A cumulative figure lower than this period's
cumulative-below-currenton by defaultJapanese / English
A year-to-date figure lower than the same row's figure for this period
Example
How to fix
Check whether the cumulative figure or this period's figure is right, and correct the other.
Why it matters
The "year to date" of a payslip, the "cumulative" of a monthly sales report and the "YTD actual" of a budget report are totals that include this period's figure. A total cannot be smaller than a part it includes. It goes wrong when a digit of the cumulative figure is dropped, when a row is copied one line off, or when last month's table is reused and its cumulative figures are not updated. Which column is this period and which the cumulative one is decided by the heading words alone (This month, This period, Current, Year to date, YTD, Cumulative), never by where a column stands. A column up to an earlier period ("Prior YTD", "Brought forward") does not hold this period and is not read as the cumulative one. Only figures of zero or more written in the same unit are compared, and each may be rounded to half its last digit.
What it does not flag
A table without a this-period column or a cumulative one, with two of either (This month budget and This month actual side by side), or whose two headings name different units in brackets (thousands, millions) is not compared. A column up to an earlier period (Prior YTD, Brought forward) or of a level (Current balance) is read as neither. A row with a blank cell, a dash or a negative figure (-1,000, (1,000)) is skipped, since a refund can make a year-to-date figure fall below this period's; so is a row written in different units, and a row of a figure that is not summed over periods (an average, a rate, a price, a balance). A cumulative figure equal to this period's (the first period) is right and is not reported, and neither is a difference the rounding can reach.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L3
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- warning
- Languages
- Japanese and English
- Suited to
- business, technical, blog, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech
Levels
Set a level for this rule under rules in chaff.yaml. With nothing set, it runs at the level its genre gives it (see By genre below).
| strict | error |
|---|---|
| normal | warning |
| relaxed | info |
This rule has no limit to count to. A level sets how a finding is marked: relaxed keeps the finding and marks it a step lower.
By genre
- Runs by default in
- technical/spec, technical/readme, blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes, legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper, speech/address, speech/transcript
- Turned off by the genre in
- literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play
Message
The cumulative figure "{cumulative}" is lower than this period's "{current}"
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/cumulative-below-current.yaml