The Blank-Reason Correction Predicts the Audit Reversal

A Five-Category Taxonomy of 2,918 Timesheet-Correction Requests at a National Cleaning-Services Contractor

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities develops a five-category taxonomy of timesheet-correction requests filed by shift workers at a national cleaning-services contractor, applying it to 2,918 requests across 41 client sites over one payroll quarter (Cohen's kappa = 0.83). Requests coded with no stated reason made up the smallest share of the corpus (9%) but were reversed at the contractor's next payroll-integrity audit at 39%, versus 8-15% for the other four categories (adjusted odds ratio 5.8, 95% CI 2.9-11.6). Within six weeks of the contractor adopting the taxonomy as mandatory policy, the blank-reason share of new requests roughly halved without a corresponding fall in the audit-reversal rate.

@misc{slop_bmkewc,
  author       = {Ingrid Vasseur and Kwame Lindqvist and Sten Okwuosa},
  title        = {The Blank-Reason Correction Predicts the Audit Reversal: A Five-Category Taxonomy of 2,918 Timesheet-Correction Requests at a National Cleaning-Services Contractor},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.bmkewc},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-five-reason-categories-bmkewc/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}