ACCOUNTING

The good thing about accounting is that accounts should balance, down to the final penny. The bad thing about accounting is that if they don't balance, even if only by a penny, then you have made a mistake.

I thought about that a lot this morning as I redid the accounts for the local cinema. Two major changes took place on 1 January this year; the cinema got a new person to do the accounts, and it also got a new accounting programme, which is much more up to date and user-friendly. The problem caused by the two changes was that the year-end results and adjustments for 2011 had to be manually put into the new system by the person managing the transition (i.e. me). This took some time, but eventually it was done, and off we went with the new system.

Then disaster struck. I got a panic-stricken sms from the new accountant last week, saying that the new accounts had somehow "disappeared". Exactly how this happened has not been revealed; but it meant that all those results and adjustments had to be reinserted into the new programme, with the added complication that it is now more than five months after the event and memories are fading fast.

Still, nothing like a challenge. And I am pleased to be able to report that I got everything to balance in the end, down to the last penny (well, øre). We are back on track.

Walter Blotscher