Flux analysis in accounting explains why an account's balance moved from one period to the next. The controller sets a threshold, a dollar amount paired with a percentage of the prior balance, and the team writes a comment for each movement that crosses it, naming the transactions behind it. The CFO reads those comments before the numbers leave finance.
Each of those comments is a claim about the books, and the reviewer needs its source to check it. In Rever, Flux Analyst drafts an evidence-backed narrative: it traces each material movement to the transactions behind it, cites them, and separates what the records support from what they leave unexplained. The controller reviews the draft and owns the sign-off. A month with Rever shows where the flux review sits among the rest of the close.
Flux against variance
Variance analysis compares actual results with a budget or a forecast. Flux compares actual balances with the same account in an earlier period, this month against last month or a quarter against the same quarter a year before.
Teams run flux on the income statement and on the balance sheet. A balance sheet flux analysis catches a prepaid that stopped amortising, or an accrual that should have reversed and stayed on the books. It complements the balance sheet reconciliation, which proves each balance against its support, while flux explains why the balance moved. In Rever, Close Orchestrator checks the reversing kind at the start of each month and verifies that each entry scheduled to reverse did reverse in the right period.
The calculation and the threshold
For each account, you subtract the prior balance from the current balance to get the dollar change, and divide that change by the prior balance to get the percentage change.
You choose the workload when you choose the threshold. Set it low and the team writes comments about rounding. Set it high and a change that matters passes under it. A dollar amount paired with a percentage keeps a small account's large swing and a large account's small swing out of the review, and leaves in the movements a CFO would ask about. Flux Analyst works from the same pair, an absolute and a relative trigger, and you set both.
In the illustration below, with round figures, the controller sets the threshold at $10,000 and 10%, and a movement needs a comment when it crosses both, up or down.
| Account | Prior month | Current month | $ change | % change | Needs a comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash | $500,000 | $540,000 | $40,000 | 8% | No |
| Accounts receivable | $250,000 | $262,500 | $12,500 | 5% | No |
| Accounts payable | $300,000 | $285,000 | -$15,000 | -5% | No |
| Office supplies | $3,000 | $3,600 | $600 | 20% | No |
| Freight | $80,000 | $100,000 | $20,000 | 25% | Yes |
Cash moved $40,000 at 8%, and office supplies rose 20% on $600, so neither reaches the review. Freight crosses both lines, and the controller owes the CFO a comment that names the transactions behind it.
A flux analysis example: freight
The worked example below is an illustrative case, not a customer result: a FreightCo invoice that landed at $4,812 against purchase order PO-1884 for $4,502, one of the invoices behind the freight row in the table. Three source records explain it: amendment A2, the invoice and the bank record.
A team working from memory on the third day of the close writes a comment like "Freight up on fuel surcharges and timing." The CFO cannot check it without redoing the work, and an auditor who reads it at year-end has to ask for everything behind it.
The cited version, written as the FreightCo line of the comment a controller hands the CFO, reads like this.
Freight, FreightCo: $310 above PO-1884. The FreightCo invoice came in at $4,812 against a purchase order of $4,502. Amendment A2, signed 28 June, adds $240 of fuel surcharge. A short shipment credits $180. Journal prepared the entry, matching $4,562 and accruing $250, and the team posted it after the approver signed; the accrual reverses on settlement. Sources: amendment A2, the FreightCo invoice, the bank record. Each figure links to its page.
Add the $240 surcharge, subtract the $180 credit, add the $250 accrual, and you have the $310. The CFO reads one short paragraph and can open any of the three records behind it.
The citation, and how Flux Analyst drafts it
A cited comment works as a control. The reviewer checks each claim in one click, and the CFO can dispute one sentence and accept the rest. An auditor who asks about freight at year-end gets the same records from Evidence, the agent that keeps source records connected to the work.
Flux Analyst works from the connected record of your books that Mapping Studio maps from the ERP and its sources. It takes the movement in each account and traces it to the transactions that caused it: the invoice, the amendment, the credit, the entry. If price and volume both moved, it splits the change between them and states the residual, so the parts add back to the ledger movement. Each sentence it writes links into the record, where the invoice leads to its purchase order and payment.
Flux Analyst writes the comments and leaves entries to Journal. If an explanation turns up a correction the books need, Journal prepares the entry, and once your approver signs in the Inbox, the approved entry comes back as an import file your team loads. Journal cannot approve its own entry, and material amounts take two approvers under the thresholds you set.
Sign-off waits for the comments
In Rever's period close, Close Orchestrator uses Flux Analyst's narratives in the close review, and it does not certify a close while a material blocker is unresolved. A material freight movement with no explanation reaches your Inbox as a blocker. The controller clears it by accepting Flux Analyst's draft or by writing the comment.
The flux review sits near the end of the month-end close checklist, after the reconciliations and the accruals, as part of the general ledger review in the financial close, so the comments describe balances the earlier lines have tied out.
You can test the standard on your own books. The zero-day scan is the first pass over your connected records once read-only access is in place. It applies the relevant reconciliations, verifications and controls to the in-scope population and reveals initial findings with the evidence behind them, and missing sources and blocked procedures stay visible.
