NotesEleven notes
Notes
Notes on checking data: statements, invoices and reconciliation.
- 01Derive tax rates from history, don't assume themA single flat rate across an expense ledger is wrong by construction. How to recover the real rate per account from prior-period records, and when to refuse.4 September 2026
- 02Why bookkeeping cleanup always takes longer than you quotedCleanup overruns because it is scoped by transaction count, and transaction count does not predict the work. What drives the hours, and how to scope against that.21 August 2026
- 03Verify the deliverable, not the library that wrote itRe-reading a generated file with the library that wrote it proves almost nothing. What an independent validity check needs to cover, and why one rule catches one defect.13 August 2026
- 04Where bank reconciliation hours actually goReconciliation is benchmarked near 11 hours per client each month, and almost none of it is matching. Where the time really lands, and which parts are checkable.7 August 2026
- 05Template OCR vs layout-aware invoice extraction: what breaks and whenTemplate OCR fails visibly when a supplier changes layout. Layout-aware extraction fails invisibly. The honest case for each, and why the real question is neither.24 July 2026
- 06Why a spreadsheet that imports cleanly can still be wrongPosition-based import grids accept a shifted column without complaint. Five rules for building spreadsheet deliverables that cannot be silently misread.16 July 2026
- 07How to audit an automated coding run before it reaches the ledgerA review procedure for checking automated transaction coding — what to sample, what to recompute, and the four failure patterns that never appear in a summary.10 July 2026
- 08Settling an ambiguous invoice date without guessingA numeric date can name two real days. Six evidence tests that resolve it from the documents themselves, ranked by strength — and when to leave it unresolved.18 June 2026
- 09How to tell whether a bank statement set is completeCounting the files answers a question nobody asked. Four independent checks that establish whether a set of statements actually covers the period, with no gaps.21 May 2026
- 10Detecting duplicate invoices when receipts arrive as photographsA photographed receipt and the supplier's emailed PDF of the same expense share nothing as files. What to match on instead, and how to handle recurring charges.9 April 2026
- 11Why supplier invoice totals don't match the accounting systemSix structural causes of a folder-to-ledger discrepancy, in the order worth checking them — with the specific test for each.12 March 2026
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