The back-office vocabulary, in plain language.

ASN (856)

An ASN, or EDI 856 Advance Ship Notice, is the electronic document a supplier sends a trading partner before a shipment arrives, detailing its contents, packaging hierarchy, and carton or SSCC labels. Accurate ASNs are a common compliance requirement, and errors in them are a frequent source of retailer chargebacks.

Celigo flow

A Celigo flow is a configured integration pipeline in the Celigo platform that moves data between systems, for example syncing orders from a storefront into NetSuite, on a schedule or in response to an event. Flows are where integration logic, error handling, and retries live for a NetSuite-centered operation.

Chargeback / deduction

A chargeback or deduction is an amount a retail or marketplace partner withholds from payment because a shipment, document, or invoice failed to meet their compliance rules: a late ASN, a labeling error, a routing miss. Left untracked, deductions quietly erode channel margin and distort settlement reconciliation.

Clearing account

A clearing account is a temporary general-ledger account where settlement and payout activity lands before it is matched, fees are separated, and the net is swept to the bank. For multi-channel reconciliation it is the structurally correct place to hold a payout until every line is explained and posted.

Days to close

Days to close is the number of business days it takes a finance team to finalize the books after period-end. For multi-channel brands the figure is dominated by reconciliation: the close cannot start until every channel's payout is reconciled, so unmatched settlements are usually why a close that should take days takes weeks.

Deterministic matching

Deterministic matching is reconciliation by fixed rule rather than guess: each settlement line-type is mapped once to a chart-of-accounts treatment, and from then on the same input always produces the same posting. It is the opposite of probabilistic, AI-scored matching. There is no confidence percentage, because the assignment is a lookup a person confirmed.

EDI trading-partner onboarding

EDI trading-partner onboarding is the work of connecting a brand's systems to a retail or wholesale partner so they can exchange standardized electronic documents: orders, shipment notices, invoices, and acknowledgements. On NetSuite and Celigo, it means mapping the partner's exact specification and validating it before live trading begins.

Exception handling

Exception handling is the governed path an automated workflow follows when something does not fit the rules: a payout that will not match, a stuck order, an integration error. Instead of failing silently or forcing a person to hunt, the exception is classified, routed to the right owner with context, and resolved with human approval where it matters.

Exception seam

An exception seam is a point in an operating process where the deterministic rules stop and a person starts hunting: a payout that will not tie out, an order held for a reason nobody recorded, a partner document that changed shape. The work is real, recurring, and usually invisible to the systems that report on it.

Governed AI workflow

A governed AI workflow is an AI-assisted operating process with explicit controls: a defined data contract, a risk tier set by what the action touches, and a human approval point before anything posts to a system of record. It is how AI is used safely on back-office work, amplifying operators rather than replacing them.

Happy-path integration

A happy-path integration is the deterministic motion an integration platform already handles well: an order arrives, an item matches, a fulfillment posts, an invoice follows. Every input fits the rules and no judgment is required. It is the part of commerce operations that is genuinely solved, and it is not where the backlog lives.

Human approval gate

A human approval gate is a defined point where an automated workflow stops and waits for a person before anything consequential happens. It is not a notification and not an after-the-fact log. The action does not execute until someone with the authority to own the outcome approves it, and the approval is recorded.

Marketplace remittance

A marketplace remittance is the statement or document a marketplace provides for a settlement period, showing gross activity, fees, refunds, reserves, adjustments, and the net amount owed to the seller. It is evidence for reconciliation, not the reconciliation process itself and not necessarily the same as the bank deposit timing.

Month-end close automation

Month-end close automation converts the manual, repetitive parts of closing the books (reconciliations, evidence gathering, report rebuilds, exception reviews) into a governed, repeatable workflow in NetSuite. The goal is a close that ties out without needing explanation, with human sign-off retained where judgment and risk matter.

Net deposit

A net deposit is the single amount a marketplace or processor actually transfers to the bank after netting its fees, refunds, reserves, and adjustments against gross sales. Because it summarizes many transactions into one number, the net deposit is an input to reconciliation, not proof that the underlying activity has been matched or explained.

NetSuite HealthCheck

A NetSuite HealthCheck is a focused assessment of where a brand's NetSuite environment is creating friction (manual workarounds, brittle integrations, untrustworthy numbers) and which fixes are worth doing first. It is the entry point Altura uses to surface the highest-value workflows to convert before committing to a build.

Settlement reconciliation

Settlement reconciliation is the process of proving that each marketplace remittance statement and payout deposit matches the underlying orders, refunds, fees, reserves, and adjustments in NetSuite. It is not the statement itself. It is not the bank transfer event; it is the governed matching workflow that explains variances before finance posts the close.

TradeBridge

TradeBridge is Altura's B2B/EDI partner library inside Vista LaunchPad: partner specifications, suite-class patterns, and validation approaches for retail and wholesale trading partners on NetSuite and Celigo. It is a capability of LaunchPad, not a separate managed EDI network.