Glossary

The Microsoft .NET Framework is a platform for building, deploying, and running Web Services and applications. It is required to be installed on computers running Sage 100 Contractor. During Sage 100 Contractor installation, if .NET 4.8 Framework is not found, it is installed automatically.

A 1099 form is used in to report payments made to vendors subject to 1099 reporting.

A generic term for specific information relating to a supplier, customer, bank, or nominal account record.

In Payroll, this term comprises vacation time or pay, sick time or pay, and compensatory time.

An active company is one that you are currently keeping books for in Sage 100 Contractor.

Work a technician might perform in addition to the primary task. The billing rate for add-on work does not include costs for travel.

When you log into Sage 100 Contractor using Company Administrator privileges, you have access rights to all administrative functions. These functions include menu- and field-level security, user setup and access, some customizations, and some work-flow controls.

API is an acronym for application programming interface. Sage 100 Contractor delivers an API with its software package. The API defines the complete methods by which programmers can access and control Sage 100 Contractor to build programs that integrate with Sage 100 Contractor and extent its capabilities.

Programmers interested in developing APIs are invited to join the Developer Partner Program. For more information, visit http://na.sage.com/us/partners/construction-and-real-estate.

In Sage 100 Contractor, you can attach files and hyperlinks (URLs) to records contained in the following windows:

Reports, journals, and listings generated to document and verify entries made in your accounting system.

Users can sign in to Sage 100 Contractor using their Windows credentials, or sign in using a Sage 100 Contractor-specific user name and password. This option is set on the 7-2-2 User List window by an administrator.

Note: When Windows is the authentication method, a domain name is required.

A fixed-price offer to do all, or part of, the work for a project in accordance with the specifications and plans supplied by the owner or contracting agent.

The period of time between statement dates. In Sage 100 Contractor, a cycle is represented by ##DY (a number of days), ##MO (a number of months), and ##TH (a specified day every month).

• ##DY – 30DY means due 30 days from the date of the invoice.
• ##MO – 02MO means due two months from the date of the invoice.
• ##TH – 25TH means due on the 25th day of each month regardless of the date of the invoice.

The unit by which you bill for equipment time.

The most common format for graphic images. Most paint programs support the creation of bitmap files. Bitmap files use the *.bmp file name extension.

Standard text that appears in a report or document. In an accounts receivable invoice, for example, the standard terms of payment appear at the base of every invoice.

A clearing account is a temporary account containing costs or amounts that are to be transferred to another account. In Sage 100 Contractor, you can set up a clearing account in the 1-7 General Ledger Accounts window. You can set it up in the cash accounts section and call it "Check Clearing" or something similar.

Computer connected by a network to the Sage license server. Client workstations run Sage 100 Contractor.

Comma-delimited format is initiated and saved in a text editor with a .cma extension. It consists of an item followed by a comma followed by another item. There are no spaces between the items.

Comma-quote delimited format is initiated and saved in a text editor with a .qte extension. It consists of an item enclosed in quotation marks (") followed by a comma followed by another item enclosed in quotation marks. There are no spaces in the string of items.

Costs represented by purchase orders for materials that have not been shipped or billed. Some contractors allocate costs to contracts when committed rather than wait until the liability has been incurred.

A folder that contains all database information for a Sage 100 Contractor company. The company folders are located in the [Installation drive]:\Sage100Con\Company folder.

The name by which the local area network identifies a server or workstation. Each computer name on the network is unique.

If you have activated floating use licenses, the Current users of the product or feature grid in the License Administration window displays the computer names for the users that are currently using the selected product or feature.

Limits placed on the start or finish date of a task. When you initially create a schedule, tasks do not have any constraints.

The Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) publishes information about the description, categorization, naming, and numbering for construction specifications.

The Associated General Contractors has adapted this numbering system for cost code categorization, which is published jointly with CSI. Ask for the AGC Cost Classification Index.

Construction Specifications Institute
99 Canal Center Plaza
Suite 300
Alexandria, VA 22314
http://www.csinet.org

A ledger account in the general ledger that summarizes the balances for a group of similar subsidiary accounts.

The critical tasks that define the length of the project. Each critical task must be completed within its duration for the project to finish on time.

A method of planning and organizing tasks performed over the course of a project. The critical path is the order of tasks necessary to complete the job. The duration of each task along the critical path determines the project’s overall duration.

A task that can affect the project’s finish date. Delays to a critical task affect subsequent critical tasks, which might delay the project’s completion date.

The amount of the original budget plus the amounts from change orders assigned status 1-Approved.

A cycle, such as a transaction cycle or a billing cycle, is the period between recurring transactions or events. A cycle can be based on days, months, or a specific day of the month. In Sage 100 Contractor, a cycle is represented by ##DY (a number of days), ##MO (a number of months), and ##TH (a specified day every month).

The cycle you assign to a recurring transaction determines the frequency of the transaction. When you post the recurring transaction, Sage 100 Contractor uses the cycle to determine the next transaction date.

Cycles can be found in these and other windows: 1-4 Recurring Journal Transactions, 4-6 Recurring Payables, and 3-11 Recurring Receivables.

The frequency of a billing, transaction, invoice, or other cycle can be a number of days, a number of months, or a specific day of the month. In Sage 100 Contractor, a cycle is represented by ##DY (a number of days), ##MO (a number of months), and ##TH (a specified day every month).

When specifying the frequency of a recurring transaction or other event, you replace the ## symbols with the number of days or months, or the day of the month on which the event occurs. For example:

• ##DY.30DY means due 30 days from the date of the invoice.
• ##MO.02MO means due two months from the date of the invoice.
• ##TH.25TH means due on the 25th day of each month regardless of the date of the invoice.

You enter these cycles in 1-4 Recurring Journal Transactions, 4-6 Recurring Payables, 3-11 Recurring Receivables, 4-6 Recurring Payables, 4-7-4 Recurring Credit Card Charges, and in other menus.

Requires the payment of prevailing-wage rates on Federal construction projects that exceed $2,000. Wage rates are determined by the Department of Labor, and apply to all laborers and mechanics that work on the project.

A positive balance on the left-hand side of an account. Increasing the balance of an account that normally has a debit balance is called debiting, as is decreasing the balance of an account that normally has a credit balance.

Indicates the location where the body of a report will appear. The gray detail box cannot be edited as it only serves as a placeholder for the report details.

A tax calculated separately from the sales tax. Often, the discretionary surtax has a maximum, limiting the amount that can be taxed per invoice or job.

A false check number. Most payroll records assigned pay type 3-Hand Computed, 4-Startup, or 6-Third Party result in a net $0 paycheck. Records using those pay types do not require you to print a check, but do require a check number.

A formula to compute the value of a calculated field. An expression can contain fields, constants, operators, and functions.

The Federal Insurance Contribution Act. FICA is made up of two parts, Social Security and Medicare. A federal payroll tax that the employees and employers must contribute to support the social security and medicare systems.

 Because information can change each time you generate a report or document, use a field. The field acts as a placeholder for information until you generate the report or document.

A presentation style report that combines the Balance Sheet and Income Statement.

 A firewall is a device and/or software program that guards the entrance to a private network and keeps out unauthorized or unwanted traffic. The integrity of this protective barrier depends on the effective deployment, configuration, and capabilities of individual firewall devices.

When you install programs on a computer that is running a firewall, you see alert messages from the firewall about allowing the new program to access the Internet, to access privileged resources, and/or to act as a server. It is best to grant access to new programs that you are installing, such as Sage License Administration tool and Sage 100 Contractor.

 An amount of time that you can delay a task without affecting another task. A task with float is not in the critical path. If a task with float does not begin or end within the allotted time, it can delay other tasks and ultimately delay the project’s finish date.

A hardware problem can cause the computer running the Sage license server to fail. If that happens, you have to re-install the Sage license server on a different computer on your network and re-activate your product license. Then you have to go to each computer running Sage 100 Contractor and from there specify the new computer on which you have installed the Sage license server.

A chronological record of transactions also referred to as the book of original entry.

Labor burden refers to job-related payroll overhead costs. These employer-incurred costs are in addition to the direct wages and include taxes, insurance, and benefits. The additional costs for Labor burden can account for up to 35% of the total wages.

For more detailed information, see Working with Project Management and related topics.

A delay between tasks that have a predecessor/successor relationship.

Debts or other amounts that you owe to creditors for goods or services provided to the company. Liabilities that are due within the next twelve months are called current liabilities. Liabilities that have a longer period due are called long-term liabilities.

A legal authorization from Sage to use the product or feature.

A license expires if:

• It has not been activated within the grace period.
• It has been activated, and the license agreement states that it expires.

Refer to the end-user license agreement for details about the terms and conditions of your license.

A product license defines your Sage 100 Contractor product attributes. For example, your license number contains information about your version of Sage 100 Contractor, any Add-on modules, and the number of license uses that you have purchased.

An Activated status for a license indicates that you can use this Sage product or feature, such as Sage 100 Contractor.

After adding or updating a license, you must activate it. Activation verifies that the Sage product or feature is a legal copy and is installed in compliance with the end-user license agreement.

License uses define the number of people who can work in Sage 100 Contractor on your company network simultaneously. For example, let’s suppose that you have purchased 10 license uses with your product license. With 10 license uses, 10 people can be logged in to Sage 100 Contractor at the same time through your network.

Even if you install Sage 100 Contractor on, for example, 50 computers, the Sage license server will only assign 10 license uses at the same time. If you are the eleventh person who tries to log on to Sage 100 Contractor, you will see a message telling you that no license uses are available and to try again later.

You can manage your license use through the License Administration window.

There are several preconditions for acquiring a license use.

• Your product license has been activated.
• A network connection exists between the computer running the Sage license server software and your workstation computer running Sage 100 Contractor.
• You have specified the Sage license server computer on your network from your computer running Sage 100 Contractor.
• You have access to and rights in a Sage 100 Contractor company.
• A license use is available.

When you can launch Sage 100 Contractor and log in to a Sage 100 Contractor company, you have acquired a license use.

When you exit a Sage 100 Contractor company or the Sage 100 Contractor program, the license use is returned to the pool. If you switch between two Sage 100 Contractor companies, your license use is returned, then re-acquired.

When you exit a Sage 100 Contractor company or the Sage 100 Contractor program, the license use is returned to the pool. If you switch between two Sage 100 Contractor companies, your license use is returned, then re-acquired.

If you experience a computer or network failure, Sage 100 Contractor does not have a chance to return your license use as usual. After a certain period of time, your license use is automatically returned.

Many lending institutions, as part of the terms of a loan, require contractors to submit a request for a loan disbursement. In the loan draw application, the contractor details the amount of work completed in each cost code or division. Before the lender releases the funds, the lender inspects the job site to verify the amount of work completed.

Taxes that you set up in the system yourself. Local and other custom taxes are not included in Sage 100 Contractor tax updates.

When two or more computers are connected and communicating with each other, and they are in close proximity, then you are operating in a local area network (LAN) environment.

Sage 100 Contractor is engineered to run in a LAN environment or a stand-alone environment.

A measure of a company's profitability, cost structure and efficiency, calculated by dividing earnings or cash flow by revenue. There are four basic types of profit margin: gross, operating, pre-tax, and net.

The percentage of the cost or price of a product added to cost in order to arrive at a selling price.

A federal payroll tax that the employee and employer pay to support medical coverage for older Americans.

A group of computers connected by a telecommunications link that allows them to share information. A network may be wired or it may be wireless. Two types of networks are local area network (LAN) and large area network (WAN). The Internet is a WAN.

The amount of the original contract plus approved change orders.

You can select from four operators to perform standard calculations.

• + To add
  
• - To subtract
  
• * To multiply
  
• / To divide

Passwords provide access by authorized users to companies. You can assign a different password for each user and for each company. A password can contain any combination of letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols except ! (exclamation mark), # (number symbol), $ (dollar sign), % (percentage symbol), & (ampersand), " (quotation mark), and ' (apostrophe). A password can be up to 20 characters long. Passwords are case sensitive.

Pay Type categorizes the timecard line and determines the rate of pay. A pay type is required for each timecard line.

The status of a payable record indicates its location in the process.

Lets you manage the wages and benefit packages for union shops. During timecard entry, Sage 100 Contractor uses the paygroup as the source for wages and benefit packages. For open-shop contractors working on prevailing-wage jobs, paygroups make it possible to pay each employee the correct wage rates and benefits for each type of work performed.

PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. It was developed by the major credit card companies as a guideline to help organizations that process card payments, prevent credit card fraud, cracking, and various other security vulnerabilities and threats.

A company processing, storing, or transmitting payment card data must be PCI-compliant or risk losing its ability to process credit card payments and being audited and/or fined. (For more information about PCI standards, see https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/.)

Sage 100 Contractor payment processing works exclusively with Paya to enable merchants to seamlessly process check and credit card transactions directly in Sage 100 Contractor. The payment processing program uses Paya Exchange, a secure payment-processing application, to connect to Paya and process check and credit card transactions.

Integrating your financial and operations system with Paya lets you process check and credit card transactions without storing your customers’ sensitive card information in your database. Paya Exchange transmits check and credit card details through a secure connection to Paya, where they are stored in a PCI-compliant vault, protecting your from exposure to non-compliance penalties and credit card fraud.

A placeholder cost code is a division cost code with no assigned amount displayed in all capital letters. When using detailed cost codes, placeholders can help estimators maintain them under the correct division names. You don’t have to use placeholder cost codes, but using them can be helpful when not budgeting phases.

A very rough estimate. Use plug numbers only until you are able to get a better estimate.

A task that must start or finish before the dependent task can start or finish.

The main work a technician is performing during a service call. The billing rate includes the cost of travel.

Architect-supervised jobs, as well as an increasing number of private jobs, require contractors to submit bills based on the percent of work completed. This idea of billing as work is completed is referred to as progress billing.

When saving a payable invoice for a vendor, Sage 100 Contractor refers to the selection made in the Purchase Order Warning list in the vendor’s record. If the payable invoice does not meet the criteria, Sage 100 Contractor displays a warning.

The total quantity of stock you have throughout all inventory locations that you have not reserved for specific jobs.

The total quantity of stock throughout all inventory locations. This includes all stock held for use on specific jobs.

A span of time that contains the highs and lows of seasonal work; usually a year is sufficient.

A portion of the contract that is withheld at an agreed upon rate. Withholding the funds acts as an inducement to complete a contract.

The computer in your network that manages the licenses for Sage 100 Contractor. It becomes the Sage license server when the License Administration program is installed on it, and you enter your Sage client ID and Registration name. In a network environment, the computer running Sage 100 Contractor must be connected to the computer running the Sage license server.

A security group has access to specific program areas, such as Payroll, Estimating, Accounts Payable, and so on. The company administrator creates each group, and assigns users to groups as needed to provide access to program functions.

A type of accrual. Sick time consists of the hours available for an employee to use as time off with pay for illness, as well as the method used to compute the accrual.

A stand-alone environment implies that you are running the Sage license server and Sage 100 Contractor on a single computer. No other computers running Sage 100 Contractor are connected to the Sage license server computer through a network.

The status bar is located at the bottom left of Sage 100 Contractor windows. When your cursor is in an entry box, column, or grid cell on a window, the status bar displays valuable information about what to enter in the box, column, or grid cell.

A successor task is one that must start or finish after the dependent task can start or finish.

Tab-delimited format is initiated and saved in a text editor with a .tab extension. It consists of an item followed by a TAB followed by another item.

Lets you ignore the discount due dates to take discounts.

An event that has a defined beginning and ending. Not only can you create tasks for work to perform, but you can also create tasks for other important events such as inspections, sending billings, or ordering materials.

The number of days necessary to complete the work from start to finish, excluding non-workdays.

Windows Terminal Services is a component of Microsoft Windows Server. Terminal Services consists of a terminal server and one or more remote workstations. It allows users to access programs or data stored on a remote computer by a phone, network, Internet connection, or other communication methods.

Remote network connections do not provide adequate bandwidth to run Sage products without the use of Terminal Services. Terminal Services provides remote users with a stable and well-performing experience with Sage products.

The function you use to enter work details for an employee for a specific pay period.

The period of time between training dates. In Sage 100 Contractor, a cycle is represented by ##DY (a number of days), ##MO (a number of months), and ##TH (a specified day every month).

• ##DY – 30DY means due 30 days from the date of the training.
• ##MO – 02MO means due two months from the date of the training.
• ##TH – 25TH means due on the 25th day of each month.

See Cycle.

User name is the name with which you log in to a Sage product such as Sage 100 Contractor.

User names define access to Sage 100 Contractor companies and must be set up for a Sage 100 Contractor company by a company administrator. Every time you create a new company, you have to create a list of user names on the 7-2-2 User Listwindow.

A type of accrual. Vacation time consists of the hours available for an employee to use as time off with pay, as well as the method used to compute the accrual.

A WAN is a computer network that spans a relatively large geographical area. Typically, a WAN consists of two or more local-area networks (LANs). Computers connected to a wide-area network are often connected through public networks, such as the telephone system and with the security of virtual private networks (VPN).

For information about running Sage 100 Contractor in a WAN, contact your business partner.

The wildcard takes the place of a word. Using a wildcard, you can narrow a search for a string of characters with an asterisk (*). It is important to separate the wildcard from any other text by using a space. Otherwise, Sage 100 Contractor does not recognize the wildcard as a separate word.

A state-mandated type of insurance that compensates workers who have been injured while on the job.