A total of payments that is not the payments added up
installment-total-mismatchon by defaultJapanese / English
A total of payments that is not the number of payments times the payment
Example
How to fix
Check which of the number of payments, the payment and the total is right, and correct the others. If a first or final payment absorbs the rounding, state its amount.
Why it matters
When a loan or installment plan says "48 monthly payments of $537.50; total of payments $25,800", readers trust the total without multiplying. It goes wrong when the plan is redone with another rate or term and the payment or the total is left as it was. When the number of payments, the regular payment and the total of payments are each stated once, the number times the payment is compared with the total; a first or final payment stated apart is added as written (first + payment × the rest + final). Without labels, the payments of one sentence ("47 payments of $550.53 and 1 payment of $550.71") are added up. Each regular payment may be rounded by half its last written digit. When a school trip or camp notice lists numbered instalments as table rows or list items ("1st payment: £150", "Final payment: $60") and states the cost in the same section ("The trip costs £300 per student"), the instalments are added up and compared with the cost.
What it does not flag
A document with no total of payments, an amount marked "about" or "up to", a range ("$540 to $560"), a label stated twice with different values (plans side by side), sentences of payments that differ from one another, and a sentence with two repeated payments ("12 payments of $100 or 24 payments of $60", a choice) are not compared. Neither is a document with a bonus, balloon, down payment, deposit or deferred payment, nor one that says a payment absorbs the rounding ("the final payment may vary") without stating that payment. Amounts in different currencies are not compared. A table that names the count and the total only in its column headings is not read. Numbered instalments are compared only when their section states one cost, they run from the first with no gap or repeat, each has one amount, and the section speaks of payments or instalments. A deposit is added only when listed as one of the instalments; named anywhere else, nothing is compared.
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 payments add up to {sum} ({payments}), not the total of payments {total}
The instalments add up to {sum} ({payments}), not the cost {total} stated with them
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/installment-total-mismatch.yaml