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Case Study
The Budget Reconciliation
Track down a missing budget line, prevent lookup errors, and quantify the unresolved spend still distorting the forecast.
Core Skills
Scenario
Finance flagged a mismatch between the draft operating budget and the invoice ledger. You need to identify a mystery spend line, harden the lookup against missing IDs, and total the open operations spend before the forecast locks.
Current Mission
Identify the spend category behind an unlabeled invoice in the draft budget.
What formula returns the category for invoice INV-1004 from the visible ledger excerpt?
Dataset
Work from the table below, then submit the formula or result for the current mission.
Vendor Spend Tracker - rows 1-12
Download CSV| Row numbers | A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Header row | |||||||
| 2 | INV-1001 | Cloudline Software | Software | $12,500.00 | Engineering | Paid | Sarah Chen |
| 3 | INV-1002 | Apex Office Supply | Office Supplies | $487.50 | Operations | Paid | Marcus Rivera |
| 4 | INV-1003 | Summit Consulting Group | Consulting | $18,750.00 | Finance | Paid | Priya Patel |
| 5 | INV-1004 | Meridian Travel Co. | Travel | $3,200.00 | Sales | Paid | Laura Thompson |
| 6 | INV-1005 | Forge & Frame Creative | Marketing | $7,600.00 | Marketing | Paid | James Okafor |
| 7 | INV-1006 | NovaTech Solutions | Software | $9,800.00 | Engineering | Pending | Sarah Chen |
| 8 | INV-1007 | Atlas Hardware Co. | Hardware | $2,150.00 | Operations | Paid | Marcus Rivera |
| 9 | INV-1008 | Clearview Data Systems | Software | $15,300.00 | Engineering | Overdue | David Kim |
| 10 | INV-1009 | Redstone Marketing | Marketing | $4,250.00 | Marketing | Paid | James Okafor |
| 11 | INV-1010 | Keystone Legal Advisors | Consulting | $8,900.00 | Finance | Paid | David Kim |
| 12 | INV-1011 | Cloudline Software | Software | $8,500.00 | Engineering | Paid | Sarah Chen |
| 13 | INV-1012 | Basecamp Events | Marketing | $8,256.80 | Operations | Paid | Laura Thompson |
| 14 |
The visible columns and rows follow the active mission so each step stays focused.
Mission
Identify the spend category behind an unlabeled invoice in the draft budget.
Question
What formula returns the category for invoice INV-1004 from the visible ledger excerpt?
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