Month-end Cost Explain

Catch manufacturing cost losses before the decision is made

On top of your ERP, the cause, the amount and the evidence of a cost change land on one screen.
The cause used to arrive after the decision. We move it in front of it.
Start with one plant, one product family and one month-end close — in 4–6 weeks.

A loss you find is money already gone

Event
A number or an assumption changes
The allocation basis moved, the material master went stale, or the calculation lives only in someone’s head.
Broken chain
Why it changed doesn’t reach you before the decision
There is nowhere to trace when and how a rule changed, so confirming it takes days.
Decision risk
Price, cost and orders change without knowing the cause
The same wrong saving repeats, and a correction report follows.

Signal

Start by picking which product family needs explaining

Once the close is done, how much each product family moved sits on one screen.
You don’t read all of it — only what the rules flagged.

Month-end briefingFictional Manufacturing Co. · Plant 1 · 2026-06 close

Read-OnlyExample — fictional data

The 2026-06 close — which product family needs explaining?

Total cost change +KRW 279.09M · 5 product familiesPublished 4/5 · 1 blocked3 sources connected · 2 not loaded

Largest moveFrozen food+KRW 154.0M · +KRW 1,539/kg per unit
Over threshold3Δ ≥ +2.0%p → analyse
Publication blocked1Seasoning
Families in scope5As of the 2026-06 close
Items held open11Held at the release gate

To be explained3Of five families, those the rule (Δ ≥ +2.0%p → analyse) flagged or that are blocked from publishing

	Cost change · vs last month	Unit cost	Cost ratio (ref.)	Verdict · top driver
1	+KRW 154.0M	KRW 16,915/kg+KRW 1,539	68.4%+4.3%p	Over thresholdRaw-material price
2	+KRW 70.19M	KRW 16,149/kg+KRW 710	69.5%+3.5%p	Publication blockedKRW 45,000,000 unexplained
3	+KRW 68.3M	KRW 16,263/kg+KRW 732	72.1%+3.8%p	Over thresholdRaw-material price

Click a row and the Decision Brief below switches to that family.

This is the real product screen. The figures are fictional data, and every number on it is the result of SQL run against the connected sources.

Explanation · evidence

Not one number —
the items that made that number

Pick a product family and the cost change splits by factor. Each line carries its formula and the owning department, and the screen checks that the total matches the cost change.

Decision BriefFrozen food · A · 2026-06 close · vs last month

Read-OnlyExample — fictional data

Why frozen-food cost rose in 2026-06+KRW 154.0M

Cost change+KRW 154.0MKRW 2.308B → 2.462B
Unit costKRW 16,915/kgLast month KRW 15,376 · +10.0%
Output145,552kgLast month 150,100 kg · −3.0%
Yield rate92.8%Last month 95.0%

Contribution to changeThe KRW 154,000,000 cost change, split by axis

Why it changed	Amount	Share	Cost-ratio effect	Owner	Verified
	KRW 83,504,500	+53%	+2.3%p	Purchasing	Verified
	KRW 49,495,500	+33%	+1.4%p	Production	Provisional
	−KRW 47,873,684	-30%	−1.3%p	Production control	Provisional
	KRW 36,873,684	+23%	+1.0%p	Production	Provisional
	KRW 32,000,000	+21%	+0.9%p	Cost accounting	Provisional
Total	KRW 154,000,000	+100%	+4.3%p	Checked against the cost change

Residual KRW 0

The total reconciles. The five axes add up to KRW 154.0M — the same as the cost change. The tolerance is ±0.05%p; beyond it we do not invent an “other” bucket, we simply do not publish the Brief.

Source vouchers · 5Largest RM-X variances

PO-2606-001S-04212,000kgKRW 10,850 → 12,500+15.2%
PO-2606-002S-04210,000kgKRW 10,570 → 12,000+13.5%
PO-2606-004S-0189,000kgKRW 8,900 → 10,000+12.4%
… 2 more

SQL executed · 5No number on this screen was typed in by hand

SELECT material_code,
       SUM(qty_kg * (unit_price
           - prev_unit_price)) AS contrib
FROM   purchase
WHERE  period = ? AND product_group = ?
GROUP  BY material_code
ORDER  BY contrib DESC

Click an axis and its evidence changes — currently “Price axis”.

A candidate cause is not a verdict. This product answers as far as the axis points; the judgement after that is yours.

Five stages, from signal to memory

This isn’t a tool that answers once and stops. Evidence and decisions stay in the same place, so this month’s judgement is where next month starts.

Signal

When cost or margin moves unlike it usually does, we catch it first — before anyone opens the month-end close.

Explain

What contributed and by how much, split by item, process and department — with the comparison base and the calculation alongside.

Decide

Every candidate cause carries a drill-down, a formula and a source. Your team checks it on the spot and moves to the decision.

Act

For a confirmed cause we propose what to do next, and record the action a person picks. Whether it happens is a human approval.

Learn

What was decided, on what evidence, and how it turned out — all kept. Next month the same question starts from that record.

In the Act and Learn stages the system proposes and records. It does not act for you, and approval stays with a person.

We don’t touch your existing systems

We only read from them. That means no system replacement and no migration to get started — and a source that isn’t connected is shown as not connected.

Data connectionsExample — fictional data

purchaseConnected33 rows · snapshot 2026-08-07 01:21
cost_ledgerConnected30 rows · snapshot 2026-08-07 01:21
revenueConnected10 rows · snapshot 2026-08-07 01:21
Production actuals · mesNot loadedInput and output actuals per batch — the source behind the yield axis.
BOM · bomNot loadedProduct family ↔ material ratios — the only path that attributes a voucher to a family.

The edge of coverage — this is as far as the system goes. MES and BOM exist as nodes in the definition file but are not loaded. So yield broken down by process and lot and attributing purchase vouchers to a product family are not answered here. We do not fill them in with estimates.

What it does not do

Running, editing or writing back your ERP close
Forecasting
Acting on its own
Approving anything automatically

It goes as far as explaining a closed set of books. Being read-only keeps the review short, and there is nothing to roll back.

Our data is a mess. Does this still work?

We don’t start by assuming tidy data. Finding out when the allocation basis changed and how stale the master data is, is the early work. If clean data were the entry price, this problem would never get solved. If tidying the data and the decision rules is itself what you need right now, that’s a different engagement — the plant diagnostic covers it.

How can we trust an answer an AI produced?

It is built to stay silent when it is not sure. The five-axis breakdown has to match the actual cost change within ±0.05%p before a Brief goes out. When it cannot, it does not invent an "other" bucket; that month simply gets no Brief. Every answer that does go out carries its cause, amount and evidence, so your people can check it on the spot.

What extra input do our teams have to provide?

None. We only read your existing systems; nothing new has to be entered. There will be a few things to confirm with your people while we align the assumptions behind the calculation.

Permissions

Same data, different screens

An executive and an analyst look at the same numbers but not the same screen. What is not shown is specified just as carefully as what is.

Role	Scope	What the screen shows	What stays hidden
CFO · finance executiveChooses which of the five families to dig into	All families	The list is the hero · Brief down to the summary layer · validation shows the gate verdict only	Technical detail — residuals, SQL counts, gates, pack versions — opened only when something looks off
Cost accountantBuilds the explanation and defends the numbers	All families	Every layer — axis table, SQL, vouchers, gates, open items, glossary alignment, ad-hoc queries	Nothing. If this role can’t see the evidence, the product doesn’t work
Division head · plant managerAnswers why cost moved in their own product family	Frozen food only	Ownership and the written explanation at the top · one row in the list · evidence collapsed	Every other family · the validation screen · vouchers and SQL · ad-hoc queries · setup screens
FDE · ontology ownerConnects the customer ERP to the definition file and sets the detection rules	All families	Every layer + golden set · QA scoring + Ontology Studio + workflow setup + operations and admin	Nothing. Early in a rollout this role is the only user

Role names and scopes come from the definition file. Where your organisation calls them something else, we use your words.

One cycle, four to six weeks

You don’t have to commit to a company-wide rollout first. Start by seeing whether one product family’s close produces an answer.

Fix the scope

One plant, one product family, one month-end close. The narrower the cut, the sooner the answer.

Connect the data

We connect your existing systems read-only and write down where each value comes from.

Align the rules

We check the allocation rules and when master data was last updated, so the calculation starts from the right assumptions.

Check the explanation

We answer real month-end questions with comparison, contribution and evidence — and confirm it with your team.

Check whether your plant is a fit right now

Five questions are enough to tell whether now is the right time to start. We don’t ask for your contact details.

1 / 5

When a cost or margin number changes, do you find the cause within days?

Where this goes

Starting at cost, then inventory, scrap, yield and margin — one way of deciding

That’s the direction we’re heading. What a contract promises today, though, is the month-end cost explanation described above — no more. The rest widens step by step as the evidence accumulates.

Before you start

These are the questions people usually ask first

Next step

Pick where to start

Month-end cost explained

Read-only connection to your systems
One plant · one product family · one close
Comparison · contribution · evidence
Starts in 4–6 weeks

AX kickoff guide

The three most common false starts
Four conditions for picking the first use case
A 90-day roadmap
A reporting frame for executives, plus a 10-point self-check

Technical review pack

Read-only integration and data flow
On-premise and air-gapped options
TLS 1.3 · AES-256 · SSO/RBAC
An engineer review call if you want one