Read your first weeks' numbers

Run these reports in your first week, then again at the end of it. Check each one against what you already know happened at the counter and in your bank, because that comparison is the only thing that catches a setting you got wrong two steps ago. A mistake made in Set up your business or Bring in your data rarely breaks anything visibly. It shows up here, as a number that is close to right.

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The five reports to run

Each row answers one question you already have. Read the report that answers it rather than working through the whole list. Revenue and Payments answer different questions and will not match. Revenue counts what you earned in the period, Payments counts what you collected in it. See Finance Reports for how each number is derived.

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Check each report against what you know

Compare every report to a number you hold outside TWICE. A report that agrees with itself proves nothing. Expect small differences and investigate large ones. A tax total at half what you expected, or an inventory value at a tenth of what you paid, is a setting rather than a rounding difference.

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Find what a wrong number is telling you

Two mistakes from earlier in the path surface here first, and both produce numbers that look almost right. Fix the setting first, then re-run the report for the same period. Numbers already written against the old setting do not move on their own, so decide with your accountant whether to correct past orders or start clean from the fix.

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Trace a number back to when and who

Pick your route by whether the problem sits on a setting or on one record. A setting that changed. Open Audit log in the top navigation and filter Resource type to the kind of resource you suspect, such as Tax, Service location or Article. Each entry names the actor, the endpoint and the time, so you can see when the value changed and who changed it. One record that looks wrong. Go to the record itself. A stock item, SKU, listing, customer and order each carry their own Activity log tab, already filtered to that record. See Read a stock item’s history and Read a customer’s history.

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Done when

• You have run all five reports for a real period and can say what each one measures.
• Every total agrees with a number you hold outside TWICE, or you know which setting explains the difference.
• You have traced at least one number back to the record or setting behind it, so you know the route before you need it.

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