Skills

Flux Narrative Builder

What it does

Computes the period-over-period movement for every account across two trial balances, applies a dollar threshold and a percent threshold together, and drafts a causal explanation for each line that clears the bar for review — sourced to the underlying detail, not a restatement of the number that moved. Where an account carries a confirmed explanation from the prior period's flux review, that explanation comes back as a labeled draft for the reviewer to confirm or replace, instead of asking them to write it again from a blank cell.

A draft never counts as an explanation on its own. Nothing closes until a reviewer confirms it, re-quantified for this period, with a source attached — and the workbook reports a confirmation rate, by count and by dollar, that has to reach 100% of flagged items before the analysis is complete.

Why the threshold is dual

A percent-only threshold flags every small account that moved from $100 to $300. A dollar-only threshold misses a 90% swing in an account too small to clear a flat dollar bar but too meaningful to skip. Both have to clear before a line gets pulled into the report — set by engagement judgment, recorded, and applied consistently — which is what keeps the output a workable population instead of a printout of every account that moved at all. Sign flips, new and disappeared accounts, and an account whose figure held steady despite activity underneath it are always flagged regardless of threshold.

What it won't do

It won't accept "revenue increased," "higher volume," or "timing" as an explanation — those restate the variance instead of naming a cause, and "timing" is the single most common way a real error hides in a flux review. Every confirmed explanation has to be causal, quantified, and tied to a source; if the components don't sum to the variance, the remainder stays visible as unexplained rather than disappearing into "other." A stale draft confirmed without being re-quantified for the current period is treated as a failure, not a shortcut.

Where it escalates rather than explains

Some patterns get raised as an observation instead of a drafted cause: the same explanation repeating verbatim for an account across several consecutive periods, a round-dollar movement that exactly offsets an equal and opposite one elsewhere, an account marked "activity changed, amount unchanged" more than once, or a prior-period figure that no longer agrees to what was actually reported last period. The skill states the facts; it does not characterize intent.