Glossary¶
Purpose¶
This glossary defines the base glossary used across the Bluu Personal Finance Platform.
Each term has a specific and consistent meaning within the system.
It ensures clear communication across teams and avoids ambiguity in design, code, and documentation.
Core Financial Concepts¶
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Account | A financial container representing a bank account, credit card, wallet, loan, or investment portfolio. It holds transactions and maintains balances. |
| Transaction | An immutable financial event representing income, expenses, or transfers. It always belongs to one or more Accounts. |
| Transfer | A two-legged transaction moving money between accounts (e.g., checking → savings). Both sides must balance to zero. |
| Balance | The current or historical monetary value of an Account, derived from transactions. |
| Reconciliation | The process of matching imported data with existing transactions to detect duplicates, omissions, or inconsistencies. |
| Category | A classification label (e.g., “Groceries”, “Rent”, “Salary”) assigned to transactions for analysis. |
| Merchant | The vendor or entity associated with a transaction. Used to infer categories and recurring payments. |
| Budget | A plan defining how much money can be spent in specific categories over a given time period. |
| Envelope | A sub-budget that allocates funds for a specific purpose (e.g., “Fuel”, “Dining Out”). |
| Allocation | The act of assigning a portion of available funds to a Budget or Envelope. |
| Variance | The difference between the budgeted and actual amount spent. |
| Goal | A savings target with a specific purpose, amount, and timeline. Progress is tracked through contributions. |
| Funding Plan | The recurring or one-time contribution schedule that funds a Goal automatically. |
| Forecast | A projection of future balances or cashflow based on historical data and upcoming events. |
| Advice | Automated recommendations generated from forecasts and spending behavior. |
| Debt | A liability representing borrowed money (loan, mortgage, credit card). Tracked with principal, interest, and repayment schedule. |
| Interest Calculation | The process of computing accrued interest for debt accounts. |
| Net Worth | The aggregate value of all assets minus liabilities. Calculated across accounts. |
System and Platform Concepts¶
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Domain | A high-level area of business capability within the platform (e.g., Ledger, Budgeting, Goals). |
| Subdomain | A smaller, specialized function within a domain (e.g., “Accounts” or “Reconciliation” under Ledger). |
| Bounded Context | A logical boundary in which a domain model is defined and consistent. Each microservice typically represents one. |
| Context Map | A diagram showing relationships and dependencies between bounded contexts. |
| Event | A record of a state change in the domain (e.g., TransactionPosted, GoalReached). Published asynchronously. |
| Aggregate | A cluster of domain objects treated as a single unit of consistency, enforcing invariants (e.g., Account, Budget). |
| Repository | Abstraction for retrieving and persisting aggregates. |
| Anti-Corruption Layer (ACL) | A translation layer that protects a bounded context from external model changes. |
| Ubiquitous Language | Shared vocabulary used consistently by developers and business experts. |
| Ingestion | The process of importing financial data from external sources (banks, brokers). |
| Normalization | Converting heterogeneous input data into a standardized format the Ledger can use. |
| Consent Grant | Explicit user permission to access or process financial data from an external provider. |
| Audit Trail | Immutable record of actions and data access for compliance. |
| Notification | A user-facing alert or message triggered by system events. |
| Document | Any uploaded or generated financial file (e.g., receipts, statements, invoices). |
| Integration | The technical mechanism that connects Bluu with third-party systems (APIs, webhooks). |
| Identity & Access Management (IAM) | Handles user authentication, authorization, and role management. |
| Household | A shared financial group (e.g., family or couple) where multiple users manage finances together. |
| BFF (Backend for Frontend) | A service that tailors backend data for a specific client (e.g., web app). |
| API Gateway | Infrastructure component that routes and secures incoming API traffic to backend services. |
Security and Compliance Terms¶
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Authentication | Verifying a user’s identity (email/password, OAuth2, passkey). |
| Authorization | Determining what resources a user can access. |
| Token | Credential proving a user’s authentication state, used for secure API calls. |
| Session | The active authenticated state of a user in the application. |
| PII (Personally Identifiable Information) | Any data that can uniquely identify a user (e.g., name, email, account numbers). |
| Data Retention | The duration for which personal or financial data is stored before deletion. |
| Data Export / Erasure | Mechanisms allowing users to download or delete their data, per privacy laws. |
| Encryption | Secure encoding of sensitive data at rest and in transit. |
| Access Control List (ACL) | Rules defining which users or systems can access certain resources. |
Analytics and Reporting Terms¶
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Event Tracking | Collection of user interactions for analytics and insights. |
| Data Warehouse | Central storage for aggregated analytical data. |
| KPI (Key Performance Indicator) | Quantifiable measure of product or financial performance. |
| A/B Test | Experiment comparing two versions of a feature or model. |
| Insight | Data-driven observation derived from analytics or AI models. |
Integration and Infrastructure Terms¶
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Microservice | Independent service implementing a single bounded context. |
| Event Bus | Messaging system (Kafka, SQS, Pub/Sub) enabling asynchronous communication between services. |
| Queue | Message buffer for sequential event processing. |
| Webhook | Outbound HTTP callback notifying external systems of events. |
| Database | Persistent storage (e.g., PostgreSQL) maintaining state per domain. |
| Cache | Temporary high-speed storage (e.g., Redis) for performance. |
| Storage | Object storage (e.g., S3) for documents and files. |
| Monitoring | Collection of logs and metrics for system observability. |
Usage Notes¶
- All teams should use these exact definitions in discussions, documentation, and code comments.
- Any new term introduced in the system should be defined here and reviewed during domain model updates.
- Each bounded context should extend this glossary with its own internal domain-specific terms when needed.