Who is this article for?

Users encountering incorrect variance calculations.

IT Administrator permissions are required to resolve the issue.

Ideagen Internal Audit enables you to monitor variance from key due dates. These variances are displayed on the data grid. If there is a problem with the application server's Pentana Robot service then these variance values will become incorrect.

This article gives an example of what this looks like, and how to troubleshoot the problem.

1. Issue

In the example below you will see a data grid for Actions, including Current Due Date.  The Due Date Variance field shows (today) - Current Due Date, so you can see whether the Action is not yet due, or if it is late.  If it is late, the value is shown in brackets, in red.

The Current Due Date Period field is derived from the variance.

The Variance and Period fields are recalculated each night by the Pentana Robot service on the application server, specifically by the job UpdateDueDateVariances.

If the Robot is not running, or if there is a problem running this specific job, then the variances will not be recalculated and the figures will show incorrectly, as in the example below.

 Here, the Current Due Date is 1st August 2025, which is prior to the current date (18th August 2025).  Yet, the variance shows that the Action is due in 31 days time, and is 0-3 months early.

2. Solution

To resolve this issue:

1. Log into the application server.
2. Open services.msc.
3. Locate the Pentana Robot Service
4. Check the status.
   
   
    
5. If it is not Running, start it.

If the Robot is running, it's likely that it is encountering an error.

To check for the error:

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Locate the application folder.
   By default, this is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pentana\ServerRobot\[instance name]
3. Open the file ServerRobot.txt and look for errors relating to UpdateDueDateVariances
4. Troubleshoot from there,

After correcting the problem, the variances should be corrected.  

The process that recalculates variances is run overnight, so after starting the Robot successfully the correct values will not show until the next day.