Glossary

Terms you’ll encounter throughout Cherp, explained in plain language.

Add Alternate — A pre-priced optional deliverable that a client can activate at any time during a project. Common in hospitality contracts where the base scope includes core work and add alternates offer additional services at locked pricing. When activated, an alternate becomes a real deliverable with tasks.

Association — A link between two records with a role. Contact associations connect people to clients or projects (e.g., “John is the primary contact for Acme Corp”). Hotel associations connect entities like owners, architects, and flag brands to hotels. Brand associations connect key parties like designers and strategists to brands.

Brand (Intel) — A visual identity profile in the Intel system. Stores colors, logos, fonts, files, and narrative strategy. Can be a Portal brand (Cooper House managed) or a Reference brand (observed for competitive research).

Capacity — The number of hours a team member is available to work per week. Set on the Team page. Used by the Workload planner to calculate utilization percentages.

Chain Scale — A hotel classification system: Luxury, Upper Upscale, Upscale, Upper Midscale, Midscale, Economy. Used to categorize both hotels and brands in the Intel system.

Cherp — The name of this system. Short for Cooper House ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Manages projects, time, invoicing, competitive intelligence, and more.

Comparator — A hotel or venue added to a project’s comparator set for competitive analysis. Comparators are organized into tiers (Primary, Secondary, Aspirational) and can include common threads and a positioning map.

Comparator Tier — The competitive relationship level: Primary (direct competitors), Secondary (relevant but not direct), Aspirational (the standard to aspire to).

Deliverable — A specific piece of work within a project, with its own price, timeline, and status. The database calls these “line items” but the user-facing term is always “deliverable.” Examples: Brand Identity Package, Website Design, Brand Guidelines.

Enrichment — AI-powered data extraction. For hotels, enrichment searches for the property website and extracts details, images, and brand associations. For brands, enrichment fetches the website and extracts colors, fonts, logos, and narrative text.

Flag Brand — The hotel chain brand that a property operates under. For example, “Marriott Tribute Portfolio” is the flag brand, while “The Beekman” is the property brand. Chain sites (marriott.com, hilton.com) use corporate templates, so flag brands are tracked separately from property brands.

Hotel Phase — The lifecycle stage of a hotel property, independent of project delivery status: Prospect (pursuing), In Design (active engagement), Under Construction (being built), Open (operating).

Journal Entry — A payroll allocation entry that distributes each team member’s labor cost across the projects they worked on. Created monthly and posted to QuickBooks to keep project profitability accurate.

Keystone Project — Cooper House’s term for large-scale hospitality branding engagements — designing the brand identity for a hotel property. These are linked to hotel records in the Intel system.

Line Item — The database term for a deliverable. In conversation and in the UI, always use “deliverable” instead.

Outlet — A restaurant, bar, spa, or other venue that operates within a hotel property. Tracked as venues linked to hotels in the Intel system.

Personal Mode — A toggle in Settings (for admins) that switches from the full team/business view to a personal view showing only your own work. Useful when you want to focus without the management overhead.

Portal Brand — A brand that Cooper House is creating or managing (as opposed to a Reference brand being researched).

Positioning Map — A visual tool on the project comparators page that plots comparator properties along two axes (e.g., Traditional vs. Modern, Classic vs. Contemporary). Helps the team understand where a new brand should sit relative to competitors.

Prospect — A potential project in the proposal or draft stage. Tracked on the Prospects page with deal value, likelihood percentage, and pipeline stage.

Qualifying Indicator — Tags on venues that describe why they’re relevant for research: New (recently opened), Notable (award-winning), Classic (established occasion spot), Neighborhood (beloved local fixture).

Record Type — Classification for Intel records. Hotels can be Comparator (market research), Cooper House (our projects), or Both. Brands can be Portal (CH managed) or Reference (observed).

Reference Brand — A brand being studied for competitive analysis, as opposed to a Portal brand being created by Cooper House.

Retainer — A project type with a recurring monthly hour allocation and billing amount. Clients pay a fixed monthly fee for a set number of hours.

Rollover — Unused retainer hours that carry forward to the next month, up to a configured maximum.

Task — An individual piece of work within a task list. Tasks have estimated hours and can be assigned to team members.

Task List — A group of related tasks within a deliverable. Represents a work phase (e.g., “Discovery,” “Concept Development,” “Refinement”).

Template — A predefined deliverable structure with task lists, tasks, and proportional hour allocations. Used to quickly scaffold deliverables with consistent scoping.

Utilization — The percentage of a team member’s capacity that’s allocated to work items in a given week. Shown on the Workload planner’s capacity bar.

Work Item — A planned task on the Workload planner. Represents something someone needs to do in a given week — assigned to a person, optionally linked to a project and task, with estimated hours and priority.