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Costs are off by a few pennies against the Google interface - should I worry?

T
Tomasz Wojcik Asked Sep 26, 2024
2 529
Comparing month totals for a client. Google interface says one number, our report says a number about 30 pennies lower on 12000 spend. Every month similar, always small, always lower. Not a big problem but client asks and I need to say something better than "rounding".

Replies (2)

Accepted answer
K Keyword Ninja Team · Sep 26, 2024
"Rounding" is close to the truth but you can give them the precise version, which lands better. Google reports cost in micros - millionths of a currency unit - so a click that costs 1.234567 is stored exactly. Anything that displays a currency figure has to round somewhere, and Google's interface rounds each row before it adds them up, while a total computed from the raw micros adds first and rounds once. Add a few hundred thousand rows and the two methods drift by pennies. Neither is wrong; they round at different points. Two things worth checking so you can rule out anything real: Timezone. Your account's reporting timezone decides where a day starts. If a comparison spans a month boundary and the two sides disagree about which day a midnight click belongs to, you get a difference far bigger than pennies. Date range. Today is usually partial and still moving, so including it guarantees a mismatch that fixes itself tomorrow. A consistent difference of pennies on five figures is the arithmetic. A difference of pounds is one of the other two, and worth telling us about.
T Tomasz Wojcik · Sep 26, 2024
Micros explanation is what I needed. Client is accountant, he will like that answer more than rounding. Thank you.

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