>>There were three things you had to automate, or you had to spend a lot of time doing them over and over: first, making money columns wide enough - n(19,2) was pretty common, n(19,0) also; second was the pictures - I usually had something like g_amount="999,999,999,999,999" and in most of the forms and hand-coded reports I had ...picture g_amount; third was the denomination: you had to total everything, add a line item with the negative value of the total, then add the same thing divided by 10, 1000 or 1000000 (depending on how many zeros were removed that time).
>>
>>Once you automated all three for each app involving money, you were in the saddle.
>
>And then, of course, is the issue of converting "old" values to "present value" - in case it was requested.

It was, only first time, when it was all divided by ten only (and with the primary purpose of invalidating the money remaining in the renegade republics). Later, each time you wanted to denominate, probably two thirds of the previous records would vanish into zero if you did that, so practically everybody opted for the cut method. Anyway, in most of the things that year doesn't count. For instance, if you want to retire, that year is skipped in the average, because the numbers made no sense. Actually, we didn't even look at the numbers, only at their length :).