The work completed, the money arrived, and the report showed almost none of it
An owner came close to killing a membership programme that was earning, because the record connecting the work to the agreement had gone blank.
The office was closing out membership visits properly. Tech goes, does the work, comes back, the job completes. Money moved every time.
Then the owner pulled his membership revenue and it read low enough that he took it as the programme failing. He was a week away from shutting the whole thing down.
The agreements had stopped being populated on the records as those jobs closed. Work completed against the customer, and the line tying that work back to the agreement sat empty, so every report built on agreement revenue was reading a slice of what the shop had actually delivered.
The work happened. The money arrived. The thread connecting the two is what went missing.
He was ready to cancel something that was earning, on the evidence of a report that could only see part of it.
So now, before any decision that rests on a number, I ask what the number counts and what it leaves out. Most reports in any system are counting a field somebody has to remember to fill in.
Take any number you are about to make a decision on and ask what field somebody has to remember to fill for it to be right.
The notebook is where this turned up. If you want it fixed rather than described, that is a look at how yours is built, over at Titan Tech Tools.
One question a week.
Two minutes, one problem, something to do about it. No pitch.