Glossary
The terms around IDA - explained
Briefly explained: the terms that come up in IDA and on this site.
- Ticket
- A ticket is a single request or case captured and worked on in IDA: an email enquiry, a fault reported by phone, or a job. Every ticket has an owner, a priority and a deadline. The tickets included in the price refer to newly created tickets per month.
- Named licence
- A named licence is assigned to one specific person (29 EUR per month). Each named licence contributes 50 tickets to the shared monthly pool. It suits everyone who uses IDA regularly.
- Pool licence
- A pool licence (59 EUR per month) is used by changing people - ideal for shift work or occasional use. Each pool licence contributes 100 tickets to the shared monthly pool. A seat is occupied for as long as a session is active.
- Fair-use cap
- The fair-use cap limits the cost of additional tickets to at most 50 % of your running licence cost. Tickets beyond the monthly pool are charged at 9 cents each - but never more than half of what your licences cost. That keeps the bill predictable.
- SLA
- An SLA (service level agreement) defines how quickly a ticket must be answered and resolved, usually graded by priority. IDA calculates the deadlines automatically, taking business hours and public holidays into account, and tracks whether they are met.
- Single sign-on (SSO)
- Single sign-on (SSO) means staff authenticate once against your central identity provider and use IDA from there, without a separate password. IDA supports the common providers (Keycloak, Microsoft Entra ID, Auth0, Okta) through the OpenID Connect standard.
- OIDC
- OpenID Connect (OIDC) is an open standard for authenticating against a central identity provider. IDA uses it to offer single sign-on with providers such as Keycloak, Microsoft Entra ID, Auth0 or Okta.
- Two-factor authentication (2FA)
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) protects sign-in with a second factor alongside the password, usually a time-based code from an authenticator app. IDA offers it for local accounts, meaning accounts that do not sign in through a central identity provider.
- Magic link
- A magic link is a single-use, time-limited sign-in link delivered by email. Customers use it to reach the portal or to sign contracts without having to manage a password.
- ERP
- ERP (enterprise resource planning) covers the commercial side of a business: items, quotes, orders, invoices, stock, purchasing and accounting. IDA has that part built in - the ticket becomes an order, the order becomes a delivery note and an invoice, with no handover to a second system. If you already run an ERP, the commercial part of IDA can be switched off entirely.
- E-invoice
- An e-invoice is an invoice in a structured, machine-readable format the recipient can import without retyping. A PDF alone is not an e-invoice. Two formats matter in Germany: ZUGFeRD (the XML sits inside the PDF) and XRechnung (pure XML, mandatory towards public sector customers). IDA produces both and checks the mandatory fields before sending.
- ZUGFeRD
- ZUGFeRD is a hybrid invoice format. The recipient sees an ordinary PDF that additionally contains a machine-readable XML file (technically PDF/A-3). Whoever processes invoices automatically reads the XML; whoever looks at it reads the PDF. That lets you send the same invoice to every customer, however far their accounting is automated.
- XRechnung
- XRechnung is a purely structured XML format without a visual document and the standard for invoicing German public sector customers. It usually requires a routing ID (Leitweg-ID) that directs the invoice to the right office. IDA stores it on the customer record and validates it before sending.
- DATEV export
- DATEV is the widely used German standard for handing bookings to a tax practice. IDA collects outgoing and incoming invoices, payments and cash discounts into a posting batch and exports it as a DATEV file - the practice imports it instead of retyping documents. Posting and review stay with them.
- Open items
- Open items are invoices that have not been settled: on the receivables side what customers owe you, on the payables side what you owe suppliers. IDA keeps both in one place, matches incoming payments automatically and passes overdue items to the dunning process.
- SEPA direct debit
- With a SEPA direct debit the payee collects the due amount from the customer account, based on a mandate granted beforehand. IDA manages the mandates, creates the batch, distinguishes first and recurring collections, respects the lead times and detects returned debits, which then move into the dunning process.
- FinTS
- FinTS (formerly HBCI) is the German standard through which software talks to a bank directly. IDA uses it to fetch account transactions, so nobody has to export a file from online banking and upload it. Credentials and the TAN method are stored per account; accounts without FinTS can be kept manually.
- Service report
- A service report documents a visit to the customer: the work carried out, material used and time spent, signed on site. In IDA it grows out of the ticket, takes over the recorded time including travel, and hangs on the same order as the later invoice.
- CSP licences
- Under the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) programme, IT service providers buy Microsoft cloud subscriptions for their customers. IDA reconciles the quantities of such licences from sources like Crayon Cloud iQ, ALSO Cloud Marketplace and the Microsoft Partner Center against the contracts you have on file.
- GDAP
- GDAP (Granular Delegated Admin Privileges) are time-limited, fine-grained administrative rights a customer grants their IT service provider in Microsoft 365. IDA tracks when these delegations expire and raises a ticket in time to renew them.
- MDM
- Mobile device management (MDM) is the central administration of mobile devices such as phones and tablets, including configuration, app deployment and security policies. IDA connects to MDM systems such as Relution.
- CMDB
- A CMDB (configuration management database) is a central register of IT assets: devices, software and the relationships between them. The inventory in IDA can be used as one, with automatic hardware discovery and customer assignment.
- PWA
- A progressive web app (PWA) runs in the browser but installs like a native app on desktop and mobile, with no app store involved. IDA is installable as a PWA.
- Simple electronic signature (SES)
- The simple electronic signature (SES) is the basic level of electronic signing. It records who signed what and when and backs that up with an audit log and a document checksum. Where a specific legal form is required, check the individual case.
- iCal
- iCal (the iCalendar format, .ics) is the common standard for exchanging calendar data. IDA publishes personal and filtered iCal feeds and can subscribe to external calendars - compatible with Outlook, Google Calendar and others.
- Data processing agreement
- A data processing agreement (Auftragsverarbeitungsvertrag) governs, under Article 28 GDPR, how a provider processes personal data on behalf of its customer. We provide one for IDA.