Any entity has a certain life span – short or long, but it exists. The life cycle or life span is the period of relevance. Even if a physical entity has its own physical basis after a lifetime, it cannot perform its function, and therefore becomes useless. Or, for example, even with excellent performance of its functions, a thing cannot fulfill its function or role. For example, a spare part is useless if all the devices for which it was created have been destroyed. Or the spare part is in stock, but a more perfect analogue was created for it. Similarly with intangible entities – they can lose their relevance, and then their life cycle is over.

In the life cycle of any entity, with various refinements, three parts can be defined – development (becoming), developed life path, aging (transition). The entire life cycle lies between the birth of an entity and its death. During a lifetime, an entity can spawn other entities with their own lifecycle. Also, several internal entities with a shorter and sometimes longer cycle can live in one entity. For example, the cells in the body are constantly updated. The body may be incapacitated as a whole, and its individual cells may be in good shape. And vice versa.

An organization can also have several types of activities, the end of one of them does not mean the end of the life of the organization. Within the type of activity, activity cycles live, for example, the cycle of production of a certain product or the cycle of purchase and sale.

The project activity fully fits into the concept of the life cycle; any project has its beginning and end, projects can be divided into preparatory and final activities, corresponding to the formation and transition of the essence, respectively.

In warehouse operations, the life cycle can be applied to batch accounting. The party is born at the time of receipt of stocks and “dies” at the time of the sale of the last unit of goods. At the same time, even before the appearance of the lot, there is usually a purchase order, which can be considered as a preparatory stage for the appearance of the lot (batch): the lot (batch) is expected to emerge from the purchase order – based on the delivery of goods to the warehouse for this order.

Another cycle of a trading operation is the purchase process and the sale process (order – receipt of goods – payment): from order to payment (Quote-to-Cash, Purchase-to-Pay).

The life cycle can be applied to any entity, but this is not always justified. For example, due to the large fineness of such cyclical processes within one processing unit. Although it should be noted that an accurate description of cyclic processes allows a qualitative and deep assessment of the overall structure of treatments, for example, in terms of cost.

The same operations can simultaneously enter into different cyclic processes. Moreover, such an occurrence can be in various stages of cyclic processes. Also, an entry can be with different or with the same semantics (meaning).