What "reconciled" actually means

Every close carries a set of checks. It is worth knowing what they do and do not prove.

The arithmetic check

The headline check is that the opening balance plus every leg equals the closing balance.

This one is real and it is worth having. It catches a dropped row, a leg computed on a different filter, a rounding error that compounds.

But it is a check on the addition, not on the meaning. The closing balance is defined as opening plus the legs, so the identity holds whatever the legs contain. A close where every leg is correctly computed from the wrong set of rows will tie perfectly.

That is why the other checks exist, and why Morevy never shows a bare "Reconciled".

The checks that are independent

Each is graded on its own and shown on its own:

Amounts

The legs sum to the movement, to the cent.

Customer counts

The people in each leg add up, and nobody is in two legs at once.

Source coverage

Whether every row was used, excluded or unusable is graded on the customer drill, where it is computed. On the close card this row honestly reads "not evaluated at this level".

Classification completeness

Every payment was classified. Nothing fell into an unhandled case.

Provenance

Every figure traces to the rows and answers it came from.

Customer-level comparison

Appears when a customer-by-customer comparison against the prior period was not possible, and says so.

Morevy renders the specific claim, such as "Amount reconciled", rather than a general one.

Unknown is not a pass

If a dimension could not be measured, it is reported as unknown, not as passing.

This matters more than it sounds. A check that silently counts "I could not test this" as "this is fine" is worse than no check, because it produces a green screen that means nothing.

The customer-level comparison, for example, is unavailable when a run returns aggregate counts only, with no per-customer assignments to compare. That is a legitimate state, and it says so.

Reading the panel

The checks sit folded under the close as one line naming how many there are. Open it and each row carries its own grade; on the record the same rows summarise as all pass, K of N with notes, or K of N did not pass.

A failure is surfaced rather than left folded, because at that point it is the most important thing on the page.

What reconciled does not mean

A reconciled close means the arithmetic holds, the rows are accounted for, and every figure traces to its source. It does not mean the commercial story is understood.

A month can tie perfectly and still leave open why a customer paid less. Reconciliation is a statement about the numbers, not about the business behind them.

When a close does not tie

The headline says so, and by how much: the ending figure carries an "Off by ($312)" note, with a Does-not-tie stamp beside it.

It does not stretch the closing bar to meet the legs, and it does not round the difference away. A close that quietly presents a total the rows do not support is the one failure mode this whole system exists to prevent.

Caution. If a close does not tie, do not act on it. Ask what changed, or open the source evidence. A gap of a few dollars is usually rounding, which Morevy labels as such. A gap of hundreds is a data problem worth finding.