# Core concepts

> A glossary of the words you meet in finstory, such as workspace, model, dimension, report and story.

Page: https://help.finstory.ai/core-concepts/
Updated: 2026-11-12

A short glossary of the words you meet in finstory, defined the way the product uses them.

## Workspace and people

| Term | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| **Workspace** | One company's or group's space in finstory, with its own data models, reports, stories, members and settings. |
| **Member** | A person who can open a workspace. |
| **Role** | What a member may do: **User**, **Editor**, **Power user** or **Admin**. See [Workspace administration](https://help.finstory.ai/workspace-administration.md). |
| **Reeve** | The AI assistant built into finstory. It answers questions about your figures and helps build reports and stories. |

## Data

| Term | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| **Model** (data model) | Holds the structure, calculations and data for one part of the business. Every workspace starts with one model; you can add more. A report always belongs to one model. |
| **Dimension** | One way of looking at your figures, such as by entity, by account or by period. |
| **Member** (of a dimension) | One item in a dimension, such as one account or one entity. Members can have children; a parent shows the total of its children. |
| **Entity** | The companies or business units you report on. |
| **Account** | The lines of your statements, such as Revenue. Each account has an **Account Type** (Revenue, Expense, Asset, Liability, Equity or Balance) and an **Aggregation Sign** that says whether it adds to, subtracts from or is ignored in its parent. |
| **Period** and **Year** | The periods of your calendar, such as months, and the year they belong to. You pick them separately. All models in a workspace share one period calendar. |
| **Category** | finstory's name for a scenario, such as Actual, Budget or Forecast. A new model starts with Actual. |
| **View** | How a figure reads over time, for example **Periodic** (the period on its own) or **YTD** (year to date). |
| **Currency** | The currency a figure was loaded in. You can filter or group by it. finstory does not convert between currencies. |
| **Measure** | A dimension for calculations that belong to no other dimension, such as a ratio. It always has a built-in member called Default. |
| **Custom dimension** | An extra dimension with a name your workspace chooses, such as Department or Product. A model can use up to eight. |
| **Calculated member** | A member whose value comes from a formula instead of loaded data, such as a margin percentage or a variance. |
| **Shared member** | An account or entity that also appears under a second parent. It gives you an alternative roll-up without loading the data twice. |
| **Connection** | A link to a source system, such as your accounting system, that loads figures into a model. |

## Reports and stories

| Term | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| **Report** | A page of tables, charts and tiles built on one model. A report is either published, so every member can open it, or a draft. |
| **Group** | A named section of the **Reports** menu that holds reports. |
| **Selectors** | The dropdowns under a report's title, such as Entity, Year and Period. They set what the whole report shows. The report editor calls them the POV (point of view). |
| **Component** | A building block of a report: Table, Pie Chart, Bar/Line, Waterfall, Funnel, Tile, Scale or Nested Row. |
| **List** | The items a component shows as its rows or columns, such as a set of accounts. A list is either fixed (you choose the items) or dynamic (it follows the hierarchy, for example all children of a member). |
| **KPI** | A headline figure. In a report it is shown on a **Tile**, which can also show a variance, a small trend line, a gauge, a rank or a bridge. |
| **Story** | A scrolling narrative that explains your figures chapter by chapter, with charts and commentary. A story is private or public. |
| **Chapter** | One section of a story. A chapter moves through one or more steps as you scroll. |
| **Basis** | A switch in a story that shows what each step rests on: data, an answer someone gave, or an assumption. |

## How the pieces fit together

Figures are loaded into a model, by upload or through a connection. A report reads the model and shows the figures for the selectors you choose. A story explains those figures in chapters.