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. |
Market and Business Terms¶
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| TAM (Total Addressable Market) | The total market demand for a product or service. Represents the maximum potential revenue opportunity if 100% market share were achieved. For BluuLabs, this includes all millennials (ages 25–40) in Colombia (~12–14 million people). |
| SAM (Serviceable Available Market) | The segment of the TAM that can be realistically served by the product. Represents users who have access to the necessary technology and infrastructure. For BluuLabs, this includes urban millennials with smartphones and digital banking usage (~4.5 million people). |
| SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) | The portion of SAM that can be realistically captured in the near term given market conditions, competition, and go-to-market capacity. For BluuLabs, this includes millennials interested in financial education, active on social media, and reachable through digital advertising (~250,000–300,000 people). |
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.