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There were "bugs", yes. There were also fundamental design flaws. One of the things the Post Office did was sell travel money, but the whole system was never r
by pdpi 2y ago
There were "bugs", yes. There were also fundamental design flaws.
One of the things the Post Office did was sell travel money, but the whole system was never really designed for ForEx operations, so it didn't keep track of exchange rates over time. The result is that reconciliation used the exchange rate at time of reconciliation instead of at the time of trade. So, if the foreign currency had gone up in value, it would show up as GBP missing.
- rswail 2y agoSo they didn't record the rate in the transaction?!? Wow, that's... dumb.
- pdpi 2y agoIIRC they did record the date, yes. What they _didn't_ store was historical exchange rates.
- rcxdude 2y agoEven still, exchange rates aren't a fixed value globally at any given time. You should record the rate with the transaction because the rate could be different from your log of exchange rates for any number of different reasons.
- pdpi 2y agoDisregard that comment. I misread "rate" in GP's comment as "date". Yeah, they just plain didn't record the rate the trade was made at.
- db48x 2y agoA lot of the problems with Horizon are incredibly dumb. Mistakes that anyone with two brain cells to rub together would recognize.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoAs a developer working on trading platforms, this is horrific. Given the Post Office had a reputation for really good exchange rates, this one design flaw might be responsible for a significant portion of the problem.