Ubiquitous Language & Terminology

A unified glossary guarantees that sales representatives, operations managers, fulfillment partners, and software contracts share an identical understanding of commercial and order management processes.

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Terminology Glossary

Term	Category	Business Definition
Quotation / Proforma	Commercial Phase	A non-binding commercial proposal presented to a customer before order confirmation.
Pricing Tier	Commercial Phase	A customer-specific or channel-specific price classification (e.g., retail, wholesale, distributor).
Commercial Discount	Commercial Phase	A reduction in price applied at line or order level, expressed as a fixed amount or percentage.
Customer Commitment	Commercial Phase	The moment a quotation is accepted and converted into a binding sales order.
Sales Order (SO)	Order Fulfillment & Routing	The authoritative document representing a customer’s binding request for goods or services.
Omnichannel Order	Order Fulfillment & Routing	A sales order captured through any approved channel, normalized into a single internal representation.
Split Shipment	Order Fulfillment & Routing	The practice of fulfilling a single sales order through multiple physical shipments from one or more nodes.
Sourcing Node	Order Fulfillment & Routing	A warehouse, store, or drop-ship location selected to fulfill all or part of an order.
Backorder	Post-Order & Exceptions	A portion of an order held for fulfillment once stock becomes available.
Order Cancellation	Post-Order & Exceptions	The formal termination of a sales order or line before or after fulfillment.
Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA)	Post-Order & Exceptions	A controlled authorization for a customer to return goods and receive refund, replacement, or credit.
Partial Fulfillment	Post-Order & Exceptions	Delivering only a portion of the ordered quantity due to stock or operational constraints.
Soft Reservation	Allocation & Availability	A provisional hold on inventory during order capture, not yet tied to a specific fulfillment node.
Hard Allocation	Allocation & Availability	A firm assignment of specific stock at a specific node to a sales order line.
Available to Promise (ATP)	Allocation & Availability	The net quantity available for new orders after accounting for on-hand stock, reservations, and commitments.