The paper behind the audit

Every number on this site traces back to paper like this.

TallySquared reads real invoices, real signed tickets, and real supplier corrections. Below are six of them, names taken out, arithmetic left in.

First audit free See the six specimens

Suppliers correct these too, once they see their own paper

None of this is about a supplier trying to shortchange anyone. Most billing errors are exactly that: errors, the ordinary kind that turn up across tens of thousands of invoice lines a month.

The specimen that leads this page is a supplier correcting its own invoice, on its own initiative, once the paper laid out the arithmetic plainly. Our job is making sure the number everyone ends up arguing about is the real one, checked before it's paid instead of disputed after.

Every example on this page is from a public record. Citations available on request.

Six specimens, four error families

Every specimen below is real paper: names withheld, dollar figures and arithmetic exact. Each one shows what the document says, what it proves, and which error family in the audit catches it.

Exhibit A · the process working

A supplier's own credit memo confesses a double bill

What the paper shows

A supplier issued a credit memo for −$8,650.64, tied to 24 delivery tickets. The memo's own line states, in the supplier's words, that tickets already delivered and paid on one invoice were duplicated onto a second invoice that was still open. The supplier found its own mistake and corrected it before anyone else raised it.

What it proves

The same delivery ticket really can get billed twice, across two different invoices, at real dollar amounts, and a supplier's own paper is enough to prove it and fix it. This is the same cross-invoice check TallySquared runs on every month's stack: every ticket number read across every invoice, not one invoice reviewed at a time.

Error family: Duplicate billing

Exhibit B

The credit memo that decodes its own overbill

What the paper shows

One supplier's claim totals eight invoices summing $14,689.49, minus a credit memo for $189.75, netting $14,499.74. The credit memo does the arithmetic in the open: 16.5 CY × $11.50 = $189.75, the exact gap between the job's $75.00 rate and the $86.50 that invoice actually billed on that same 16.5 CY.

What it proves

A single mispriced line, caught and reversed by the supplier's own credit memo, to the penny. That is the shape of a rate error TallySquared is built to catch: every line checked against the job's actual rate, and no claim ever larger than that line's own arithmetic supports.

Error family: Rate errors

Exhibit C

The same supplier, two different rounding rules

What the paper shows

Four lines on one supplier's aggregate invoices only balance under one specific rounding rule: 24.290 × $5.50 = $133.595, printed as $133.60; 24.290 × $4.50 = $109.305, printed as $109.30. Both rule out plain round-up and plain truncation; both only fit round-half-even, the rule that rounds a tied cent to whichever side is even. Invoices from that same supplier a couple of years later use ordinary round-up instead.

What it proves

A supplier's own rounding convention can change over time, and a check built on one fixed rule will misflag paper that was never wrong. TallySquared accounts for how each supplier rounded in the era an invoice was actually printed before calling a line incorrect.

Error family: Rate errors

Exhibit D

Two tickets, billed once alone and once inside a bigger group

What the paper shows

Two delivery tickets are billed by themselves on one invoice: 29.83 tons × $8.00 = $238.64 plus $15.96 tax, $254.60 total. Those same two ticket numbers also appear inside an eight-ticket group on a second invoice, filed the next day, against the same purchase order and the same delivery date. No credit memo corrects it. Both invoices sit inside the same sworn accounting, each one balancing perfectly on its own.

What it proves

A total can add up exactly and still hide a load counted twice. Catching this takes a ticket-by-ticket check across every invoice in the stack, not just confirming each invoice's own math is right, the same ticket-number check this supplier's own paper shows working in Exhibit A.

Error family: Duplicate billing

Exhibit E

A fee that turns on and off mid-job, tied to the order, not the date

What the paper shows

One job's fuel surcharge line prints $0.00 across a run of deliveries, then $5.00 across the next run, then $0.00 again, same job, same season. The fee doesn't move with the calendar or the customer's account; it moves with which order each delivery was placed under.

What it proves

A fee can be legitimately absent on one delivery and legitimately present on the next delivery from the same supplier the same week. TallySquared checks each fee against the terms attached to its own order instead of assuming a fee is always on or always off for an account.

Error family: Unauthorized and mis-applied fees

Exhibit F

Fifty-four ticket lines billed, fifty-two tickets in the file

What the paper shows

One invoice set bills 54 ticket lines across a month of deliveries. Counting every ticket in the supporting file against that billed list finds only 52 tickets actually there; two billed ticket numbers never appear anywhere in the file. Every dollar total in the set still reconciles exactly.

What it proves

A perfect-looking total doesn't mean every line traces to paper. The gap only surfaces when every invoice line is checked against a signed ticket, one by one, across the whole stack, which is what ticket coverage means in a TallySquared audit: a line with no ticket behind it gets flagged instead of quietly paid.

Error family: Coverage

The worked-example package

Every audit that finds something ships as a dispute package: the disputed line, the ticket it traces to, the rate or term it breaks, ready to send to a supplier.

Worked-example package

A TallySquared-branded edition built around one of the specimens on this page, arithmetic laid out in full, ships with the site cutover. Until then we're not linking the old-branded sample here: shipping this brand's name on last year's document would be its own kind of error.

Worked-example package: available at launch

Meanwhile, see a sample dispute package for the package structure itself.

First audit free

Send us last month's full stack: every invoice, every signed ticket. We check every line and send back what doesn't hold up. No cost for your first month.

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