Book September's freight accruals, then revise them when the facts behind them change
Omar Haddad, staff accountant, books one inbound-freight accrual per September receipt from the carrier's rate schedule. Between the turns the warehouse reverses one receipt as a receiving error and the carrier corrects one lane's rate. On Friday he must retract or adjust every accrual derived from those two facts, by reversal dated in September, and leave every other accrual standing (a belief-revision task: derived work must follow its sources).
No published attempts for this task. The task is available for inspection and validation; it is outside the six-task pilot matrix.
The requests
The example below is generated at seed 0. Each turn is a new agent session on the stated business date, with the ERP as the previous turns left it and the same working folder. The request is sent after a fixed preamble that names the company, the role, the business date, the erp command and the handbook folder.
from Priya Raman (Controller)
budget 20 min
Please book September's inbound freight accruals today, from the receipts in the system and MVF's rate schedule. I'll review them and close September on Monday.
from Priya Raman (Controller)
budget 20 min
Before I close September on Monday, please make sure the freight accruals you booked on Wednesday still hold, and bring them up to date if they don't. Leave me a short note in freight-accruals.md saying which accruals you changed and why.
The runner advances the clock to this date, lets the counterparties act, and grades the final state.
Checks
The attempt passes only if every check passes. Clause references point into the handbook below. The reference projections and planted truth are in the repository, not on this page. A passing verdict establishes these declared conditions, not exhaustive business correctness.
| Check | Type | Handbook clauses |
|---|---|---|
| freight accrued per September receipt | state_values | FRT-1.1FRT-1.2FRT-1.3FRT-2.1 |
| accounts the accruals touch | state_set | FRT-1.3 |
| September freight totals | state_values | FRT-1.2FRT-1.3FRT-2.1JNL-1.1 |
| accruals reversed after the facts changed | state_set | FRT-2.1FRT-2.2FRT-2.3 |
| no accrual left standing on a revised source | audit_forbidden | FRT-2.1FRT-2.2 |
| control accounts tie to their subledgers | ledger_ties | |
| master data untouched | state_unchanged | |
| note names the reversed receipt | text_sentence_matches | FRT-2.4 |
| note names the corrected lane rate | text_sentence_matches | FRT-2.4 |
Negative controls
Each negative control is a reference policy with one plausible mistake built in. Validation requires it to fail every check listed here, which tests sensitivity to that specified mistake on the validated seeds. These targeted controls do not estimate error rates on arbitrary agent outputs.
| Control | Must fail |
|---|---|
ignore_revision | freight accrued per September receipt; September freight totals; accruals reversed after the facts changed; no accrual left standing on a revised source |
reverse_everything | accruals reversed after the facts changed |
adjust_without_reversal | accruals reversed after the facts changed; no accrual left standing on a revised source |
reverse_in_october | freight accrued per September receipt; September freight totals |
august_rates | freight accrued per September receipt; September freight totals |
Handbook
The company policy the agent receives in ./handbook. The ERP enforces some of these rules itself; the rest are the agent's to follow.
Northgate Valve Co. handbook
Accounting: inbound freight accruals and journal entries. Clause numbers are referred to in the ERP, in audits and in performance reviews, so cite them when you explain an entry.
- Inbound freight accruals (FRT)
- Journal entries (JNL)
The staff accountant books the month-end accruals; the controller reviews them and closes the month once they are right.
Inbound freight accruals (FRT)
Northgate pays Miami Valley Freight Lines (MVF) for inbound deliveries from the vendors that ship freight collect. MVF bills a month's deliveries on the 12th of the following month, so the freight on each month's receipts is accrued at month end from MVF's rate schedule for that month. MVF sends its schedules, and any corrections to them, to the accounting inbox.
FRT-1.1 Accrue freight for each receipt posted in the month from a vendor on MVF's rate schedule. Vendors that are not on the schedule ship prepaid and bill freight on their own invoices: accrue nothing for their receipts. A receipt that has been reversed was not a delivery to us: accrue nothing for it.
FRT-1.2 The accrual for a receipt is the receipt's value at PO prices (the quantity received times the PO line price) times the rate of the vendor's lane on MVF's schedule for that month, rounded to the nearest cent (half a cent rounds up). A correction MVF sends replaces the rate it corrects, for the month it names.
FRT-1.3 Book one journal entry per receipt, dated the last day of the month: debit 5100 Freight in, credit 2100 Accrued liabilities. Put the receipt number in the entry's memo (for example "Freight accrual RCV-10123, Mid-State Metals, lane L1"), so every accrual can be traced to the receipt it comes from.
When a source changes
FRT-2.1 An accrual is only as good as its source. Until the controller closes the month, when a receipt behind an accrual is reversed or the rate used for it is corrected, reverse that accrual's entry with a reversal dated the last day of the month it was booked in, and, if freight is still owed on the receipt, book a new entry at the corrected figures as in FRT-1.3.
FRT-2.2 Correct an accrual by reversing its entry, never by posting a difference beside it: an entry left standing next to a correction still states the old figure, and the auditors trace each receipt's freight to one live entry.
FRT-2.3 Leave every other accrual alone. An accrual whose receipt and rate have not changed is not reversed or booked again, even while the entries around it are being corrected.
FRT-2.4 Before the month is closed, check each accrual's source again: the receipt's status in the ERP and the latest word from MVF in the accounting inbox. Tell the controller in writing which accruals you changed and why.
Journal entries (JNL)
JNL-1.1 An entry below $5,000.00 is posted by its preparer. An entry of that amount or more is submitted for the controller's approval, and the person who prepares an entry never approves it.