Glossary
Compliance terms, defined plainly
One sentence for what a term means, and one for how CLEX Legal treats it.
- Applicability
- Whether a law applies to a particular organisation or place, decided by facts such as state, industry, type of organisation and headcount.
- In CLEX Legal: CLEX Legal compares each law's stated reach with your facts and shows what applies, what does not and why.
- Audit trail
- A time-ordered record of who did what, when and to which record.
- In CLEX Legal: Append-only, written in the same step as the change, and chained by hashes so tampering is detectable.
- Checker
- The person who independently reviews and approves, or sends back, a maker's work.
- In CLEX Legal: A checker can approve or send work back with a reason; a checker can be limited to one organisation, unit or vendor.
- Compliance item
- One requirement of a law, written as something to do: how often it falls due, on which day, what is provided and what it costs to miss.
- In CLEX Legal: A legislation is a list of compliance items. Adopting a legislation adopts its items; each can be marked not applicable with a reason.
- Compliance vendor
- A compliance firm or consultant who carries out compliance work for a client.
- In CLEX Legal: Given a legislation or selected items by a client, works under maker–checker rules, and can be verified and listed in the public directory.
- Evidence
- A document or record that proves an obligation was met, such as a challan, certificate or register.
- In CLEX Legal: Evidence is immutable, content-addressed and versioned, and opened only through short-lived signed links.
- Legislation
- An Act, Rule, circular or policy whose requirements a business must follow.
- In CLEX Legal: Each legislation in the library has a code, a country, optionally states, a category and versions. A published version is fixed.
- Maker
- The person who prepares or submits a piece of work.
- In CLEX Legal: A maker submits an obligation with its evidence and cannot approve it.
- Maker–checker principle
- A control that requires two different people to complete one action, so no one can both do and approve the same thing.
- In CLEX Legal: Enforced across obligations, closing a month, contracts, exceptions and vendor checks.
- Not applicable
- A decision that a requirement does not apply to a particular unit, with a reason.
- In CLEX Legal: Recorded as a decision with its reason and history; it is not a progress status.
- Obligation
- A specific thing a business must do by a specific date, such as filing a return or renewing a licence.
- In CLEX Legal: An obligation is made for each compliance item in each period it falls due, for the right unit, and has an owner, a maker and a checker.
- Overdue
- Past its due date and not yet completed.
- In CLEX Legal: Worked out from the due date and status rather than set by hand, so it cannot be hidden.
- Penalty exposure
- The range of penalties an authority could levy for requirements not met.
- In CLEX Legal: Where a law states a penalty, CLEX Legal records the minimum and maximum and adds up what is at stake across items not done.
- Vendor due diligence
- The checks a business makes on the suppliers and contractors it works with, at onboarding and periodically.
- In CLEX Legal: Checklists answered by the vendor in its own workspace and reviewed by the client each period.
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