Definition

A three-month period used by companies to report financial results and make shareholders simultaneously hopeful and disappointed. Also a fourth of anything, though in business it's specifically a fourth of a fiscal year where numbers matter way too much.

Example Usage

We crushed our targets last quarter, so naturally the CEO wants us to triple that next quarter without additional resources.

Source: Common business terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

taxpayer

Any individual or entity with the privilege of funding government operations through mandatory wealth redistribution, also known as paying taxes. It's the collective group of people who finance public services while simultaneously complaining about them. The term politicians invoke when they need to sound fiscally responsible about spending other people's money.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Beginner

financials

The numbers-heavy documents that reveal whether a company is actually making money or just really good at spending investor cash. It's the collective term for financial statements like balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow reports that accountants love and everyone else pretends to understand. Essentially, it's where the truth about a business's health lives, buried under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Advanced

purchase price allocation

The process of distributing an acquisition's cost across the target company's assets and liabilities at fair value, usually creating a giant plug number called goodwill for the amount that can't be justified. It's accounting's way of making an overpriced acquisition look systematic.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Advanced

Zombie Firm

A company kept alive by continuous financing despite being unprofitable and unlikely to ever make money. Financial walking dead.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Beginner

aging schedule

A report categorizing accounts receivable by how long they've been outstanding, typically in 30-day buckets. It's a snapshot of who owes you money and which customers are slow payers or potential deadbeats.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Advanced

stuffing the channel

Forcing distributors to buy more inventory than they can sell to inflate current sales figures, essentially borrowing from future sales to make today look better. It's corporate kicking-the-can-down-the-road at its finest.

💰 Finance / Accounting

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See “quarter” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

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Intermediate

cover count

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