Many companies work on an accounting year that dosn,t quite correspond to the calendar year. Example would be accounting months that are 4, 4, 5, 4, 4, 5... weeks in lenght or similar. For example the 1999 accounting year may have ended 12/23/99 and as of now the accounting month is 1 and the accounting year is 2000.

So far so good, but some, maybe many applications/reports may need 1999 data and report as the last week of 1999. Also some may need 1999 data but present data using a 2000 calendar. Also some may interpet 1999 as a leap year because the accounting year has already been bumped up to 2000 but control numbers assigned such as order numbers might for the remainder of 1999 assign 1999 control numbers. Example: today is day 360, but if the assigning process reads the current year as a leap year instead of assigning order number 1999-0360-001 it may instead assign number 1999-0361-001.

This kind of thing is not always as easy to test for as it would seem. I suspect a lot fixes for this kind of problem will occur this week and many reports will have to be rerun. Some may even get out to the public as billing errors, etc.

Without having any idea I must wonder if somewhat similar problems might occur with some embedded systems?

-- Ed (ed@lizzardranch.com), December 26, 1999