Source notes that survive an audit question

Auditors in municipal work do not attack the drawing first. They attack the sentence under it. “Source: agency data” is not a source. It is an admission that nobody in the room can name the register.

A note we will sign in Batumi names four things: the register or survey, the cut-off date of the extract, the unit (persons, tonnes, thousands of lari), and the suppression rule. If employment in chapter 3 uses 31 December and the annex uses 15 January, that is two series. Pretending they are one series is how a committee spends an hour on a difference of forty people.

Weighting belongs in the note, not in a methods annex that nobody carries to the sitting. So does a broken series. If school places changed definition when a village school closed, the bar for that year needs a mark and a sentence, not a footnote that says “data not comparable” without saying with what.

We write notes in the language of the volume. An English caption that names a Georgian register by an invented English title helps only the translator. Keep the register’s real name, then explain the cut-off in English if the pack is bilingual.

The test is oral. Giorgi reads the note aloud in the review meeting. If the chapter owner cannot confirm the date without looking at a second screen, the note is rewritten before the chart is redrawn. Charts are cheaper to move than a number that has already been read in public.