02 Aug 2010

         Instructions for keeping statement aging withing 30 days.

Introduction

    The aging of invoices can sometimes be tricky.  The first 
    age category is usually considered to be 30 days or less.  
    Complications such as the normal statement date falling on 
    a weekend can occasionally conspire to cause more than 30
    days to transpire between statements, which in turn causes
    invoices early in the statement cycle to show ages greater 
    than 30 days.

    For example:

           July 2010
         S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
                     1  2  3
         4  5  6  7  8  9 10
        11 12 13 14 15 16 17
        18 19 20 21 22 23 24
        25 26 27 28 29 30 31


           August 2010
         S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
         1  2  3  4  5  6  7
         8  9 10 11 12 13 14
        15 16 17 18 19 20 21
        22 23 24 25 26 27 28
        29 30 31

        If statements are generated on the first working 
	day of the month, then the June statement would be
	generated on Thursday, 01 July and the July statement
	would be generated on 02 August, 32 days later.

	Invoices posted on 01 or 02 July would have ages greater
	than 30 days on 02 August.


Choosing a date

    Although it is ideal to generate statements every 30 days, it
    is not always practical.  But changing the system date is
    almost as good!

    The first step is to determine the optimal date for the
    statements to generated, in the above example 30 July would
    insure that all invoices posted in July are less than 30 days
    old.


What to do

    Change the date

	Open a Command Line Interface (CLI) by clicking on the
	icon with a shell in front of a computer monitor.  In the
	CLI type:

	su		# Become root (the user authorized to change the date).

	date 07301030	# The date format is MMDDhhmm, 
			# this example assumes a time of 10:30 AM.

	date		# A naked date command will display the
			# current system date.  Confirm that the
			# date had been changed.

			# Leave this window open, we will need it later.

    Generate statements

        Generate and print statements as per normal.
	When finished with the statements, rest to the current
	date and time.
        
    Reset the date

	Return to the Command Line Interface (CLI) window.

	date 08021130	# The date format is MMDDhhmm, 
			# this example assumes 02 Aug at 11:30 AM.

	date		# A naked date command will display the
			# current system date.  Confirm that the
			# date had been changed.

        exit		# Leave the root account.
        exit		# Close the window