Fulfillment Event Gap
A fulfillment event gap exists where a system of record captures an authorisation — a prescription, a referral, a quote acceptance, a warranty claim — and no corresponding fulfillment event ever returns to it. The authorisation is observable; the outcome is not. Because the absence of a record is indistinguishable from the absence of the thing, the gap cannot be measured from inside the originating system alone. Closing it requires a second data source that holds the fulfillment side, joined on an identifier both systems carry.
Definition
Revenue paths split at a point where one system authorises an action and a different party performs it. The authorising system writes a record — an order, an authorisation, an approval, a referral — and then stops receiving information. Where no fulfillment event is written back, the originating system holds a permanent open state that looks identical whether the action was completed elsewhere, completed later, or never completed at all. This is different from a tracking gap, which is a break in an existing signal path. A fulfillment event gap is the absence of a signal path: no event was ever designed to travel back, so no configuration inside the originating system can surface it.
Why it matters
Fulfillment event gaps sit at the boundaries where margin actually moves — where a product is dispensed, where a service is performed, where a financed amount is approved. Because the gap is structural rather than a misconfiguration, it survives every attempt to fix reporting inside the originating platform. Naming it changes the question from an estimate of loss into a specific reconciliation: which second system holds the fulfillment side, what identifier both systems carry, and what the join can and cannot conclude once it runs. That is a build decision, not a debate.