Why No Sign of Failures from Albany? - comp.software.year-2000

Message from discussion Why No Sign of Failures from Albany?

Jo Anne Slaven

More options Apr 14 1998, 3:00 am

Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000

From: Jo Anne Slaven <sla...@rogerswave.ca>

Date: 1998/04/14

Subject: Re: Why No Sign of Failures from Albany?

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Murray Spork wrote:

> paul leblanc <plebl...@idt.net> wrote in article <35321438.6...@idt.net>...
> > Tim, yo, you little troll. My take on it is that 99 problems are either
> > system dependent (meaning certain legacy systems interpret "99" as an
> > exit command) or application dependent (meaning only those apps that
> > calculate look-aheads). Of the latter, only calcs that are actually
> > doing their routines would fail. Who really knows when these routines
> > are executed? Maybe a CPA could tell us that certain accounting
> > functions kick off to end an accounting period, for instance. Dunno.
> > Wish somebody would throw more light on this. But 99 is a look-ahead
> > issue only, not a general 00 issue. - pl (hope this helps confuse you
> > a little more)

Being an accountant who has worked with many mainframe and PC accounting
systems, I can tell you that when a new fiscal year starts, the system
has to know what the last day of the fiscal year will be. For a fiscal
year beginning on, say, April 1, 1999, there will be 12 monthly
accounting periods it will have to recognize. April 30, 1999 up to March
31, 2000.

In my mind, I can see the computer thinking that the months are out of
order just as soon as fiscal 1999 is closed and fiscal 2000 is opened
up. Then what happens? Will it show Jan 1 00 as the first day of the
fiscal year by accident? Or will the software simply decide that the
whole thing is just too ridiculous for words, and shut down completely?

> Well Paul - you kinda nailed the reason for my confusion over this
thing. I

> could not understand why everyone was thinking the roll over to FY 99 would
> cause problems (the 99 exit code issue aside).

> How early in FY99 do State governments start doing budgeting for FY00? And even
> if they have already started budgeting, any glitches in budgeting are not
> likely to cause disruptions to day to day operations. I guess problems in
> budgeting functions *may* cause problems in other areas but IMO these are
> likely to be fairly minor.

As you should be able to tell from my comments above, budgeting probably
won't be the important issue here. Getting the system to recognize the
fiscal year will be the issue.

Jo Anne

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