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01.05.10
The 13th Month
 By
Rodney Sellers
It's the beginning of a new year and a headache for many businesses. This is the time of the year when many customers are not accustomed to putting the new year down or what one of my college professors would call, the 13th month.
When I was in college, I knew their was no 13th month and many of my fellow students seemed to know this fact also. Our professor went on to explain that the 13th month begins on January 1st and ends when your customers stop putting the previous year on their paperwork.
Depending on your business, this can be a huge problem or a not so big one. My professor could tell the class didn't grasp the concept quite yet, so he told us a story of how a bank he worked for in the 80's handled the 13th month. He said before he started, they would put everything on hold until the paperwork had the new year on it. When he stated he was on a team to get the bank computerized, and holding up the process just because of a wrong year in a box, wasn't going to work any longer. For a bank, there were easy ways around the issue. They have check numbers, account numbers, transaction numbers, and many other ways for error checking to get the correct date. By hand, these things were very time consuming to check, but after the bank was computerized, the date checking was very simple.
My professor used this story to illustrate the importance of ensuring the user has input all the correct information. Something as simple as data can throw a monkey wrench into the works that can take a long time to sort out. Error checking is a great start for preventing this issue, but you also need to have a plan for when that monkey wrench does enter the works. How do you sort everything out? Do you have transaction numbers too or another means to get the correct data? Reliance on logs is not always the best because they can have missing data or they may have the incorrect data that the customer entered. In conclusion, try to verify all the data you can, but also have a plan for when things go wrong.
About
the Author:
Rodney Is A Staff Writter for iEntry.
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