Glossary

If a phrase here is more than a sentence long, it’s because the term covers a real concept worth understanding. Click through to its full page when one is linked.

Organization

• Company — A QuickBooks/Business Central legal entity. Smith Douglas runs 14 of them.
• Division — A geographic operating unit inside a Company (e.g. Atlanta, Houston). 14 active divisions.
• Area — A market area inside a Division.
• Community — A named neighborhood where homes are sold. Often equals “the master HOA.”
• Project — One book of construction inside a Community (a phase, section, or product line). A Community can have many Projects.
• Building — A physical structure on a lot. For a single‑family home, Building = the house. For townhomes, a Building has multiple Units.
• Unit — One livable address (a single‑family home is Unit 0001; a townhome building has units 0001–0008).
• Lot — The combination of ProjectID + BuildingID + UnitID. This is the addressable thing that gets sold, scheduled, costed, and closed.

See: Communities, Projects, Buildings, Units · Lots & the Lot Lifecycle

Infrastructure

• Test database — Server SDH-DC-SQLTST01.thesmartbuilder.local, database SmithDouglasCommunities. Documentation counts and schema lists are refreshed from this environment (see Database overview).

Selling

• Contact — Anyone in the CRM (prospect, buyer, agent, lender, attorney, vendor employee).
• Traffic — A walk‑in or visit by a Contact at a community. The seed of every sale.
• Plan — A floor plan offered by a community.
• Standard Plan (StdPlan) — The master engineering “build of materials” template for a Plan. Drives every cost estimate.
• Option — A buyer‑selectable upgrade or change attached to a Plan.
• Selection — A category of Options the buyer chooses from (cabinets, flooring, etc.).
• Chosen Option — A specific Option the buyer actually selected on a Contract.
• Contract — The legal sales document. Moves through statuses quote → accepted → ratified → closed. See Contracts.
• Ratified — The build authorization. The day the home goes from “promise” to “we’re really going to build this.”

Building

• Activity — One scheduled task inside a build (Pre_Construction_Day_01, Foundation, Frame, Drywall, Final QA, etc.). 2,400+ activities defined.
• Critical Activity — An Activity flagged as a milestone for reporting and delay propagation.
• Schedule — The dated list of Activities for one Lot. Generated from the Lot’s Standard Plan.
• Delay — A schedule‑shift event. May ripple across many lots.
• Estimate — The expected cost of a Lot, derived from Plan + Chosen Options + the cost book.
• Resource — A line item on an Estimate (a SKU, material, or labor task).
• Cost Book / Price Book — The pricing tables behind estimates. Cost Book is internal cost; Price Book is what we charge buyers for options.
• Vendor / Trade Partner — A supplier or trade. They get POs.
• Vendor Bid — A vendor’s price book against your Resources. POs are generated using the active bid.
• Purchase Order (PO) — A commitment to a vendor for a specific resource on a specific lot. 2.4M rows live in tblPurchaseOrder.
• Variance — A change to a PO after issuance (different qty/price). Tracked separately so we can see “what was originally bid vs. what we paid.”
• Change Order — A buyer-driven change to the contract that may change selections, plan, or price.
• Work Approval — The builder’s sign-off that a vendor’s work is done; this is what releases the bill in Business Central.
• Lien Waiver — Trade’s signed acknowledgement that they’ve been paid for work; required before payment release.

See: Schedules · Estimates · Purchase Orders

Money

• Deposit — Earnest money the buyer puts down at contract signing.
• Contingency — A condition the contract depends on (financing, sale of current home, etc.).
• Commission — What we pay a sales agent or external buyer’s agent.
• Closing — The day the home is paid for and ownership transfers.
• Transmission — A queued message from SMART to Business Central. A TransmissionMaster row (Status → TransmissionStatus.TransmissionStatusID) points at child tables such as TransmissionPOGenerate, TransmissionPOApprove, TransmissionContractPostClosing, etc. Status codes: N/C/H/E/X/R/q.
• Business Central (BC) — Microsoft Business Central, our financial system of record (live since January 2026).

See: Transmissions

Service / Warranty

• Service Request (SR) — A homeowner-reported issue. Header lives in ServiceRequest.
• Service Request Line — One specific problem on the request (e.g. “kitchen faucet drips”). Each has a ServiceRequestLineStatus (o/d/r/c/q).
• Service Order (SO) — A line that’s been dispatched to a vendor with a deadline date and dollar amount.
• CSR — Customer Service Rep. They own the SR until lines are completed.

See: Service Requests · Service Orders