When you report your end of year totals do you work from the monthly totals you produced from the monthly/quarterly reports for that year or do you work afresh from Tessitura to account for the changes due to later refunds, new/removed constituent accounts and other processes that will change the figures?
Hi Ogo,
12+ years' experience here. When in doubt, ALWAYS inform your superiors that figures change. They just do, and everyone should get on board with that. With regards to revenue, that can somewhat be controlled with performance off sales and price type/MOS end dates. But exceptions always happen, and Tessitura processes payments after the fact; it just does. With regards to things like new patron count or attendance? No stopping it. It changes. Merges/deleted accounts will never NOT happen. Just go with it. People who need things to be consistent in that regard need to learn a thing or two, not the other way around. Such is life. I have explained these things many times to many people. So far no one has been able to prove me wrong.
John A. Moskal II
Thanks John. I think it might be worth keeping the monthly/quarterly stats as an "as it was then" report and working afresh for the annual sum up and then keeping those as official figures for the year. I provide several caveats each time I provide data reports but you'll still get the odd confusions! I'm also thinking about when the figures are being shared externally we need some consistency.
Yeah, we do monthlies, quarterlies and yearlies, too. Fortunately, I am entrenched enough at this point in time that I just frankly give my numbers and do not worry about it any more. And one can always massage data for external purposes. But I maintain a strict policy of ALWAYS applying an "as of XXX date and XXX time" stamp to every revenue/data file I send to anyone. What is done with it beyond that is not my problem. That suffices for almost everything for me.
For the odd times someone responds asking "what gives?", I tell them to give me a call. And I can then always out-talk them with my comments about exceptions and oddities. When in doubt, blame humans. They (that is to say we, for I am mostly definitely one of their number) are NOT perfect beings.
Exactly this. There are reasons (good reasons) that things appear not to match up or change. 1) Is it significant? And 2) it is a risk. The answer to both of those are usually no. The reason for the discrepancies are often scale.
eg: Counting monthly sales on the order date, and then an order changes - then trying to match that up with Transaction date - tricky. Pledges are even more fun. I love a data hunt as much the next person but there is a ROI conversation in asking for every last unit of measurement to align.