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>>The problem is that other customers and transactions from the same time period would still be there, setting up the possibility for someone in accounting to re-run old reports and get really bad numbers. I see disaster in the making there.
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> Ha..yeah, I've run into situations like that too. After putting about 20 holes in their arguments for doing things like that, they've usually "decided on their own" that it was a bad idea. I think that's the real secret to getting what I want - making them think it was their idea. I try not to make them look too stupid (unless I have too) ;-)

Good idea. In this case, they spelled out what they wanted to do and listed several benefits of doing so, then asked me for an analysis report on the project -- how I would go about it, etc.

In that report, I laid out the technical design, but also stepped through each of their points and gave the positives and negatives for each, from my perspective.

That at least got them talking to the accounting department head. The final outcome is still unsure, but I've been asked now to work up a detailed spec of tables, relations and processes, so I guess it's gonna happen.