Any system that reports on its own work has an incentive to flatter itself. It is true of employees, of agencies, and of software. The difference is that software can be built so the flattery is impossible.
When Morna tells an owner that €3,180 was recovered this month, that sentence is a claim. Claims are cheap. What makes it worth reading is that the owner can tap the figure and see exactly what it adds up: three invoices, each marked paid, each paid by a payout that Stripe recorded at a specific time with a specific id.
A figure in the brief peels back to its evidence, and the evidence to the system that recorded it.
Sourced, or not shown
The rule is simple to say and strict to build: a figure that cannot trace to a live source cannot be shown as proof. Not rounded, not estimated, not inferred from an email that sounded positive. If the source is not there, the number is either labelled as what it is, a projection or an estimate, or it is left out.
Typography does not make a number true. A large, confident figure in a beautiful serif is still just a claim until it opens to its evidence. So every figure in Morna carries its evidence state, and opens the same inspector wherever it appears.
One invented euro is a failure, not a rounding error.
A projection must look like one
Owners need forecasts. Cash next month, the likely close rate on this quarter's quotes, the effect of a price change. Forecasts are useful precisely because they are not facts, and the danger is in letting them borrow the authority of facts.
In Morna's figures, a projection is always drawn differently: dashed, hollow, labelled. The sourced weeks of a cash chart are solid points that open to the Stripe lines they add up. The forecast weeks are not, and never will be.
Sourced weeks are solid and open to their lines. The forecast is dashed and hollow.
Outcomes, not activity
The same discipline applies to results. Sending a reminder is an execution, and it leaves a receipt: sent at 07:42 from the owner's Gmail. Getting paid is an outcome, and it is only recorded when the payment system says so. Morna never counts the first as the second. Permission is not execution, and execution is not an outcome.
This is why Morna's pricing principle, before any price is set, ties the first charge to a result the owner can check at the source. The receipts are not a feature. They are the product.