Two reports that should reconcile, and currently do not

Finance's number and your dashboard's number are both confident, and they disagree by four figures.

Intermediate to advancedRead 7 minDoing: 30 to 40 minutes once both reports' queries are in hand8 steps

What you'll have at the end

A written explanation of the gap, a fixed bug or a documented definition difference, instead of two teams distrusting each other's math.

Before you start

You need

Two reports of the same revenue figure, each backed by its own query or method, covering the same period, that currently disagree, plus read access to the order-level table both of them are built from.

Not covered

A gap caused by a single query's own join duplicating rows and inflating its total; that calls for a different check entirely.

Leans on

8 steps

Where to go next

Catch a join fan-out that doubles your totals

when the row count itself has grown compared to the source table: that's a join duplicating rows, which needs a join fix rather than a written note.

Checked 26 Aug 2026

Part of the Data Cleaning and Validation for Analysts cookbook