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A customer says they have 4,200 employees and you’re seeing 4,417. The two numbers are counting different populations, so establish what each one counts before investigating a fault.
Before you start
  • You have the customer’s figure and know which report produced it. An HR dashboard, a payroll report, and a headcount report disagree with each other too.

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Steps

1

Get an unfiltered count from Bindbee

Page the model with no filters and count - see Pagination.Confirm the walk completed. A loop that stopped on a short page instead of an absent cursor undercounts.Result: A trustworthy baseline.
2

Break the count down by status

Count each of ACTIVE, PENDING, INACTIVE, ACTIVE_EXTERNAL, INACTIVE_EXTERNAL, LEAVE, DECEASED, RETIRED, and -. This one breakdown resolves most gaps, because customers quote active permanent employees and an unfiltered API count includes everyone.Result: The gap accounted for.
3

Confirm the customer's definition

Ask what their number counts, and which report produced it. Their HRIS dashboard, payroll register, and benefits eligibility report each give a different figure for the same workforce.Result: A like-for-like comparison.
4

Only then treat it as a data problem

A gap that survives every check above becomes a missing-records investigation - see Missing records.Result: An investigation grounded in evidence.

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Reconciling benefits counts

Benefits gaps are usually structural. An employer benefit is a plan. A benefit is one employee’s enrollment, so counting benefits to find how many plans exist gives an enrollment count instead. A dependent becomes a covered life only through a dependent benefit. Counting dependents as covered lives overstates the population, which is why an eligibility file comes out too long. See Reading benefits.

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Frequently Asked Questions

You’re counting mid-sync. Gate the count on the sync-completed event - see Syncing.
Check for terminated or historical records the customer’s report filters out and the API returns. Confirm you’re comparing the same population too.
Suspect permission or scope first. A withheld population looks identical to a lost one - see Origin-system errors.
Give them the per-status breakdown in place of a total. It turns “your integration is missing people” into a conversation about which populations to include.