Fiscal Year End. Yay...
Right, so, this will be about work. Specifically, it'll be about some of my gripes and woes regarding fiscal year end at the University of Flor-ee-duh, in specifically my little, tiny Continuing Education program. You probably aren't actually interested, so skip it if you like.
Oh my void, I hate this shit. As if closing transaction processing for three weeks wasn't bad enough, I'm discovering huge numbers of bad payments in our system from some time back. Things that were entered all kinds of wrong that just cannot be corrected. Argh.
For those of you within UF (FU?), you'll understand, but for those who aren't let me explain a little sumpin'-sumpin'. The division of continuing education (DCE), which handles our budgets and transactions, has what are called "program numbers" which get assigned each time we offer/create a course session of any kind. If we present "Asphalt Paving Level 1", we assign a special six-digit number that allows for tracking budget data when we enter all associated transactions. Everything received for registration payments, everything for instructor payment, all the travel receipts, all the shipping expenses, all monies about that class are tracked under the DCE program number assigned to it.
This is useful on a class-by-class basis, or a quarterly basis, or at a long shot the yearly basis. Then you can sort out things like "we paid $X,XXX.XX in instructor costs for Asphalt Paving Level 1 in the '07-'08 fiscal year." Things like that help you make budget choices, help you generate earnings statements and revenue projections, help you keep track of how you're using your money and if it's worth continuing to do so in a particular way.
Now, in addition to this, my program has been using a specialized web application for all its registration tracking and a lot of the front-end fiscal management (entering payments, receipt generation, etc.). Only we just started using this system at roughly the same time as I started working here - several months beforehand. Prior to that they'd been using an arcane database management program and spreadsheets and Quickbooks (which sucks ass). The registration system is called "XMS", for further reference. And just to be accurate, XMS is always under development and doesn't handle most things well at all.
For about the first year, 2005 through most of 2006, all fiscal matters were handled and tracked in Quickbooks, and XMS was only used for tracking registrations - most payment data wasn't well-handled and people were still learning the proper use of the system (which means "couldn't use it properly if their asses depended on it"). Also, the DCE program numbers were not being assigned per-session, or quarterly, and in fact have never changed at all. We've been using the same DCE program numbers since we started using XMS.
This is... this is fucking stupid.
Now, we get to go through this closing fiscal year, assign new DCE program numbers for all the sessions after FYE, and then begin the tedious process of segregating out three year's worth of sessions into separate budget data-sets for each of 20+ program numbers. Whee! Oh, yes, and we can process credit cards still, but anything entered after the twentieth isn't going to hit the batch until mid-July some time. Thanks, Florida University... "some time in mid-July we'll re-open transaction processing." That's tits. That's super. This will go over so well with the Florida Department of Transportation. Excellent.
Anyhow, in the process of transitioning to the new program numbers, we're finding some... peculiarities. Made up money, pretend transactions, credit card processes marked as some insane and unknown transaction type, peculiar refund payments marked "DO NOT DEPOSIT - INTERNAL ADJUSTMENT"... Jesus Poke-me-in-the-ass-with-a-pink-eyed-pygmy Christ...
EVERYTHING IS FUCKED UP! If we get audited, we're probably screwed. I have no idea where the 2005-2006 Fiscal records are and nothing from that year makes sense in XMS. 2006 was full of retarded people coming and going so there are innumerable data anomalies. 2007 is roughly better in terms of how many retards, but one in particular was so awful she made up for the lack of other retards tenfold. Shit, fuck, shit... help.
If I ever get my brain through the horrid, horrid process of sorting all this shit out and laying down proper procedures and methods for a smooth-running fiscal system in this program, I'll be refusing further fiscal assistance in my job duties and go back to handing people their pencils at exam time. Shit is fucked here, yo.
And did I mention that I'm really not happy romantically or sexually at the moment? Yeah. Fucking grr.