Since today is October 1, 1999 an the Federal Goverment has supposedly rolled over to 2000 I wonder if anyone knows what we can expect to happe

-- John Hockman (jhock34981@erols.com), October 01, 1999

Answers

John,

What can we expect to happen? Over 40 states rolled over into their fiscal year 2000 on July 1st, but few problems were reported. Don't expect to hear much about it in the news. The fiscal year rollover issue is mostly about accounting and financial forecasting software.

Before February 1st, I didn't know one way or another if the Jo Anne Effect was going to cause noticeable problems that would end up being reported. After February 1st, when Wal-Mart and some other companies entered their fiscal year 2000 with no reported problems, I realized that what PNG had been saying on this forum was true...that problems in accounting software aren't nearly as noticeable to outsiders as problems in manufacturing or distribution would be.

We won't hear that much about Y2K-related manufacturing or distribution problems until January 2000. It was clear to me in February that we weren't going to hear much about fiscal year rollover problems in accounting software on April 1st and July 1st. Most people on this forum weren't expecting "show-stoppers" on April 1st and July 1st either, but yet the issue of few reported problems does continue to get raised from time to time here.

Anyone who'd like to learn more about the significance and non- significance of fiscal year rollovers in accounting software, as well as find examples problems that have occured so far can find quite a few relevant links on the following thread:

"Significance of States Fiscal Start"

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00122f

Almost all non-accounting software problems, PC BIOS chip and PC operating system problems, and embedded system/process control system problems are still ahead of us. Those are the ones with the potential of being "show-stoppers."

It should also be noted that the GPS rollover and 9/9/99 were each their own unique types of glitches and are not a subset of the "99" and "00" problem that is we usually refer to as Y2K.

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), October 01, 1999.

I don't expect much to happen, at least not soon. Any immediate problems can be readily concealed or worked around; after all, we're not really in a Y2K environment for another 90 days or so.

It may be that the problems will start to mount faster than they can be solved in the next couple of months, but it wouldn't surprise me to see things seem to be fairly normal with the government's operations all the way through the rest of the year.

-- cody (cody@y2ksurvive.com), October 01, 1999.

linkmeister, you are right that jo anne problems haven't been reported much, but they HAVE happened. my husband jon, who works for a computer services firm, has had plenty of calls all year from businesses with problems which turned out to be jo anne effect. i expect a fresh batch of phone calls any day now that we're in the 4th quarter, from businesses freshly bitten.

these businesses are not keen on telling the press what happened, and my husband keeps his mouth shut too, except in very general terms, because he wants to keep his clients.

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), October 01, 1999.

Linkmeister,

An additional factor to be considered, FWIW, is that yesterday was the end of the 1st quarter for all of those businesses which use a 1 July start of their fiscal year.

Since the 1 July date was the date that the Federal government used as it's fiscal year for many many years, it was also the chosen date for quite a lot of private business entities in the US.

The "Forecast Effect" should therefore start to show up in a larger volume of businesses in about 3 - 5 weeks as they close the books on the 1st quarter.

I expect to see more cases of "huh?"in a few more weeks. I think that enough SME's use the 1 July date to cause a noticeable increase in the leaks that escape from the inner workings of a business and reach the public eye.

We shall see, of course, in the fullness of time. To date my predictive powers have been severely limited, and have been proven to best be consigned to the realm of Mr. WEST, (Wrong Every Stinking Time).

Sooner or later I will hit it lucky though.

As we drill down the timeline to whatever awaits us at the magic moment, it would seem to me that it becomes more and more likely that the cat must escape the bag before too much longer.

S.O.B.

-- sweetolebob (buffgun@hotmail.com), October 01, 1999.

Gee, didn't I hear on the news last night that we've got a three week "extention" before the FY begins?

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), October 01, 1999.

Another year of deficit spending.

-- Nathan (nospam@all.com), October 01, 1999.