PSA + MSP Glossary
Plain-English definitions of PSA, MSP, and OriginPSA-specific terms. Bookmark this page; it's the reference for what we mean when we say “drift detection” or “dispatch board.”
A
- ACH(Bank transfer, eCheck)
- Automated Clearing House — the US bank-to-bank transfer network. OriginPSA accepts ACH via Stripe for invoice payments; settlement takes 3-5 business days vs cards which settle next-day.See also: Stripe Elements · Recurring Invoice
- Audit Log
- A chronological record of every state-changing action: who did what, when, from which IP, against which entity. OriginPSA's audit log is decrypt-on-read (encrypted at rest) and is visible per-entity on customers, tickets, invoices, projects, KB articles.
B
- BAA(Business Associate Addendum)
- Under HIPAA, a contract between a covered entity (a healthcare practice) and a business associate (an MSP, or in turn the MSP's sub-processors). OriginPSA executes a BAA on request for tenants serving healthcare customers.
C
- Change Order(CO)
- A signed amendment to a project's budget. OriginPSA change orders carry hours_delta + amount_delta + a billing mode (immediate / scheduled / recurring / manual). On e-signature, the CO applies to the budget and dispatches billing automatically.See also: Change Request · Milestone Billing · Project
- Change Request(CR)
- A customer's request for project scope to change. OriginPSA can auto-create a change order draft from an approved CR — the draft is pre-filled with the CR's description; staff fills in the hours + dollars and sends for signature.See also: Change Order · Approval Workflow
- ClamAV
- Open-source antivirus daemon. OriginPSA runs every file upload through ClamAV before accepting it; fails closed if the daemon is unavailable.See also: Upload Hardening
- CIPP
- Cloud Integration Platform for Partners — an open-source M365 multi-tenant management tool widely used by MSPs. OriginPSA integrates with CIPP to surface customer license counts, user provisioning, and tenant config on the customer record.See also: M365 · Microsoft Partner
- CMDB(Configuration Management Database)
- A record of an organization's IT components and their relationships. OriginPSA's CMDB stores configuration items linked to customers; runbooks and tickets reference them. See /cmdb-explainer for use cases.
- Customer Portal
- The customer-facing surface of a PSA — where customers self-serve tickets, invoices, estimates, payments, and project status. OriginPSA's portal is built into the same data model as the staff app, with per-contact role scoping.See also: TOTP MFA
- CSAT(Customer Satisfaction Score)
- A short post-resolution survey asking the customer how the support experience was. OriginPSA sends CSAT surveys automatically based on configurable triggers (ticket closed, time elapsed, etc.) with per-tenant frequency caps.
D
- Dispatch Board
- A schedule-grid view of the next 7 days showing who's assigned to which tickets and projects. OriginPSA's dispatch board lets a manager reshuffle work when scope changes mid-week.See also: Triage Rules · SLA
- Drift Detection
- Catching unauthorized post-sync edits. OriginPSA flags when an invoice or estimate that synced TO QuickBooks gets edited INSIDE QuickBooks after — the next round-trip surfaces a banner with the diff so you decide which side is right.See also: QuickBooks Online · QuickBooks Desktop
E
- Encryption at Rest
- Sensitive data stored in the database is encrypted with AES-256-GCM so a database-level breach (backup leak, SQLi, etc.) doesn't expose PII or integration tokens in plaintext.See also: Audit Log · Per-Tenant Database
- Escalation Engine
- Automation that pages the right tech when an SLA target is at risk. OriginPSA's escalation engine routes by tag (e.g. "after-hours" tag pages the on-call rotation, not the day-shift team) and supports multi-tier escalation (tier 1 unanswered → tier 2 manager).
- Estimate(Quote, Proposal)
- A document offered to a customer with line items and totals, sent for e-signature. OriginPSA estimates convert to invoices automatically on signature; carry forward to projects on conversion.
F
- FX Rates(Exchange Rates)
- Currency conversion rates. OriginPSA auto-refreshes FX rates daily from open.er-api.com and computes cross-rates for every supported currency pair from a USD base — needed when reporting roll-ups span multiple currencies (Enterprise plan).
- Fixed-Fee Billing
- Billing model where a customer pays a fixed amount for a defined scope regardless of hours consumed. OriginPSA supports per-project fixed-fee mode: time entries don't roll up into invoicing automatically; instead milestones and change orders drive billing.
H
- HMAC(HMAC-SHA256)
- Hash-based Message Authentication Code — used to sign webhook payloads so receivers can verify authenticity. OriginPSA HMAC-signs every outbound webhook with a per-subscription secret.
I
- Infisical
- Open-source secrets vault. OriginPSA's production deployment stores secrets in a self-hosted Infisical HA pair; app servers fetch them at boot via machine identity rather than storing plaintext on disk.
K
- Knowledge Base(KB)
- OriginPSA's documentation module: internal staff KB with folder hierarchy + markdown editor, per-entity articles attached to customers/vendors/leads/prospects/tickets, dual-surface attachments that mirror to entity Files tabs.See also: Runbook
M
- M365(Microsoft 365, Office 365)
- Microsoft's productivity SaaS suite. OriginPSA integrates with M365 for inbound email-to-ticket, calendar events, SAML SSO, and customer-tenant management via CIPP.
- MFA(2FA, Two-Factor Authentication, TOTP)
- Multi-factor authentication. OriginPSA supports TOTP (Google Authenticator, 1Password, Authy compatible) for both staff and customer-portal users. Secrets are encrypted at rest.
- Milestone Billing
- Billing tied to project milestones meeting their completion criteria. Each milestone can carry a billing_trigger_amount that auto-generates an invoice when the milestone fires.See also: Change Order · Project
- MSP(Managed Service Provider)
- A company that delivers IT services (support, monitoring, security, projects) to other companies as their outsourced IT. OriginPSA is the PSA built specifically for MSP workflows.
- Multi-Currency
- Support for billing customers in their local currency. OriginPSA's Enterprise plan supports per-customer + per-estimate + per-invoice currency override, with auto-refreshed FX rates for reporting roll-ups.See also: FX Rates
P
- Per-Tenant Database
- OriginPSA's multi-tenancy model — each customer gets a dedicated MySQL database (saas_tenant_<slug>), not a shared schema with row-level filters. Eliminates the class of cross-tenant data leak bugs caused by a missing WHERE clause.See also: Encryption at Rest
- PSA(Professional Services Automation)
- Software for service-delivery companies (MSPs, IT consultancies, AV integrators) covering CRM, ticketing, project management, time tracking, billing, and the workflows between them. OriginPSA is one.
Q
- QBO(QuickBooks Online)
- Intuit's cloud accounting product. OriginPSA syncs two-way with QBO via REST API — customers, invoices, payments, items, tax codes — with per-connection inventory mapping and drift detection.See also: QBWC · Drift Detection
- QBWC(QuickBooks Web Connector)
- The desktop-side bridge that lets web apps talk to QuickBooks Desktop via the qbXML SOAP protocol. OriginPSA includes a QBWC integration for tenants who run QB Desktop.See also: QBO
R
- Recurring Invoice
- An invoice that auto-generates on a schedule (monthly retainer, quarterly contract, annual license). OriginPSA recurring templates auto-send and auto-charge stored Stripe payment methods.
- RMM(Remote Monitoring and Management)
- Software that monitors customer endpoints and runs scripts on them remotely. Not OriginPSA's primary domain — we integrate with NinjaOne RMM, surface device + alert + script data on customer records, but don't replace your RMM.
- Runbook
- A documented procedure for a recurring task (monthly patching, customer onboarding, incident response). OriginPSA runbooks attach to triage rules so the right runbook surfaces on the right ticket type.
S
- SAML SSO
- Security Assertion Markup Language — the SSO protocol most enterprises use. OriginPSA supports SAML 2.0 against Entra ID, Google Workspace, Okta, and any compliant IdP. SAML logins skip TOTP (the IdP IS the second factor).
- Service Contract(Agreement, Retainer)
- An ongoing agreement with a customer — block-hour retainer, managed-services contract, recurring service. OriginPSA tracks consumption against ticket time entries with a renewal dashboard for expiring contracts.
- SLA(Service Level Agreement)
- Configurable response + resolution time targets per customer or contract. OriginPSA SLAs auto-pause on customer wait, auto-escalate on tier breach, and feed compliance reports.
- Stripe Connect / Stripe Elements
- Stripe's hosted payment UI. OriginPSA uses Stripe Elements in the customer portal — your team never sees raw card data, putting your PCI scope at SAQ-A.
T
- T&M Billing(Time and Materials)
- Billing model where you charge for hours consumed at a defined rate. OriginPSA T&M mode rolls time entries into the next recurring invoice automatically; supports per-customer + per-contract rate cards.
- Tenant Isolation
- The architectural property that data from one customer can never be exposed to another customer. OriginPSA achieves this via per-tenant MySQL databases bound at the connection level.See also: Per-Tenant Database
- Triage Rules
- Pattern-matching rules that route inbound tickets to the right tech, queue, or runbook automatically. OriginPSA evaluates rules in order; first match wins; assignment is audit-logged.
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