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How to check work an AI made for you
AI can turn your documents into a spreadsheet, a schedule or a summary in minutes. Often it’s right. When it’s wrong, it looks exactly the same. These seven checks work on almost any AI work, in the order that catches the most for the least effort.
The short version. Don’t ask the AI whether it got it right: it will usually say yes. Check the work against the documents it was made from, then check it against itself.
1. The biggest figures are really in your documents
Pick the five or ten largest figures and find each one in your documents. A figure you can’t find was made up or misread. Do this first: it catches the mistakes that every other check can miss.
2. Nothing is left out
Count what should be there: the transactions on a statement, the invoices in a folder, the leases in a building, the rows of a table. Compare that count with the rows in the AI’s work. A short count means something was dropped, and AI rarely says so.
3. Nothing is made up or counted twice
Sort the work by amount and by date, and look for the same item twice. Then pick a few rows at random and find each one in your documents.
4. Every total adds up all its rows
Click each total and look at what it adds. It should cover every row above it, in the right column. A range that stops one row short gives a total that looks right and isn’t.
5. The figures shown are the figures the formulas give
AI often types a number where a formula should be, or leaves a formula that no longer matches the number beside it. Recalculate the sheet and compare. Any figure that changes was wrong.
6. Figures that follow from one another still do
Debits equal credits. Quantity times price is the amount. A variance is actual minus budget. Assets equal liabilities plus equity. Work out a few of these yourself. AI can get each figure close and still get them wrong together.
7. Dates and signs are right
Check that money in hasn’t become money out, that a refund isn’t a sale, and that dates haven’t moved a day or switched month and day. These are small slips with big effects.
A quick checklist
- The biggest figures are in your documents.
- Nothing is left out.
- Nothing is made up or counted twice.
- Every total adds up all its rows.
- The figures shown are the figures the formulas give.
- Figures that follow from one another still do.
- Dates and signs are right.
For the mistakes behind these checks, see Ten mistakes AI makes in spreadsheets when nobody checks.