Email a collegue.| Headline: | Computer Errors are Part of Life? How reliable should an accounts package be? |
| Description: | The majority of errors occur in the accounting systems of companies, this trumpets that there is a “reliability problem� with accounting packages.
There is an unspoken assumption here. It is that, if an error occurs in a package, it is the package itself which is at fault, that it has “gone wrong�. But if the software has been working perfectly well for several months before the error occurred, surely the logical conclusion ought to be the exact opposite? The software itself is OK; the error must have been caused by some external event. Is the software or the hardware at fault? In any computer system the task of the software is to process lots of data. In an accounts package, much of this involves updating it to the various data files. So, for example, if you enter a sales invoice for £117.50, bits of it might be updated to a dozen records – to the Sales, VAT and Debtor accounts in the GL,to the customer and product records, and more. The task of the hardware is to physically handle this updating. Data might be retrieved from the hard disk on the server, then sent over the network to the PC of the person doing the work, processed on the PC, then sent back again to the server to update the data files. Sometimes, however, the hardware doesn’t do its job properly and some of the data fails to arrive at its correct destination. That’s when things start to go wrong. So in practice most errors are not the fault of the software at all, but of the hardware. And this is what you would expect, since it is unrealistic to expect that any physical or mechanical device is going to work correctly 100% of the time. You have to assume that there are going to be errors some time and make provision for them. After all, if someone told you he had to walk home last night because his car broke down, you’d feel sympathy. But if he then told you he hadn’t had the car serviced for the past three years, you’d say it was entirely his own fault. Personally, with all those millions of bits of electricity flying around I’m amazed that computers don’t go wrong more often than they do. The role of the operating system Apart from the hardware and the software, there’s also the operating system. I have no technical expertise in this area, but there’s no doubt that the move to Windows initially made accounting systems more flaky and prone to error. In the old DOS days accounting software sat on the computer entirely on its own and didn’t interact with anything else. This isolation was frustrating in many ways, but at least had the merit of keeping the data uncontaminated by outside influences. Under Windows, however, the accounting data now sits at the centre of any organisation’s information system and can be easily integrated with many other applications. This is as it should be, but means that the data is exposed to lots of unpredictable influences and - with them - possible error. This was certainly a problem for Windows packages in the early days and developers had to put in extra checks to ensure that the data hadn’t been corrupted by some other application. Computer error is a fact of life Computer errors, then, are to be expected. And because accounts packages are the most complex of applications with a lot of file updating, they are where errors are most likely to occur. How do you plan for them? If an accounts package goes wrong from Day One, then obviously the package itself is likely to be faulty and you need to talk to the supplier. But if it has been running OK for several months and then something goes wrong, it is almost certainly not the package at all but your own hardware that is at fault. So your key task is to make sure that your computer hardware is of good quality. Get advice from your package supplier on this. In particular, ensure that the physical avenues along which your data travels are the best available – good network cards, good cabling etc. Sometimes having different models of PC on the same network causes problems and if you make them all the same, the problem seems to disappear. It’s a bit like the railway network. If you invest in top quality track and maintain it well, you will reduce accidents to the minimum. However, accidents are still going to occur sometime. When they do, the data files in the accounts package are likely to be corrupted. You will need help from the package supplier to get them right again, so take out an annual support contract. |
| Date: | 14.02.2005 |
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