In Alphabetical Order O-T

Owner Company/Sponsor Company

The entity that engages in business and has the complete control (or ownership) of Unifier Essentials with all its rights and privileges.

Partner Company/Member Company

The consultants, contractors, and vendors that have been invited to participate in a project by the Owner Company/Sponsor Company. The system allows the addition of Partner Company/ Member Company to enable project users to collaborate on (and coordinate) the execution of a project.

Payment Applications

Payment applications are a sub-type of cost-type BPs. They are used for scheduling payments against construction contracts. Transactions on this type of BP roll up to the Cost Manager.

Percentage of Work Complete

A percentage value that indicates the current status of a task, resource, or assignment, expressed as the percentage of work that has been completed. It is between 0 (when no work has been performed on the task) and 100 (when all the work has been completed on the task). Using this value, you can compare planned work to actual completed work.

Pickers

Pickers appear as selection lists on business processes and other components. These pickers allow the user to choose elements such as dates, Master Service Agreements, other users, companies, line items, funds, or currencies.

Predecessor

A dependency; an activity or task that must occur before another activity or task. On schedules, predecessor relationships between activities are shown as lines terminated by arrows.

Private bid

A bidding process open to a specific set of bidders that have been selected during the invitation process.

Project Administrator

Performs tasks necessary to the administration of projects within the system; typically, creating projects, adding project users, creating groups and granting permissions, creating project cost sheets, creating business process setups, and defining workflows.

Project Funding Sheet

Project funding sheets track how your company's funding is being spent on each project. It tracks individual transactions, which are rolled up to the company funding sheet.

Project Phase

An intermediary milestone of a project.

Public bid

A bidding process open all vendors currently active on a project.

RFB

See “Request for Bid”.

Record

A set of related data items treated as a unit. For example, in stock control, the data for each invoice could constitute one record. Also, all the fields on a BP form constitute a record.

Reference Process

A Reference Process is a business process that another business process has referenced by way of a picker on a form. Users use pickers on one business process form to call data from another—a referenced—business process. The picker establishes a link between the records of the two business processes (for example, an invoice BP to purchase order BP). Reference processes are usually used to auto-populate pickers. They are necessary for any BP form that uses BP pickers and line item pickers.

Reference processes contain the list of items the user can choose from the picker. Because a reference process establishes a link, record to record, you can populate the fields or pickers of one business process with the data from the referenced process.

Request for Bid

The Request for Bid (RFB) is a type of line item BP. RFBs are unique business processes that require participation from personnel outside your company. For an RFB, two sets of BP forms are required—one for the requestor (the user who creates the RFB and invites bids) and another for the bidders (the vendors) to fill out with bid information. An RFB must include a reference process to a vendor list business process, which contains the pool of vendors to whom the RFB will be sent.

Requestor

The user who initiates a Request for Bid (RFB) and invites bids.

Role

Roles are job types or functions that are necessary to carry out a project's tasks. Roles usually include billable rates and the currency in which the rates should be paid. Roles are associated with personnel resources—the people who can perform these roles in a project.

Run Time

When a report is run. Also, the duration of a project, during which time users use the business processes that were created for the project.

Salvage Value

The residual value of an asset; the value of an asset after the depreciation period. This can be zero, or a value at which the asset can be sold.

Schedule of Values (SOV)

An SOV is a way to assemble information from contract, change order, and invoice/payment application business processes into a single sheet. This SOV sheet streamlines the process of invoicing for completed phases of a project/shell.

The Schedule of Values is a detailed statement furnished by a construction contractor, builder, or others, outlining the portions of the contract sum. It allocates values for the various parts of the work and is also used as the basis for submitting and reviewing progress payments.

An SOV works in conjunction with commit types of business processes, such as a purchase order. Commit-types of business processes can be designed to automatically create an SOV sheet when they reach a designated step in a workflow.

The following lists the types of SOV sheets:

Schedule Performance Index

A measure of schedule efficiency on a project. It is the ratio of earned value (EV) to planned value (PV), or EV divided by PV.

A Schedule Performance Index equal to or greater than one indicates a favorable condition; a value of less than one indicates an unfavorable condition.

Schedule Variance

As work is performed, it is “earned” on the same basis as it was planned, in dollars or other quantifiable units, such as labor hours. The planned value, when compared with the earned value, measures the dollar volume of work planned vs. the equivalent dollar volume of work accomplished. Any difference is called a schedule variance.

Schema

The flow of business process steps and the forms the users will use at each step.

Self-Service Portal

Log-in accessible to company user that allows them to submit request, track submitted requests, and communicate with the call center.

Sequence Policy

A sequence policy determines how the record numbers for each BP record are ordered. The record number is displayed on the form and in the business process log.

For a company, record numbering starts with this number on the first record of the first project and is sequential on each record after that, no matter what project a BP record is created in.

For a project, record numbering starts over in each new project, and is sequential within the project.

Service Providers

Partner companies whose users perform specific duties for the sponsoring company, both within and outside of a project.

Shell

A shell is a “container” in which users can organize entities, such as projects or facilities. This shell is where users can organize business information in one place to make managing it easy. A shell can include the functions and features necessary to manage the information in that shell, such as a Document Manager and a Cost Manager.

Standard "projects" work in a similar manner. The difference is that a shell is not required to function like a time-based project. A shell can encompass a static entity, such as a university campus, where maintenance activities are on-going. An example of such a shell could encompass a college campus to track building maintenance and new additions.

Shells can be arranged in hierarchies to represent a company's physical or organizational structure, such as:

State

City

Property

Building

Shell Dashboard

A dashboard that is accessible at the shell level and can be used to view data within a particular shell hierarchy. There are several types of shell dashboard, including My Dashboard and Shell Instance Dashboard.

Shell Instance

See Shell Type.

Shell Instance Dashboard

Dashboard created by an Administrator at a shell instance level. These dashboards are created in either a shell instance or a shell template. These dashboards are shell specific and not user specific. End users cannot modify these dashboards. This differs from My Dashboard in that is it a shell view of the shell for all users to use, and My Dashboard is a personalized view for a specific user, and displays the information that the user wants to see. The shell instance dashboard is a general view of specific shell data, and is not specific to any one user view of data. Administrators can create multiple shell instance dashboards per shell instance.

Shell Manager

Administrators group shells into hierarchies, create shell “instances,” and specify what functions and features will be included in the shell, such as a cost manager, Document Manager, and so on.

See also Shell.

Shell Type

Shells are defined by type. From this type, users can create copies, called instances. For example, a shell type could be “Country,” and instances of this type could be “Germany,” “India,” and “China.” These instances would be linked to the Country shell.

See also Shell.

Simple BP

Business process that consists of an upper form only (like a line-item BP without the line items). It is a way to add company or project information that does not require line items.

Snapshot

The snapshot feature of the system takes a working “picture” of the schedule sheet, asset sheet, or planning sheet at any point in time. You can use a snapshot on these sheets to drill down into the process to expose specific activities or milestones, plans or planning phases, for particular attention. On an asset sheet, a snapshot can show the progress of an asset and its depreciation during any specific time range.

A snapshot can also be used to make working “versions” of a business process that you can use as an audit trail of the changes you have made to the process. This use of the snapshot feature makes the ongoing evolution of a business process design easier to track and control. As a business process evolves, you might need to return to a prior version of it to redesign some elements of the forms or the workflow(s). If this is the case, you can restore any one of the snapshots you have taken and proceed with the design.

SOV

See Schedule of Values (SOV).

Start to Finish

Denotes that a task cannot end until another begins.

Start to Start

Denotes that a task cannot begin until another begins.

Status

Status indicates the position a record, line item, or asset is in at any point in the business process, such as “approved,” “pending,” or “closed.”

Each business process produces at least one, and sometimes many, transaction records during its workflow. At each transaction, the user must apply a status to the record. The status is what drives the workflow from one step to the next.

A line item status is distinct from a record status, and unlike a record status, it is not a visible part of a workflow; it is part of the form that moves through the workflow.

Statuses are created when they are designed and accompany the business process when it is imported into Unifier Essentials.

Straight Line

A method of dividing lease payments over a specific period of time. Straight line method assumes that incoming cash flow is in the form of fixed lease payments over the term of the lease. These payments are totaled and divided by the lease term to arrive at the monthly income or expense. This results in an equal impact on the income statement in each reporting period, irrespective of the fact that cash flows differ.

String Formula

A composite field that combines multiple data elements, normally used for building fund code segments. String formulas involve combining values from text box data elements and specifying a string-type pulldown; for example, designing a field called “Project Identifier” using a formula that includes Project, Record No., and location.

String formulas can be defined only for text box and text area data elements.

Summary Line Items

Cost-type and line item-type BPs support summary line items, which group multiple line items together. Only the summary will appear on the BP form. The individual line items appear on the line item window (the detail form), and can be rolled up to other elements, such as the cost sheet, as needed.

System Administrator

System Administrators (or Site Administrators) are responsible for the end-to-end administration of the application. They are the only administrators who have permission to perform certain tasks (unless they grant these permissions to others), which include creating sponsor companies and partner/member companies, loading modules, loading reports, adding the first user(s) to a company, and adding a company administrator.

Tasks (Tasks Log)

When a BP is sent to the next step in its workflow, it becomes a task for the recipient. The recipient is notified by email that someone has sent a BP record for review or other action, and the task also appears on the BP tasks log.

Terminal Status

A terminal status denotes the end of a business process, usually on a workflow. A terminal status has a significant impact on the business processes in that it can be made to trigger an automatic action in the system.

After any BP reaches a terminal status, users can copy it to create another BP of the same type.

A terminal status on a change commit BP can update SOV sheet and SOV line items. If you use this feature, users will be able to access the SOV directly from the change commit BP form. On change commit BPs linked to a general spends SOV, a terminal status is not necessary for updates; it is necessary, however, on a change commit linked to a payment application BP.

A terminal status on a base commit BP can create an SOV sheet and SOV line items. If you use this feature, users will be able to access the SOV directly from the base commit BP form. On base commit BPs linked to a general spends SOV, a terminal status is not necessary for updates; it is necessary, however, on a base commit linked to a payment application BP.

A terminal status on a commit or spends BP can automate project fund consumption or appropriation. It can also create an SOV sheet. If you use this feature, users will be able to access the SOV directly from the commit or spends BP form.

After a cost BP reaches a terminal status, users can directly view funding transaction details from the cost BP.

After a Payment Applications BP reaches terminal status, users can directly accept line item history from the BP record.

On timesheet BPs, a terminal status can roll up time and money to the master timesheet, as well as the project cost sheet.

Tracking Gantt

A tracking Gantt chart compares dates on activities.

Transient Record

A record that has not yet completed the workflow; used specifically in the Funding Manager to allow funding of “in process” records.


Last Published Tuesday, April 15, 2025