Set a quality and verification bar

For build and validate a June regional-revenue formula in Excel 365, define quality across accuracy, completeness, usefulness, safety, and reproducibility. Weight dimensions according to harm. A cosmetic miss can be revised; an unsupported claim, broken calculation, privacy leak, or rights violation blocks release.

Translate each dimension into observable checks. Accuracy means a claim, value, behavior, or frame agrees with an authoritative source. Completeness means every required field or stage appears. Usefulness means an analyst who must fill the formula down safely can take the intended action. Safety includes the boundary that you must do not upload payroll, customer records, account numbers, hidden sheets, or an entire confidential workbook; substitute synthetic rows. Reproducibility means the prompt, input version, settings, and review evidence are saved.

Use checks from cheapest to strongest:

1. Contract check: required sections, schema, length, and prohibited content.
2. Source check: trace claims and values to supplied evidence.
3. Edge check: run normal, boundary, missing, and adversarial cases.
4. Independent check: calculate, test, rehearse, listen, inspect, or open the original.
5. Human gate: a responsible reviewer approves consequential use.

In this chapter, the concrete verification is to calculate a tiny hand-checked table, test June 1 and June 30, inspect dates stored as text, confirm absolute references, and compare the total with a filtered sum. The expected candidate is A SUMIFS formula using >=DATE(2026,6,1) and <DATE(2026,7,1), with an explanation that the exclusive upper bound includes every June timestamp. Record actual evidence, not a checkbox copied from the prompt.

Score each criterion 0 (fails), 1 (partly), or 2 (passes). Any zero for factual correctness, permission, privacy, or required disclosure is an automatic stop. A total score is useful for comparing iterations, but it must never average away a blocking defect.

Excel 365, comma separators. A=Date, B=Customer, C=Region, D=Revenue; F2 contains a region. In G2, total D where C=F2 and A is in June 2026. Give one formula, explain every condition, and provide normal, boundary, and blank/error tests. Do not invent columns.

After generation, sample beyond the happy path. Failures such as wrong locale separators; text dates; shifted ranges; hidden filters; formulas filled down with relative criteria cells often survive a superficial review because the output has the right shape. Use a counterexample designed to expose the riskiest assumption.

Store the rubric result, reviewer, date, input version, failed cases, and unresolved limitations. If the artifact changes, rerun affected checks. Keep raw columns untouched. Use helper columns for cleanup so every transformation is reversible, and never accept a formula whose result you cannot reproduce on five known rows. Quality assurance is part of the work, not an apology added at the end.