Glossary
Scout uses ordinary words on purpose, and a few of them mean something particular here: a point is not a score, settled does not mean deleted, and a supplier is never a customer. Every term below is defined in plain language and links to the article that covers it properly.
A
| Above the line | The bar a point has to clear to appear in your morning brief: it puts dollars at risk, saves dollars, or protects goodwill before tomorrow. At most five items go above the line in one brief. See The morning brief. |
| Action item list | What the Inbox is. Not a folder of mail and not a project plan — a living list of the things that need a person, each with its proof. See How the Inbox is organized. |
| Admin | The role for people who configure and govern Scout: connections, teams, Watches, people, and the visibility queue. Full access except billing. See Roles. |
| Alerts bell | The bell in the header. It carries workspace housekeeping only — connections that need attention and identity reviews waiting on a decision. Customer work never appears there. See The alerts bell. |
| All | The Inbox scope that shows everything visible across the workspace. Available to Owners and Admins. See How the Inbox is organized. |
| Assignment | Who is accountable for a point — one or more teams, and optionally one person. Separate from who can see it. See Assigning and routing work. |
| Avoided | One of the three columns in Found: money you did not have to spend because Scout caught something in time, such as a rush fee. Never added to the other two. See Found: the value ledger. |
B
| Backfill | The first read of a source's history after you connect it — roughly a year for a mailbox, about two years for accounting. It runs in the background, a page at a time, and can be resumed. See Connections overview. |
| Brief | See Morning brief. |
C
| Claim | Taking responsibility for an item that is sitting in a team's queue. It becomes visibly yours so nobody duplicates the work. Claiming is also how a lapsed item is brought back. See Working an item. |
| Close note | The note attached to an item when it closes. Optional when you mark something Handled, required when you Dismiss it, and stored on the closure receipt. See Working an item. |
| Collected | One of the three columns in Found: money that came in because Scout raised something — a payment chased and received. See Found: the value ledger. |
| Connection | The card for one of your tools in the Connections catalogue — Gmail, QuickBooks Online, a supplier feed — with its state and when Scout last read it. Every connection is read-only. See Connections overview. |
| Coverage | The share of your granted sources Scout could actually read when it built your brief. When coverage is low the brief marks itself partial and withholds recommendations that depend on the missing source. See The morning brief. |
D
| Dismiss | Closing an item for everyone because it should not have been raised, or no longer applies. A note is required, because dismissals are how Scout learns what not to raise again. See Working an item. |
| Due date | The date an item is due, taken from evidence Scout can show you — a stated cutoff, an invoice term, a supplier's own date. Scout never invents one. See Due dates and undated items. |
E
| Everyone | The team Scout manages for you, containing every active person in the workspace. It cannot be renamed or removed, and it is where work goes when no better destination exists — marked as unassigned so it does not get lost. See Teams. |
| Evidence | The rows underneath a point that say where it came from, each labeled with its source. A point with no evidence does not exist in Scout. See Reading a point. |
| Evidence tier | How much of the underlying material a given person may open. Scout's conclusion and the minimum excerpt needed to act is one tier; the original message or record is a narrower one that requires access to the source itself. See Who can see what. |
F
| Fallback team | The team an Owner or Admin nominates to catch work that has no better home. Without one, that work goes to Everyone. See Teams. |
| Follow | Asking to be told when something material changes on an item — its evidence, its owner, its due date, or how it closed — without taking responsibility for it. See Working an item. |
| Found | The value ledger: what Scout helped collect, what margin it helped protect, and what cost it helped avoid, each with the receipt that proves it. The three are never summed. See Found: the value ledger. |
H
| Handled | Closing an item for everyone because the work is done. A note is optional. See Working an item. |
| Hide | Removing an item from your own view without touching it for anyone else. Personal, reversible, and not a closure. See Working an item. |
I
| Identity match | Scout's proposal that two records are the same customer or contact. You choose Confirm or Keep separate; Scout never merges quietly. See Identity matches. |
| Inbox | Your living action item list, and the page Scout opens on. Items are grouped by when they are due, filtered by kind, and scoped to you, a team, or the whole workspace. See How the Inbox is organized. |
| Inbox window | How far ahead the Inbox looks: 30, 45, or 60 days, set once for the whole workspace. The default is 45 days. Undated work stays visible regardless. See Workspace settings (General). |
L
| Lapsed | An item that passed its due date, was never claimed, and stayed visible for ten business days. Scout moves it to the Lapsed shelf rather than deleting it, and your brief reports how many lapsed in the last week. See Lapsed items and the Lapsed shelf. |
| Letter of Authorization | The document a workspace Owner signs inside Scout naming Scout as the shop's read-only service provider with its suppliers, listing the suppliers in scope. Revocable at any time. See Getting supplier credentials through Scout. |
M
| Map | The linked picture of your book of business: accounts, contacts, work, quotes, invoices, vendors, and the links Scout observed between them. See The Map. |
| Margin | One of the three columns in Found: gross margin on work won or protected because Scout raised something. See Found: the value ledger. |
| Margin floor | An optional workspace setting: the margin below which Scout flags an open quote. Off by default. See Configuring Watches. |
| Member | The ordinary employee role: sees and works the items assigned to them or their teams. The right role for most people. See Roles. |
| Mine | The Inbox scope that shows your own work: items assigned to you, claimed by you, followed by you, and the unclaimed queues of your teams. See How the Inbox is organized. |
| Morning brief | One email a day, built from exactly what you can see in your own Inbox: a read of the day, up to five points above the line, your coverage, and last week's lapse count. Weekdays at 6:30 in the workspace time zone by default. See The morning brief. |
| Mute for everyone | An Owner or Admin closing an item for the whole workspace with a reason, because it is not worth anyone's attention. Reversible. Scout keeps watching the underlying question; it just stops raising it. See Mute for everyone. |
N
| Notice | A point about housekeeping rather than customer work — almost always a connection that needs an administrator. See How Scout thinks. |
O
| Observation | A point worth knowing that asks nothing of you — a payment posted, a reorder rhythm Scout noticed. Filtered under Worth knowing. See How Scout thinks. |
| Owner | The one accountable person for a workspace: everything an Admin can do, plus billing and transferring ownership. See Roles. |
| Own account (supplier) | Reading a supplier through credentials issued in your shop's name, which unlocks order status, shipment notices, invoices, and your net pricing. The alternative is the shared feed. See Adding your own supplier account. |
P
| Personal mailbox | A mailbox belonging to one person. What Scout learns from it starts private to that person and is only shared more widely through an approved visibility review. See Team-owned vs personal sources. |
| Point | One item Scout raises, with the proof behind it. The unit everything else is built on. Four kinds: recommendation, observation, notice, and identity match. See How Scout thinks. |
| Precision | The tally of your verdicts on points — useful, not useful, wrong — shown on Found. Scout's own accuracy, measured by you. See Rating a point. |
| PromoStandards | The industry data standard Scout uses to read your suppliers: open orders, ship notices, inventory, pricing, and invoices, straight from their systems. See Connecting your suppliers: overview. |
Q
| Quiet hours | A delivery setting that holds update notifications until working hours: off, evenings, or evenings and weekends. Also used to hold a delay notice until the next business morning. See Item update notifications. |
R
| Receipt | The permanent record of something that happened: how an item closed, who closed it, what evidence settled it. Receipts cannot be edited or removed. See The Settled archive. |
| Recommendation | A point that asks for an action — follow up, chase a payment, quote a reorder. Filtered under Needs you. See How Scout thinks. |
| Reminder delay | A workspace setting: how long a follow-up waits with no response before Scout raises it — one, two, or three business days. See Configuring Watches. |
| Reopen | Bringing a closed item back into the Inbox. Available on items a person handled or dismissed. Items that Scout settled on evidence cannot be reopened by hand, and muted items need an Owner or Admin. See The Settled archive. |
| Return to team | Handing an item you claimed back to its team's queue, without closing it. See Working an item. |
| Role | Owner, Admin, Member, or Viewer. Decides what you can do. There are no custom roles. See Roles. |
S
| Scope | The Inbox control that decides whose work you are looking at: Mine, one or more Teams, or All. Hidden in a workspace with a single working seat. See How the Inbox is organized. |
| Seasonal pattern | A buying rhythm Scout learned from your own history — event banners every October, staff kits every January — with the years it is based on. See Found: the value ledger. |
| Settled | Closed, with a receipt saying why: on evidence (the source showed it resolved), by a person (handled or dismissed), or muted by an administrator. Settled is not deleted. See The Settled archive. |
| Shared feed (supplier) | Reading a supplier without credentials of your own: product data, media, inventory, and list pricing. The alternative is your own account. See Adding a supplier on the shared feed. |
| Shared mailbox | A mailbox belonging to a team rather than a person, such as a sales address. Its work routes inside the owning team and needs no personal-mail review. See Connecting Microsoft 365 / Outlook. |
| Source | One configured account Scout reads: one mailbox, one accounting company, one supplier feed. A connection can hold several. See Connections overview. |
| Source owner | The person, team, or workspace responsible for a source, and the starting boundary for what it can be used for. See Team-owned vs personal sources. |
| Supplier | An upstream vendor your shop buys from — a decorator, an apparel house, a hard-goods manufacturer. Never a Scout customer, and never confused with your own customers. See Connecting your suppliers: overview. |
| Sync | One attempt by Scout to read from one source. The connection card shows the most recent successful one; the detail page shows the history. See The connection detail page. |
T
| Team | A flat operating group inside one workspace — Sales, Production. People can belong to several and have a primary one. Teams are how work gets routed and who can see it. See Teams. |
U
| Undated | An item with no supported due date. It sits in its own section at the bottom of the Inbox, stays visible, and never lapses. See Due dates and undated items. |
V
| Verdict | Your rating of a point: Useful, Not useful, or Wrong. Marking one wrong retires that line of reasoning for the account. See Rating a point. |
| Viewer | The read-only role. Sees the same work a Member in the same teams would see, and can change none of it. Controls only their own delivery preferences. See Roles. |
| Visibility review | The recorded decision an Owner or Admin makes before work derived from someone's personal mailbox is shared with a colleague. The reviewer sees the reasoning and the participants, never the message body or attachment. See Personal mail, privacy, and the Visibility Review. |
W
| Watch | One operational question Scout asks of your data, over and over — "has this purchase order been acknowledged?" Eighteen are catalogued across five categories. Scout defines them; you enable and tune them. See What Watches are. |
| Watch effectiveness | The report showing what each Watch actually contributed over the last 30 and 90 days, alongside its current settings. See The Watch effectiveness report. |
| Workspace | One tenant and one operating company. The hard boundary around your data: nothing crosses between workspaces. See What is Scout HQ? |
| Workspace switcher | The list of workspaces you hold a seat in, inside your profile menu. Switching changes everything you see. See Multiple workspaces. |
Z
| Zero data retention | The terms Scout holds with the providers of the AI models it uses: your content is not retained by them after a request is answered, and it is never used to train a model. See How Scout uses AI with your data. |