The Income/Outcome^® Contextuary

a visual glossary of corporate finance

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

We use "business visualization" to graphically simplify complex business concepts (and increase business acumen). To get more information on business visualization, please see "The Company Board" (our business results visualizer) and Income/Outcome (our customizable business simulation).

The following are our generic explanations of common corporate financial terminology. Actual meanings can vary wildly from company to company; in order to have the correct internal definition you need to ask your Finance Department, "What do you mean by that?"

To get more information about the authors, please see our Directory of Contributing Editors.

Variable Costs

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A cost that varies with the Sales volume. Examples are materials, labor, and sales commission.

Conceptually, Direct Cost, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and Variable Costs are very similar. Check how each term is used in your company.

Full it flag term list.

The Income/Outcome® Contextuary

a visual glossary of corporate finance

Variable Costs

The Income/Outcome^® Contextuary