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Provenance & traceability

Every figure in bluprnts traces back to the drivers that produced it — no hidden formulas, and an explanation attached to each statement line and report figure.

Provenance is knowing why a number is what it is. bluprnts is built so every figure in every statement traces back through the calculation to the products, sales, employees, costs and financing that produced it — and so that you, or an investor, lender or auditor, can ask that question and get a real answer.

Why it works this way#

The model is calculated in layers, and each layer only reads the one before it:

Your drivers → the statements → the derived figures

Nothing is entered directly into a statement, so no line can have an origin outside that chain. There are no hidden cells, no formulas that have quietly diverged from the ones beside them, and no manual adjustment sitting on top of a calculation. That is the structural difference from a spreadsheet, where any cell can contain anything and the only way to know is to click on it.

See How forecasts are built.

Where you see it#

On every statement line. Each line in the profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow carries an explanation — select the (i) beside the line name. It says what the line is and what drives it, in the vocabulary of your model rather than of accounting.

On every field. The same (i) appears through the app beside the fields you fill in, saying what a field does and what it affects downstream.

On every figure in a report. Figures in report narrative are live references to the engine, not typed numbers, and each carries its own provenance — "Bank balance → Closing Balance · months until the balance goes negative for good". Hovering a figure shows you the path it came down.

Why reports can't drift#

Because report figures are references rather than values, a report cannot say something its model doesn't. And when your model moves, bluprnts compares the figures each section was written against with the live ones and flags the sections whose words no longer match their numbers. See What a report is.

What this buys you#

  • You can defend the number. Asked why runway is eleven months, you can show the chain, not just the output.
  • You can find the mistake. A figure that looks wrong is traceable to the driver that made it wrong, which is faster than auditing formulas.
  • Someone else can check it. A lender or investor reading a bluprnts report is reading computed figures, and the assumptions behind them are in the document.

The limit worth knowing#

Provenance guarantees the figure follows from your inputs. It does not make your inputs right. A traceable forecast built on optimistic volumes is a traceable optimistic forecast — which is what scenarios are for.