Ten hard questions to ask or be asked

1Are amounts stated with too much or too little precision for the purpose?
2Have numbers been rounded correctly (e.g. has an amount been rounded up when it should have been rounded down)?
3Were numbers rounded at the correct stage of a calculation (e.g. were calculations performed on rounded numbers when they should have used un-rounded values, or vice versa)?[*]

[*] A famous ruse in the early days of computers was to pay (e.g. salaries) with amounts rounded down, charge (e.g. the payroll account) for the sum of the amounts rounded up, and pocket the difference – which could amount to thousands when applied to a large volume of transactions.

4Have calculations that were copied across or down a spreadsheet ...

Get The Definitive Guide to Business Finance: What smart managers do with the numbers, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.