Since nothing in the Bitcoin consensus algorithm works with balances, using them for comparison would be potentially unwise-- it's perfectly possible to have an incorrect 'balance' that is actually a latently corrupted state. Bitcoin Core gettxoutsetinfo will give you a hash of the serialized utxo set for this kind of diagnostic purpose, though there is no text specification for the particular serialization it uses, you'd have to extract that from the implementation.
when does the (sum of vouts) - (sum of vins) for an address not match what it should be?
For things that use scripts with multisig, if statements, CLTV, etc. I just treat the p2sh hash as the "address" and not deal with the probabilistic value allocations to the potential redeemers. I think even for the strange anyone can spend outputs, it is either spent or not spent, so the difference of sums would work
I have commissioned an independently tabulated balances that I will cross check against. The plan would be to analyze any that are not matching, which will hopefully be not many. the gettxoutsetinfo should be quite useful for that, i forgot about that one. thanks
After all, block explorers are displaying a balance (potentially inaccurate it might be). I always assume my data is wrong, until I get it verified. Granted if the independently generated balances match iguana's output, it is possible for something to slip through, but at least for an initial test it seems like a good place to start and since the independent balances will be generated from bitcoin core, I know it is 100% correct
James