Skills

Flux Narrative Builder

What it does

Computes the period-over-period movement for every account across two trial balances. It applies a dollar threshold and a percent threshold together, then drafts a causal explanation for each line that clears the bar, sourced to the underlying detail rather than a restatement of the number that moved. When an account carries a confirmed explanation from the prior period's flux review, that explanation comes back as a labeled draft the reviewer can confirm or replace, so nobody starts 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. The workbook reports a confirmation rate, by count and by dollar, and won't mark the analysis complete below 100% of flagged items.

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 the thresholds by engagement judgment, record them, and apply them the same way every period. That is what keeps the output a workable population instead of a printout of every account that moved at all. Sign flips, new accounts, disappeared accounts, and an account whose figure held steady despite activity underneath it get flagged no matter what the threshold says.

What it won't accept

"Revenue increased." "Higher volume." "Timing." None of these count as explanations. They restate the variance instead of naming a cause, and "timing" is the most common way a real error hides inside a flux review. A 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 instead of disappearing into "other." A stale draft confirmed without being re-quantified for the current period counts as a failure, not a shortcut.

Where it escalates instead of explaining

Some patterns get raised as an observation instead of a drafted cause: the same explanation repeating word for word on 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 guess at intent.