End of Fiscal Year

The end of the quarter is almost here. It just so happens that this is also the end of our fiscal year.

This means that everybody in the company is getting email about making sure our project time tracking entries are up to date, our vacation time has all been submitted, and that things like expense reports are all signed, approved, and turned in.

Being a large and modern company, all of this is done through software that is maintained by the IT department. SAP is the software of choice at our company. Feel free to speculate on what the acronym SAP really stands for, but I will guarantee it isn't "Solves All Problems."

Still, we know the drill. We have received the bare minimal training to use the horrible interface on must navigate to accomplish all of these tasks before the end of the quarter.

Only there is a problem. Among the email flying about was one from IT. With a week to go in the quarter, they decided they needed to upgrade SAP.

This upgrade... you know where I am going, don't you... yes, this upgrade managed to kill all of the data entry applications we use to update our project time sheets, vacation time, expense reports, and what not. The system is up, end users can log in, but the applications are not there.

Ooops.

In real companies, these sorts of systems are locked down around end of quarter, usually two weeks before and a week after such an event, and longer at fiscal year end, to prevent just such fiascoes.

To be fair, I do not know why the upgrade was required. It might have been something that had to be done to close out the fiscal year. But to wait until the week before the end of fiscal year to do it....

We get what we deserve.