Publishing a Revenue Dashboard with Conflicting Source Systems
FP&A manager at a B2B SaaS company. The monthly executive dashboard combines CRM bookings and ERP recognized revenue. Last month CRM bookings were $8.6 million and ERP revenue $7.9 million, a 8.1% gap; the normal timing gap is 4–6%. The data engineer reports 1,200 duplicate account records from a recent acquisition, 14% of open opportunities missing close dates, and a CRM-to-ERP customer mapping table last refreshed nine months ago. ERP has 37 manual revenue reclassification journal entries posted after close, several with no supporting memo. The dashboard refresh is scheduled for tomorrow; the CFO reviews it in 48 hours and uses it for a board package. You have two analysts who can reconcile about 150 records per day. The sales operations team insists the numbers are “close enough” and wants the dashboard published. The controller wants to delay until all 37 entries are documented.
1. Quantify the unexplained gap and rank the likely causes. What evidence would you gather in the next 24 hours?
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Actual gap = ($8.6M − $7.9M) / $8.6M = 8.1%. Normal timing gap at 4–6% would be $0.34–0.52M, so the unexplained portion is about $0.18–0.36M, or 2.1–4.2% of bookings.
Ranked causes: (1) duplicate accounts inflating CRM bookings or splitting recognition; (2) missing close dates pushing opportunities into the wrong period; (3) stale CRM-to-ERP mapping misclassifying revenue by customer/category; (4) post-close reclasses shifting revenue between accounts or periods. In 24 hours, pull a duplicate report and sample 25 duplicates by amount; list open opportunities missing close dates weighted by value; obtain the mapping change log and test the top 20 customers; extract the 37 reclass entries with amounts, dates, and preparer. Compare CRM and ERP at the top-20-customer level, not just in total.
2. Decide whether to publish, delay, or publish with caveats. Justify using materiality and intended use.
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Publish with caveats, but not as a final board number. The unexplained $0.18–0.36M is 2–4% of monthly bookings-below a 5% total-company materiality threshold, but potentially material to a category or to a guidance discussion. Because the CFO uses it for a board package, the dashboard should be labeled 'preliminary' and include a reconciliation bridge: CRM bookings, expected timing gap, duplicate adjustment, mapping/reclass adjustment, ERP revenue. Delay only the board appendix if the 37 reclasses exceed $50k individually or $250k in aggregate; otherwise publish the trend view and hold the absolute revenue chart until the controller signs off. Do not let sales operations brand it 'close enough' without documenting the bridge.
3. Design a monthly reconciliation control with owners and a threshold.
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Control: a monthly CRM-to-ERP revenue bridge at customer level, owned jointly by sales operations (CRM data) and FP&A (ERP bridge), with the controller as approver. Threshold: investigate any customer-level variance above $25k or 0.5% of monthly bookings, and any total unexplained gap above 2%. Required evidence: duplicate-account report, close-date completeness report, mapping-table change log, and reclass memos for entries above $10k. Timing: complete by business day 3, before the dashboard refresh. Add a quarterly master-data review and a change-control ticket for any mapping update. Report a single KPI-percent of bookings reconciled within threshold-to the CFO.