Reconcile with a number you already know

The first two steps look at the formula from the inside: a few rows, a hard case. The third looks at it from the outside. It compares the result with a number that didn't come from your sheet and that you already trust.

Step 3: reconcile with a number you already know

Find a total that comes from somewhere else, like the cash count, the bank statement, or last month's report. What matters is that it doesn't come from the same sheet or the same formula. If it comes from somewhere else and matches, it's unlikely both are wrong in the same way.

Here, the week's cash count says 1,813 and the sheet says 1,843. There's a 30-peso difference.

Finding the difference is half the job. The other half is explaining it, peso by peso. Open the steps one at a time and try each one before you open it.

Look at what each step did. Checking rows by hand could have found the pan de muerto, if you'd landed on one of those rows. Trying to make it fail showed you the formula makes up prices when it can't find a code. And reconciling with the cash count told you it really was happening, by how much, and in which row.

None of the three needed more Excel. You needed to know what a pan de muerto costs, which products are new, and what the register said.

Try it

1. In your file, do the five steps of the example: change the formula, find the row with #N/A, add the product to Precios, and confirm the total comes to 1,813.
2. Think of a spreadsheet at your work. What number from somewhere else could you reconcile it against? A cash count, a bank statement, an earlier report, a total someone else calculates.

A good answer to item 2 names the number and where it comes from, and says why it doesn't depend on the same sheet.

Tell your Maestro what you'd reconcile your sheet against.