Describe your experience in validating reports or system outputs during User Acceptance Testing. How did you ensure that the reports met business requirements?

Situation

At a previous financial services company, I was the BA supporting the rollout of a new accounting system. My role included validating 15 custom financial reports during the User Acceptance Testing phase. One report, a daily reconciliation summary, had been flagged by the vendor as 'ready for testing' but contained critical data-mapping errors in early UAT cycles.

Task

I needed to ensure every report matched the business rules and acceptance criteria defined in the requirements document, logging all defects and tracking them to resolution.

Action

I first created a detailed UAT plan with step-by-step test scripts for each report, covering data accuracy, layout, and calculation logic. I executed the scripts using a prepared test dataset and compared outputs against expected results in Excel. For the reconciliation report, I identified that transaction types were incorrectly mapped, causing a 20% discrepancy. I logged the defect with screenshots and SQL queries as evidence, then worked with the vendor's analyst to explain the business logic until the mapping was corrected. I re-tested twice until all criteria passed.

Result

All 15 reports were accepted by the business users on the first production-readiness review. The reconciliation report became a trusted daily tool, and the UAT cycle completed three days ahead of schedule, saving the project cost of extended test hours.