A 15-minute check for any export you plan to rely on

You have a CSV of your business. Your accountant asked for it, or you are thinking about leaving your brokerage, or the customer relationship management (CRM) system you pay for just raised its price. It opened without complaint. The rows look like deals and the numbers look like money.

None of that means the file is complete. A file that lost data almost never says so. The missing part shows up as a zero, a blank, or a date that looks odd only if you happen to look at it.

$0.00

a total with no rows behind it

Dec 31, 1969

a blank date read as zero, shown in US time

7030

New Jersey ZIP code 07030, after the spreadsheet drops the zero

Each one opens cleanly and formats like a real value.

So don't read the file. Test it. Four checks, about fifteen minutes, and each one needs only a number you already trust.

1. Count the deals (3 minutes)

Pick a number you know without the software: how many deals you closed last year. Your own records, your brokerage's production report, or a calendar and a pen will do.

Filter the export to closed deals with a close date in that year and count the rows.

If you get fewer, something was filtered out before you ever saw the file. The usual suspects: deals missing a close date, which a date filter quietly skips; deals entered before the company adopted the system; and referrals or leases filed under a different type. If you get more, look for the same address twice.

Four missing rows is not a rounding error. It is four clients.

2. Reconcile one total against paper (5 minutes)

Now check the money, against a document the software didn't write.

For a few specific deals, use the settlement statement. On a financed sale, the federal Closing Disclosure has to show the total commission paid to each brokerage. That is gross commission, before your split, so compare it to the gross column in the export.

For the whole year, use your Form 1099-NEC, the nonemployee compensation form your brokerage files. Know what box 1 means first: some brokers report the full commission and others report only your share after the split, and it varies by broker and by state.

The size of the gap tells you what went wrong:

What you see	What it probably means
Off by the same percentage every time	One side is gross, the other is after the split
Off by roughly one deal's commission	A missing row. Go back to test 1
Off by an odd amount	A referral fee, a changed price, or a correction that never reached the export

A worked case: your 1099 says $84,000 and the export's commission column sums to $67,200. That is exactly 80% of $84,000. An 80/20 split, most likely, with the two documents reporting different sides of it. Nothing is missing. Had your broker reported gross and the export summed to $77,000, the missing $7,000 would be a deal.

A check, not tax advice. If it still won't reconcile, ask your accountant.

3. Look for columns that are all zeros (3 minutes)

This is the test that catches the worst failure, and the one nobody runs.

For every money column, total it. For every date column, count the blanks. A column that sums to exactly zero, or is empty all the way down, is almost never the truth about your business. It usually means the system kept that number somewhere the export didn't look.

We shipped this ourselves: a picture of our own dashboard read "Expenses $0.00" directly under a caption promising every expense was included, because the expenses were filed in one place and the screen was adding up another.

Watch for the half-empty column too. Filled in for the last two years, blank before that. The system added it later, and older deals never got it.

4. Read one old deal, every column (4 minutes)

Choose a closing from two or three years ago that you remember well, and read its row left to right with the file folder open.

Old deals are where the damage lives. Recent ones went in through today's version of the system; old ones survived every change since. Look for a date in 1969 or 1970, which is a blank that became zero: most software counts time from midnight on Jan 1, 1970, and in US time zones that moment falls on Dec 31, 1969. Look for a long number like 1755302400000 in a date column, which is a date in August 2025 written as milliseconds. Look for a second buyer who isn't there. And look at ZIP codes: Excel removes leading zeros when it opens a CSV, so a New Jersey or New England address loses a digit on your screen even when the file itself is fine.

One deal read closely beats a hundred skimmed.

What passing buys you

A file that passes all four can be trusted for its numbers. It is still a file. A CSV carries a filename for the contract at best, so the documents need downloading on their own. And a clean export is not a migration; getting another system to read those columns with the same meaning is its own week of work.

Passing also doesn't settle what you're allowed to take with you. That is a question for your independent contractor agreement (ICA), and it's not one we can answer for you.

Where KeyFlow fits

You own the account, so the export is yours to pull whenever you like. Settings, then Data, lets you pick transactions, contacts, vendors, expenses, income, and email templates, and downloads one zip: a CSV file for each, the templates as their own files, and a readme that describes each file and lists its columns.

It has a limit too, and it says so. Each deal carries two client columns; when a deal has a third client, the export tells you how many names it left out, instead of dropping them quietly.

Run it now

Not the week you give notice. Today, on the file you have, while you still have the login to go back and ask for a better one.

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Sources: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: official interpretation of the Closing Disclosure, real estate commissions · Reed Corporation CPA: Realtor 1099 from broker explained · Wikipedia: Unix time · Microsoft Support: keeping leading zeros and large numbers