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Free Reference · Part of the Controller's Toolkit

Variance Classification Quick Reference

Seven classes for every unmatched reconciliation variance — so exceptions get classified and chased, not written off by guesswork at month-end.

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01 FEE_DEDUCTION

Fee & commission leakage

MDR overcharges, commission rate errors, and double-deducted platform fees inside aggregated settlements.

02 TAX_DEDUCTION

Tax-deduction leakage

TDS deducted by your customers that never converts into a claimed credit — Form 26AS mismatches, wrong-PAN filings, deductions that age past the correction window.

03 DISCOUNT_APPLIED

Discount leakage

Unapproved, duplicate, or out-of-policy discounts absorbed silently at settlement.

04 ROUNDING

Rounding & truncation leakage

Sub-₹10 rounding and paise truncation per transaction — irrelevant on one invoice, a real line item across hundreds of thousands of settlement rows a month.

05 PARTIAL_PAYMENT

Short-settlement leakage

Partial payments closed as if they were full payments — the unpaid balance stops being chased the day the invoice is marked settled.

06 PENALTY_OR_INTEREST

Penalty & interest leakage

Avoidable statutory cost: interest on late TDS deposit, interest on ITC claimed without GSTR-2B support, NACH bounce charges that nobody reconciles against recovery.

07 UNEXPLAINED

Unexplained variance

The most dangerous class — differences closed by guesswork at month-end so the books can move on. Every unexplained write-off is leakage that has been formally forgiven.

Full framework: Stop Revenue Leakage — the Seven Classes explained.

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This reference plus the month-end close checklist, four operational CSV templates, and a calculator index — packaged as one download.