drnetwork (9/29/2009)
How common is this 4-4-5 (or variant) thinking in modern accounting systems? This is the first I've heard of it and I've DBA'ed behind three different fairly popular accounting systems, none of which incorporated this possibility. The assumption was always that a period was monthly.Then my second question is that every 5 or 6 years you'll need an extra week thrown in somewhere. Do the accountants just make a 4-5-5 in a fiscal quarter?
I have no idea how common it is but we had been running our application for about 10 years before it came up so we had to come up with a solution. And I think, non-accountant that I am, that every few years there is an extra week thrown in. I mention this in my article and andyscott mentions it, too.
A further question I have on a table implementation (yes, I think it's a great idea but I'm pondering things) is what about shifting the start date of the year. Meaning, if you build the table where year 2008 starts on 1/6/2008 then the table's data is fine. But what happens if the accountants decide that the year should start on the first Sunday after Sept 1st? Then another accountant says it should start on the first Tuesday after July 1st? I'm thinking you'd need more key values in the table but I'm curious if anyone has any great implementation ideas.
Cliff