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Corpay One's glossary

Here's a list of commonly used words and concepts used in Corpay One.

Mads avatar
Written by Mads
Updated over 3 years ago

Here’s a list of some common words you'll see throughout Corpay One's web and mobile apps. Looking for a word that isn't defined here? Shoot us a message and we'll add it to the list!

ACH

Automatic Clearing House (ACH) refers to a type of electronic payment that pulls funds directly from one bank account and sends them to another. In Corpay One, you have the option of paying vendors via ACH or via check.

  • To learn more about setting up payment methods for your vendors in Corpay One, click here

Administrator

An administrator is a Corpay One user who has permission to manage documents, settings, integrations, workflows, user permissions and more. They have almost all of the same permissions as an account owner, but can be limited in a few small ways by the owner under Settings > Team.

  • Read about Corpay Ones’s various roles and permissions here

Advisor

Advisor is a special type of Corpay One account for accountants and consultants that work with multiple companies, or clients. There is a special dashboard and billing structure for advisors. Please reach out to a member of our sales team to learn more.

Approval

Approval refers to the common accounting task of having a manager or other coworker review and “approve” a company expense. Corpay One makes the process easy, as any appointed approver can simply hit the “Approve” button on a bill, receipt or credit note. Depending on your company’s unique settings and workflows, you can specify who the approver(s) should be.

  • Read more about how to approve (or decline) a company expense here.

Audit Trail

Audit trail is a Corpay One feature that lets you track all the activities occurring throughout your Corpay One account. Simply click your name in the lower left corner, and then click Activity, and the Audit Trail / Notification screen will appear, giving you visibility into which coworkers have approved bills, left notes, updated settings, and more. 

Autopay

Autopay is a setting you can turn on in Settings > Advanced > Payments. If Autopay is enabled, bills will automatically proceed for payment once they are approved. If it is disabled, then you’ll need to manually click Pay now on unpaid bills to pay them.

  • Read more about Autopay here.

Bill

A bill is a type of document uploaded to Corpay One that represents money owed to a vendor for goods or services. You can upload bills to Corpay One, and based on your settings and workflows, we’ll process and pay them in a way that best meets your needs.

  • Read more about the document types supported in Corpay One here.

Bill Pay

With Bill Pay, Corpay One can read the information off of all the documents you submit and turn them into actionable data. Every time you submit a document (via the web app, mobile app or Send & Scan) it will show as “analyzing” until it appears under Bill Pay with all the pertinent information digitized, editable and ready for processing.

  • Learn more about Bill Pay here.

Category

Category in Corpay One refers to the general classification, or expense account, of any financial document. When you integrate with your accounting software, Corpay One will import your existing chart of accounts, which can be found by navigating to Settings > Lists > Categories in the Lists page under “Categories.”

  • Learn more about categorizing documents here

Check

A check is a payment method used to pay vendors that involves sending a physical paper check, that the vendor can then deposit into their bank account. Checks take up to a week to deliver to vendors, while ACH bank transfers tend to be complete in 2-3 days.

  • Learn more about setting up payment methods for each of your vendors here

Contributor

A contributor is a Corpay One user who can log in and submit bills to their company’s Corpay One account, but they do not have permission to manage permissions, workflows or other company settings. Their visibility can also be limited by an account administrator or owner. The contributor is perfect for an employee who needs to submit documents for approval, but does not have other accounting responsibilities.

  • Read about the various roles and permissions in Corpay One here

Company

A company is a business unit within a Corpay One account that has its own set of documents, workflows and coworkers. You’ll see your company name in the bottom left corner when you are logged in Corpay One, as well as in your settings. With an advisor account, you have the option to manage multiple companies at once. 

Coworker

A coworker is simply another member of your team with a Corpay One account. As an administrator or owner in your company’s Corpay One account, you can easily add coworkers, as well as set their roles and permissions, by navigating to Settings > Team

Credit Note

A credit note is a document that reflects a sum of money your vendor owes your company (as opposed to a bill, which represents money owed to the vendor). You can submit a document as a credit note either by clicking Add document > Credit note in the Bill Pay section or by sending it by email to your company's Send & Go address. In addition, you can always convert a bill to a credit note using the three dots in the top right corner of each document. Rather than marking as paid like a bill, you must manually mark credit notes as “processed” when you have deducted them from bills.

  • Learn more about processing credit notes here

Department

A department refers to the entity within your company to which coworkers and expenses often belong. When you assign a primary department to a coworker in that coworker's permission settings, then each document that the coworker submits automatically has that department selected. You can sync your departments directly from your ERP system. 

Direct Pay

Direct Pay is an payment method option we offer for customers to pay their vendors almost instantly. Read more about Direct Pay here.

Document

Document is an umbrella term that is used to describe any bill, credit note or receipt that you upload to Corpay One. Documents are either bills (i.e. invoices received for services, products, utilities, office supplies, contractors), credit notes, or receipts (i.e. employee expense reports, previously paid). These are what companies or vendors submit to Corpay One for processing.

Integration

Corpay One lets you set up integrations with your existing accounting software (i.e. QuickBooks, Xero, Dinero, E-conomic) or other commonly used tools (i.e. Zapier, Slack). Integrations make it so that Corpay One can coexist with your existing processes, with information automatically syncing across your databases without any manual work.

  • Learn more about our integrations here

Initiate

Initiate means to start the payment process for a bill. Clicking Pay Now on a bill will initiate the payment, or you can specify in your settings to automatically initiate a payment a certain number of days before a bill’s due date. After payment is complete, the bill’s status will change from “Initiated” to “Paid.”

  • Learn more about the different statuses a bill can have here

Invoice

An invoice is a document that a seller sends to a purchaser, representing an amount owed for goods or services. In Corpay One, we usually refer to invoices as bills. You can submit invoices to Corpay One for approval, payment, categorization and more. 

List

A list is simply a customizable list of labels you can use to classify your documents in Corpay One. You can add a list in 3 ways: 1) import it from your accounting software (i.e. expense accounts, departments, projects); 2) create a list manually from Settings > Lists; and 3) upload your list from a CSV file. When you make a list “visible” it will automatically appear as a drop-down field on each of your documents.

  • Learn more about setting list visibility here

Mark as Paid

Mark as Paid is a Corpay One feature that lets you manually mark bills as paid if you’ve handled the payment outside of Corpay One. It’s basically a button that appears on unpaid bills, and when you click it, the document automatically changes to “Paid” status. Simple as that. 

Owner

An account owner is the Corpay One user with the highest level of controls and permissions in the company’s Corpay One account. The person who creates the Corpay One account is automatically assigned its owner, however ownership can be transferred. The owner has visibility and control of settings, workflows and coworker permissions.

  • Read about the various coworker roles and permissions in Corpay One’s here

Pay Now

Pay Now is a button that appears on each unpaid bill after it’s been approved. When you click Pay Now, it changes the bill’s status to “Initiated,” which means the payment process has started. It does not complete the full payment in that instant.

  • Learn more about using Pay Now here

Payment Method

Payment method refers to the way your vendor will be paid. Remember that payment funds in Corpay One flow first from you to Corpay One, and then from Corpay One to your vendor. This term refers to the second part of that process (Corpay One to vendor). So even if your vendor’s preferred payment method is via Check, your money would still flow to Corpay One per the Payment source set up in your settings.

  • Learn more about setting a default payment method for each vendor here

Payment Source

Payment source refers to the type of payment you’ll be using to pay your vendors, via Corpay One. Remember that payment funds flow first from you to Corpay One, and then from Corpay One to your vendor. Payment source dictates how the funds are transferred from you to Corpay One. You can set a default payment source, customize it manually on each bill, or set the payment source with a workflow. 

Pay

Pay is a core feature, or component, that lets you pay your bills to vendors through Corpay One. As soon as your account has been verified and a payment source added, you’ll be able to get up and running.

  • Learn all about Pay here

Receipt

A receipt in Corpay One is a type of document, or expense, that represents a company expense that has already been paid. Coworkers can submit receipts for approval in Corpay One, as well as automatic categorization (goodbye, paper expense reports!) They’ll always appear in the Paid tab unless they require approval, in which case they can be found under Pending.

  • Learn more about receipts here

Send & Scan

Send & Scan gives your company a unique email address upon getting started with Corpay One. You, your coworkers and even your vendors can send expenses as attachments (PDF, JPEG or PNG) directly to your company’s Send & Scan address, and the expense’s data will automatically be read, analyzed and made visible in your account. Each company gets 2 Send & Scan addresses: one for bills and credit notes, and the other for receipts.

  • Learn more about using Send & Scan here

Workflow

A workflow is essentially an if/then statement used to create workflows to process your documents. Each rule consists of triggers and actions, and owners / administrators can create and manage these by navigating to Advanced > Workflows.

  • Read more about workflows here.

Vendor

A vendor refers to the entity to whom you owe money for a specific product or service. Each bill, receipt or credit note that you upload in Corpay One is associated with a vendor. You can easily manage vendors in Corpay One by navigating to Bill Pay > Vendors, as well as add a default payment source for each one.

  • Read more about vendors here.

Verification

Verification is a series of steps each Corpay One user must take in order to take advantage of Pay (the ability to pay vendors through Corpay One). The process will verify your identity using a few sources, and there are some additional steps that the account owner must take in order to verify the company.

  • Read more about the various verification steps in Corpay One here.

Viewer

A viewer is a Corpay One user who can only view documents in their company’s Corpay One account. They may neither submit documents, pay bills nor manage any settings.

  • Read about the various coworker roles and permissions in Corpay One here

Workflow

Workflow is Corpay One's state-of-the-art automation feature that lets you create if/then rules (or workflows) to perform a range of actions on your documents. It’s what transforms the data Corpay One has read off your uploaded documents into approvals, bill payments, accounting categorizations and more. Using simple sets of triggers and actions, a workflow dictates what action to perform on documents that match certain criteria.

  • Learn more about workflows and how to let them work for you here

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