The only critical items in the Ace Payroll supply chain are electricity and telecommunications. There are no Y2K problems in these areas.

We have checked all our electronic equipment including computers, printers, fax machine, phone system and disk duplicators and there are no faults.

We use an in house accounting system that we developed specifically for our own business. A very small Y2K problem was noticed and rectified on Sunday 2nd January, and updated versions installed on all office machines. The problem related to the color in which a client's account balance was shown on the screen. We use different colors based on the period past due.

No problems have been reported with the Ace Payroll program. The last Y2K adjustment made to the program was in version 3.05P released on 5th August 1999.

All clients with a support contract have received either this or a later version.

All clients on casual support that replied to our September 1999 newsletter have this version.

Any clients that still require this version can download the last of our 1999 versions which is 3.05S. Before downloading check your current version number to ensure you really need it.

We have now released the first of our 2000 series which starts with version 3.06A. Clients with a support contract will automatically be sent a copy in late February, and those using our casual support service will be notified by mail.

Feel free to call if you require a 3.06 version before this.

This site is hosted by Xtra, and there have been no interruptions to service.

There is a very trivial Y2K problem with the hosting log on the Xtra server. We access the server to retrieve a daily log showing all files download, and also access statistics reported on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The weekly and monthly reports show all access 'between 1st January 2000 and 31st December 1999'. Our bet is this is caused by a direct date comparison being made as decribed in our October 1996 Technical Note.

If this is the case, we hope Xtra does nothing about the problem. The weekly report will come right by itself on 8th January, and the monthly log in early February. There will then be no problems for another 100 years.

This is a very minor annoyance, and does not affect levels of service to either ourselves or our clients.

Problems are being encountered with security certificates being used in all versions of Netscape Navigator prior to 4.06. On entering certain sites, a message is displayed indicating the certificate is out of date.

We have experienced this problem with Hotmail, Paradise, ASB Bank, and the IRD IR-File system.

With Hotmail and Paradise, simply click continue and everything is fine.

The ASB Bank suggests you download an updated browser from the internet.

Unfortunately the implications for the IRD IR-File system are more serious and we have documented these in a related FAQ.

We are receiving around five calls daily from clients with possible Y2K related problems. These fall into three categories, in almost equal numbers

It is worth noting that with the 11,000 clients we support within New Zealand, the incidence of all the above problems is probably no greater than similar problems received throughout the year. In other words, even without Y2K we regularly have clients with the wrong computer system date settings.

We continue to provide links to our older documentation on