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Having worked on billing and accounting systems for decades now. I am constantly amazed by all of the edge cases and situations that have to be handled to ensur
by kjrose 6y ago
Having worked on billing and accounting systems for decades now. I am constantly amazed by all of the edge cases and situations that have to be handled to ensure that every bill is correct and nothing is missed or misbilled. Especially since the oil firms out here will reject an invoice if it is off by as little as a penny.
At first it seems like it's so easy and straightforward but when you are looking at thousands if not millions of bills a year and the myriad methods you need to compensate for to ensure its accepted by large firms.... well. I can say nothing surprises me anymore. Including hardware level errors causing an issue no one expected with a final number.
- throwawayboise 6y agoRight -- accounting seems simple. It's just debits and credits and adding it all up. Until you get into it, and you understand why "Accounting" can easily be a department of dozens or hundreds of people.
- kjrose 6y agoThere's a reason to separate your accounts receivable from payables. To separate invoicing from receipts. And so on and so on. You don't realize it until you suddenly realize why it was such a bad idea to have one point of failure for everything.
- cosmodisk 6y agoThe principles behind it all are pretty simple and well established. What makes it complicated are the people and poorly designed systems.
- flukus 6y ago> Especially since the oil firms out here will reject an invoice if it is off by as little as a penny. Half of them will reject you for being wrong, the other half will reject you for being right because it doesn't line up with their floating point errors in excel.