Ways to troubleshoot a discrepancy / error in a report

Sometimes there may be an error or something just seems confusing about a report, in either case the best way to figure out what is going on is to narrow down the date range.

Clients often come to us with a perceived (or sometimes actual) error in the reports and the best way to figure out what is going on is to narrow down the date range to find out what is causing the discrepancy.

For example, if you are pulling a report for a date range of the Financial Year and you feel that one of the numbers doesn't seem right compared to another report or part of the system (e.g. spend/receive money windows) follow the below:

1. Instead of choosing financial year as the date range, start with just July.

2. Compare the numbers you are looking at for just July in both the report and whatever you are comparing that report to.

3. If July looks good, move onto just August.

4. Repeat for every month until you find a month where the numbers start to differ.

5. Once you have found that month, then change the date range to week 1 of that month.

6. Repeat until you find the week where the numbers start to differ.

7. Once you have found the week, then change the date range to be the Monday of that week.

8. Repeat until you find the day where the numbers start to differ.

9. Now that you have narrowed it down to a particular day, it is much simpler to go through all of the transactions for that particular day (a much smaller number of transactions than what you would have had to look through for a whole year!). Depending on what you are looking for, you can search for invoices, spend money, receipts or even check to see whether particular matters are set to be GST free or anything you think is relevant to what discrepancy you are searching for.