It took a long while then I realized how true it is. No mattter how a product is designed and completed by high-tech material and assembling process, a tiny component which is not fully tested or certified, would ruin the performance and kill the whole thing. I figured out from those past experiences that one should never assume until finding the fact to prove.
Since then, I always carry this word with while taking on jobs or projects. And I learned again after I finally completed the reconciliation this time. It usually cost me at most 2 full days to clear 5000 records in all accounts to be verified.
It seems after a long Christmas holiday, everyone had a good rest. We should all have high energy back on task. It shouldn't have any hard fruit for me to reconcile the bookings in January.
I was wrong. The 1st day was like walking in a jungle. I have a huge variance (over half million)with multiple mis-matches in the book. At first I found an incorrect transaction between business account and investment account, but the amount is very small - about 90 dollars. Several hours later, thanks for my mentor, he helped me clear the postdate error record for accrual payrolls. These two corrections reduced half million to a smaller amount. Then I begun to dive in deep ocean, because no more assumption proved helpful in searching any suspect numbers. I was drowned in the salty water. Lucky enough, before the day end, I found a duplicate booking, and successfully reduced the variance to several thousands.
Day 2, although I cleared out several minor errors, the situation was getting worse. Small amounts could be anything or everything. That means the only way to find out is to search line by line. Well, if that's the case, do it earlier is better than later. The whole morning I just sat in front of the screen without moving my butt, scanning all the SAP bookings, excel worksheets, payment details, wired details and statements. I tried to look through each number. Co-workers also helped randomly check their bookings in case anything in their baskets is a good match.
It's really the most difficult 4 to 5 hours since I have taken on this role until I finally realized the unusual wired out dollars. Nobody noticed that this invoice was a refund, instead of a payment, as indicated as a fine print at the bottom. The payable colleague just simply followed the summary approval sheet and wired the payment out of the pocket.
What a release on me after confirmation and adjustments on the entries.
To the point, what I learned a lot from this exercise including, firstly never assume, secondly never assume and finally never assume!
