Glossary of Terms for Non-Profit

activity: In NetSuite, this includes CRM-related actions concerning customers, leads, or prospects in the form of phone calls, tasks, events, notes, messages and campaigns.

accounts payable: Money owed by an organization to its suppliers and/or vendors for goods or services purchased.

accounts receivable: Money owed to an organization for goods and services it has sold or that has been committed to it as a grant or donation. Also called grants receivable.

assets: an item of current or future economic benefit to an organization – these can be in the form of cash, stocks, bonds, real estate or other holdings of a foundation. Generally, assets are invested and the income is used to make grants.

Advanced Partner Center: customizable role you can assign to your partners in NetSuite. The Advanced Partner Center gives a partner access to their customers, campaigns, opportunities and sales orders as well as reports pertaining to partners.

audience: In NetSuite, audience refers to the specific users, roles or groups who have access to certain files or forms. You can also use NetSuite to publish a Web site or Web page to a particular audience. Choose an audience on the Audience subtab on applicable NetSuite records such as files, folders, and Web site pages.

breadcrumbs: The small links that appear on the upper left side of NetSuite pages. Each page has a series of links to the working pages of the system. Once you've reached one of these working pages, these links tell you where you are in the system. If you want to go back to a page you have already worked with, you can click that link in the breadcrumbs. For example, if the breadcrumbs are Lists > Items > Inventory Part, you are working on an inventory item’s record.

campaign: a series of marketing efforts or programs designed to achieve a certain organizational objective. For nonprofits, this objective might be fundraising, calls to action, client outreach, education, volunteer management or raising awareness. And it might include tactics like email, phone, direct mail, or printed advertisement. You can setup and manage campaigns in NetSuite when you enable Marketing Automation.

charity: In its traditional legal meaning, the word "charity" encompasses religion, education, assistance to the government, promotion of health, relief of poverty or distress and other purposes that benefit the community.

class (fund): A way to separate and track records such as financials, transactions and employees. For example, a janitorial service wants to track household and commercial accounts separately. After they set up a class for each of these account types, they can track the financial performance of each class over any given period of time.

constituent: These are always customer records in NetSuite. Contacts are almost never used. NetSuite allows you to classify a customer record as a company or individual. Constituents who are individuals should always be entered as individual customers. Any other type of constituent (corporation, foundation, household, trust, donor advised fund, etc.) should be entered as company.

csv: Comma separated value. A file format you can use for importing and exporting data in and out of NetSuite.

custom form: A form you can modify based on the needs of your business.

dashboard: Provides a visual workspace that allows users instant, uninterrupted access to accurate information. On your dashboards, you can view the data you need to make decisions, and edit records easily. Dashboard content is displayed in a variety of portlets, dynamic data display windows. Some portlets provide direct access to raw data, while others display data that has been synthesized into critical business metrics, such as key performance indicators (KPIs), performance scorecards, trend graphs, and report snapshots. Other portlets allow you to display data from Web site RSS feeds.

department: A division or section of your business. Use departments to separate and track records such as financials, transactions and employees. For example, you can create a department for each team of employees dedicated to a certain area of business, and then track income and expenses by each department over any given period of time.

donation: Gift represented by a cash sale transaction record

donor: An individual or organization that makes a grant or contribution to a donee. Also known as the grantor or grantmaker. In NetSuite, the donor is represented by a customer record.

entity: Entity records include those records that define people or organizations such as a partner organization, foundation, school or a company.

export: The process of transferring data from NetSuite into another program. Right now, only exporting to IIF is supported. IIF (Information Interchange Format) files are tab-delimited ASCII files that QuickBooks can import and export. To export, go to Setup > Export as IIF. Watch for other exporting features in the future.

Financial Statement: A report that summarizes an organization's financial position. Financial statements include the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows. In NetSuite, financial statements differ from other available financial reports in the following ways: they group data by financial sections, they store report characteristics in layouts, and they have a specialized customization interface, the Financial Report Builder.

grant: an award of funds to an organization or individual to undertake charitable activities

grantee: the individual or organization that receives the grant

Income Statement: A financial statement that shows an organization's revenues, expenses, and net income over a period of time. This report is also called a profit and loss statement or an earnings statement.

in-kind donation: (a.k.a gifts in kind), refer to the monetary value of donated goods or services. Examples can be goods such as computers, furniture, supplies; services such as office space, construction labor or administrative support; and expertise such as bookkeeping/accounting services, legal, tax or business advice or social media development.

internal ID: Records and forms in NetSuite each have a unique internal ID. The internal ID is useful when writing SuiteScript and when referring to custom records and custom fields. Internal IDs are also useful for understanding the default URL parameters in your Web store. You can set a preference to always view internal IDs for records on lists. To set the preference, go to Home > Set Preferences. On the General subtab, in the Defaults section, check the Show Internal IDs box.

items: Records that track objects you utilize or services you provide in day-to-day business, or assist your business processes. Items may be inventory items that you buy and sell, assemblies you manufacture, or services you provide to customers. They can be electronic files to download or gift certificates that record prepayment. Items such as discounts or markups can affect pricing on transactions. For information on the many item record types available in NetSuite, see Item Types.

lead: a lead is a company or individual that represents a potential “sales” opportunity. When you see “leads,” think prospective donors, program participants, members, etc. These are people who might have expressed an interest in your programs, but with whom you have yet to have significant interaction.

mail merge: Operation allowing one to include information from a NetSuite account in business correspondence. With NetSuite's Mail Merge feature, you can create personalized email, letters, faxes, PDF documents, mailing labels and more.

matching gift: also known as a matching fund or matching donation is a charitable gift made toward a non-profit organization by a matching donor under the provision that an original donor first makes a gift toward that organization

note: Notes are automatically added to records to keep track of any changes made to the record. You can also add manual notes about communication you have had with the person the record is for.

opportunities: an opportunity is a record of negotiation with a prospect. For nonprofits, think of opportunities as grant applications, pledge payments, individual donations, product sales, fee-for-service activities, or any other financial transaction. In the SuiteDonor bundle, Opportunities have been renamed “Donations.”

partner: A partner is an outside company you have a business relationship with who isn't a customer or a vendor.

Partner Center: Partners can log in to NetSuite to update their profiles, view reports and set up promotion codes.

pledge: this is Sales Order in NetSuite wherein this is a promise to make future contributions to an organization. For example, some donors make multi-year pledges promising to grant a specific amount of money each year.

restricted funds: Assets or income that is restricted in its use, in the types of organizations that may receive grants from it or in the procedures used to make grants from such funds.

sandbox: A sandbox is a copy of your “production environment” – it provides you with one or more test accounts that have configuration, data, and customization identical to your company's production account.

SuiteDonor: a non-profit bundle (still in Beta version) in NetSuite that installs a bunch of customization into a standard NetSuite instance. It renames some standard records (e.g. Cash Sale to Donation), and includes custom records, fields, forms, roles, scripts etc. 

unrestricted funds: Normally found at community foundations, an unrestricted fund is one that is not specifically designated to particular uses by the donor, or for which restrictions have expired or been removed.