Business A to Z

Every trade has words it uses without explaining. In business the cost of not knowing one is real: some of them are ordinary jargon and some of them are a decision that can take a house.

Please note: This page explains what a term means. It is general information, not legal, financial, tax or investment advice, and it does not know anything about your business. Before you sign, file or commit to anything, check it with an accountant, a solicitor, or the official guidance we link to.

Studying business? We write GCSE revision songs, and there is one for business studies. Listen to the revision playlist.

8 terms filed under U.

U

Unit economics

Whether one sale, one customer or one job makes money once everything it costs is counted.

Upselling and cross-selling

Also called Upsell, Cross-sell, Account expansion

Selling more to people who already buy from you. The cheapest revenue available and the most often forgotten.

Uptime

Also called Availability, Downtime, Nines

The proportion of time a service is working. Small-sounding percentages hide large amounts of downtime.

Uptime and incident response

What happens when a system goes down, and who does what.

Use of home as office

Claiming for working from home. Two methods, and one is much simpler.

USP

Also called Unique selling point, Unique selling proposition, Differentiator

The reason to choose you rather than the alternative. Usually stated as something every competitor also claims.

Utilisation

The proportion of available time actually spent on chargeable or productive work.

Utilisation and recovery rate

For time-based businesses: what proportion of the value of your time you actually bill.

Ready when you are

Have a look round the demo, start a free trial with your own service in it, or ask us the awkward question first. Whichever you pick, the people who answer are the people who built it.