Stop “Fixing” Data by Hand: Why Your Manual Overwrites Are Creating a Black Hole
A tiny manual tweak feels harmless, but it destroys the audit trail. We explore why 'hard-coding' corrections creates a future mystery that no one can solve.
Sofia Vector
The Visual Investigator Barcelona
Market Analyst who treats data visualization as a lie-detector test. She prefers a messy CSV over a polite PowerPoint, but her true superpower is turning that mess into a chart that makes the problem obvious. A disciple of Edward Tufte and Gestalt theory, she writes here to teach you how to see the patterns your competitors miss—usually using nothing more than Excel and a keen eye.
Note: “Sofia Vector” is a pseudonym. We use pseudonyms so we can write honestly about real work without naming clients, employers, or teams.
Refunds, Returns, Write-Offs: Build a “Reality Ledger” in Excel
Gross Revenue is vanity. We show how to pull refunds and write-offs out of the shadows and build a reconciled table that shows your Net Reality.
Stop Letting One Big Deal Hijack the Forecast
That massive contract in your pipeline is not a trend; it is a lottery ticket. We isolate 'Hero Deals' to keep your core forecast honest and safe.
The Forecast That Looked Fine Until Tax Day: A Case of Forgetting Timing
Revenue is vanity; timing is sanity. We show how predictable bills like VAT and Tax act as surprise villains, and how to map them so they stop ambushing your cash.
The Segmentation Fail: Why Your “Industry” Pie Chart Is Hiding the Money
We love to group customers by easy labels like 'Industry' or 'Region.' But these labels are lazy. We show how to segment by behavior to find the real pattern.
Three-Way Reality Check: How Sofia Verifies a Conclusion Before Believing It
The fastest way to lose money is to fall in love with the first chart you see. We use the 'Triangulation Protocol' to verify data by Time, Segment, and Cohort.
“Pipeline” Is Not Money: Forecast Only What Has Earned the Right
Sales reps are optimists. CFOs are realists. We bridge the gap by 'scoring' the pipeline based on evidence, not sentiment. Stop forecasting hope.
Stop Sending Me Screenshots of Dashboards: I Need the Raw Export
A screenshot is a postcard from a place we cannot verify. Why static images of gauges and pie charts are liability magnets, and why we demand the raw rows.
Come, Look at This Cell: Turn a Messy CSV Into a Clean Weekly Sales Pulse
Manual reporting is not just boring; it is dangerous. We tour the cells of a messy export to build a 'Set and Forget' cleaning machine in Excel.
The Average Is a Polite Fiction: Why We Must Tour the Tails
Why your 'Average Deal Size' metric is masking a cash flow crisis, and how to use histograms to find the truth hiding in the extremes.