Finance shouldn’t feel like a foreign language to the department leads, budget owners, and business partners who use Cube but don’t live in spreadsheets all day. This glossary helps you make sense of the terms you’ll see in Cube and how they impact your work.
| Term | What It Means | Why It Matters to You |
| Actuals* | The final, booked numbers from your ERP or accounting system | Tracks what your team actually spent or earned |
| Budget* | The original plan approved at the start of a period | Your benchmark for spend, hiring, and results |
| CapEx | Long-term investments or purchases | Typically higher-dollar and treated differently in reporting |
| Cash Flow | The movement of money in and out of the business | Important for tracking liquidity and spending runway |
| EBITDA | Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization | A common way to look at operating profit, especially for investors |
| Forecast* | A current estimate of future results, based on updated assumptions | Helps you course-correct and align with Finance |
| Gross Margin | Revenue minus the direct cost of delivering products/services | A measure of efficiency before overhead |
| OPEX | Operational expenses (e.g., salaries, tools, travel) | Often, the bulk of your team’s controllable costs |
| P&L | Profit & Loss statement showing revenue, expenses, and net income | Often, the foundation for team- and company-level decisions |
| Scenario | A version of the financial plan (budget, reforecast, what-if) | Let's finance and business teams model changes and tradeoffs |
| Variance | The difference between actuals and the budget or forecast | Shows where you’re over or under the plan |
*Your finance team may have their own naming conventions for scenarios, but these are the common use cases. Learn more about scenarios in Cube.
Cube Concepts (A–Z)
| Term | What It Means | Why It Matters to You |
| Audit Trail | A history of who made changes and when | Useful for tracking inputs and ensuring accountability |
| Dashboard | A visual report view in Cube | Where you can see performance at a glance |
| Dimension | A category used to organize your data (e.g., Department, Account, Time) | How you filter or break down data in Cube |
| Drilldown | A way to see the detailed transactions behind a number | Helps you understand what’s driving variances |
| Fetch | Pulls Cube data into your spreadsheet via the Spreadsheet App | Keeps your sheet up to date with the latest numbers |
| Library | A shared folder in Cube for templates and reports | Use it to access standard formats across teams |
| Publish | Sends updated data from your spreadsheet or Workspace template into Cube | Applies your forecast edits to the plan |
| Rollup | A grouped total (e.g., total Marketing spend across all channels) | Makes it easier to see team- or region-level summaries |
| Scenario | A version of your financial plan (e.g., Budget, Forecast, Actuals) | Enables comparisons between plans or time periods |
| Spreadsheet App | The Cube app for Excel or Google Sheets | Bring Cube to your spreadsheets and build reports on the fly or refresh data |
| Workspace | Cube’s web interface for managing reports, dimensions, and permissions | Used by Finance, but often shared with collaborators |
Want the full Cube glossary? Check it out here.