mapping also covers account codes (which revenue account a line posts to), tax rates, and tracking categories.

Each invoice line carries an account code from your chart of accounts. Setting sensible defaults per task or cost category means your profit and loss report stays readable without manual recoding.

Xero calls these tracking categories, QuickBooks calls them classes or locations. AtomicSam can attach them automatically from the job or client so reporting splits correctly in your accounting app.

Outbound sync posts approved invoices and credit notes. Inbound sync brings back payment status and contact changes, and only ever updates fields the accounting app owns.

Failed syncs go onto a retry queue with backoff rather than being lost, so a temporary outage does not need manual repair.

Reconciliation checks invoice numbers, totals and payment status on both sides. Differences usually trace back to an invoice edited directly in the accounting app after it was posted.