Custom Date Range Not Matching Date Dimension

[sadoskydm]

I have a simple Freeform table with Visits as the metric. I added 'Month' from Dimensions and several pre-defined Custom Date Ranges. The Months from the Dimensions group are Feb, Mar, Apr, 2023 (based on the workspace date range in the upper-right), while the pre-defined Custom Date Ranges are '3 Months Ago', '2 Months Ago', and 'Last Month' which correspond to Feb, Mar, Apr, 2023. I would expect the visits shown in the Months from the Dimensions to be equal to the visits shown in the pre-defined date range months as they represent the same month. However, the visits are off by a small amount, e.g. 33,927 to 33,954. Interested in understanding why they don't match.  Thanks in advance.

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

When I compare our stats using the actual months and the "last month", "2 months ago" and "3 months ago" date ranges, Visits match perfectly....

First, check that your Panel date range is looking at exactly the last 3 months.... if for instance it's looking at "Feb 2-April 29"... the Dimension variation will only include Feb 2-Feb 28 (not Feb 1)... and April will only include Apr 1-April 29 (but not April 30)...

However, custom date ranges ("last month", "2 months ago" and "3 months ago") will supersede the panel date range and include the entire month of Feb or April.

[sadoskydm]

Thanks for the info Jennifer. I checked and the Panel date range is set to exactly the last three months. 

I believe I uncovered the culprit but am unsure of the reasoning. I realized we have a Panel segment applied at the top, the segment being the Adobe defined 'USA' segment. When I remove the USA segment the monthly date ranges match exactly. When USA is applied the visits are reduced in both the Dimension months and the pre-defined Date Range months, the Dimension months are always a little higher than the pre-defined Date Range months.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Ahhhhh, that's probably doing it... how is your USA segment defined? You might need to tweak it slightly to work properly in this setup....