Tools
The commentary test
Four of the five tests your flux commentary either passes or fails are arithmetic. Here they are, running — and saved between visits.
Enter the accounts you're reviewing and the driver lines behind each one. Coverage, direction, sourcing and specificity answer themselves as you type. The fifth test is judgment and stays yours.
Debits positive, credits negative — a credit movement is a negative number, and so is a driver that reduced a debit balance. Saved in this browser only, under the period you pick below; nothing is sent anywhere. Source references you've typed before will suggest themselves as you type a new one.
Settings — coverage band, residual materiality, banned phrases
Coverage band
Below the minimum the drivers don't account for the movement. Above the maximum something has been double counted.
Residual materiality
Coverage inside the band can still leave a material dollar amount unexplained — this catches that case even when the percentage looks fine. Set to 0 to disable. This is company-specific; set it to whatever your own materiality is.
Banned phrases, one per line. Matched anywhere in a driver description, case-insensitively.
Paste from a spreadsheet instead of typing
Copy rows straight out of Excel or Sheets. Tab or comma separated, one driver per line. Two shapes work:
Accounts only — two columns: account, movement.
Accounts with drivers — three or four columns: account, driver description, amount, source (source optional). Repeat the account name on each of its driver rows.
All rows import together or none do. If any amount doesn't parse, nothing is added and every problem line is listed so you can fix the paste and try again — a half-imported account would look complete and wouldn't be.
Summary
Copy all pulls the statement text as generated — review before pasting into a real workpaper.
The five tests
T1 Quantified — the drivers sum to within the coverage band of the movement, and the unexplained residual is under your materiality threshold. Zero drivers is an automatic fail.
T2 Directional — the drivers sum in the same direction the balance actually moved.
T3 Sourced — every driver line carries a source reference.
T4 Specific — no driver description hides behind a banned phrase.
T5 Causal — judged. The description names a business event, not the number restated.
Apply T5 strictly. "Inventory increased $742,500" is the variance, not a cause. "Higher spend in the period" names a category, not an event. "Two units shipped 7/22 and 7/26 under the Q3 backlog release" names what happened, when, and to what — a reviewer can go and look.
What this doesn't do
It doesn't find your exceptions — you tell it which accounts to grade. It doesn't read a trial balance, flag flat accruals, round-number estimates, sign flips or dormant accounts, and it doesn't rank anything. Deciding which accounts needed explaining in the first place is the other half of the problem. See where commentary sits in the whole review.
A driver amount that doesn't parse as a number is flagged, not silently dropped — fix it before trusting the verdict on that account.
Want this as a workbook you keep? The free flux template is the single-sheet version. The CloseOps Flux & Variance System ($79) starts from your trial balance instead: confirm each account's classification and it builds the income statement and balance sheet flux statements, then ranks what to investigate.
Related: the method behind these tests in month-end flux, start to finish. This grades commentary once you've decided an account needs it. Knowing which accounts are ready to write about in the first place is the step before this one. Deciding which accounts belong in the population at all is covered in structural exceptions; re-running the test after a late entry lands is in late entries. Or the reasoning behind these tests: four of the five tests your flux commentary fails are arithmetic.
The six loaded examples come from a synthetic trial balance built for the purpose. No company data appears anywhere on this page and the entity doesn't exist. This describes a working method, not accounting advice, and nothing here is an assurance service.
Found something wrong or missing? Tell me here — anonymous, thirty seconds.