What we investigate
A reef looks like scenery.It is a system keeping score.
We examine the records an organization already holds. Not opinions, not interviews, not reconstructions: the financial, operational, contractual and behavioral record of what the business actually did.
The condition we look for
Individually valid. Combined, impossible.
Every system in a large organization is right on its own terms. Billing reconciles. The ledger balances. Operations reports what it observed. The contradiction only appears when the accounts are placed against each other over the same period.
Money moved, the basis did not exist
Payment, credit or compensation released against a relationship, entitlement or authorization that had already ended.
Two records, one event
The same underlying event entering through separate paths and being settled twice, with neither path aware of the other.
Terms that were never applied
Contractual rates, clawbacks, audit rights and deadlines that were enforceable and were never triggered.
An event that never crossed a boundary
An operational fact that never reached the financial system, so a control that depended on it silently never ran.
A population no review reached
Exposure concentrated exactly where the audit sampling frame could not see it.
Sustained, not episodic
Patterns that hold across the full period rather than clustering in a single month, which is what separates a defect from a mistake.
Millions of movements.
One doesn't belong.
We find what doesn't add up.
Record classes
What we take into custody.
Sources vary by industry. The classes do not.
- Financial records: ledgers, payments, credits, settlements, accruals and adjustments.
- Operational records: provisioning, delivery, scheduling, movement, scan and service events.
- Contractual records: agreements, schedules, amendments, side letters and rate histories.
- Behavioral records: access, approval, override, exception and correction activity.
- Reference records: entity masters, hierarchies, product and territory definitions.
- Prior work: earlier audits, reviews and reconciliations, examined as evidence in their own right.
Boundaries
What an examination will not do.
- We do not assert motive or intent. Records rarely support either.
- We do not report a figure we cannot reproduce deterministically.
- We do not substantiate a finding a named analyst cannot trace to source.
- We do not publish our detection logic, thresholds or analytical methods.
PERISCOPE is a service operated by PERISCOPE analysts. There is no software to implement, license or administer. Clients receive findings, evidence packages and reports.