Accounting standard for "one month ago"

[Jason Rennie]

cbbrowne@hex.net said:
> And the day "a month back" from June 30th should be May 31, and one
> month ahead should go to July 31st. 

One might wonder why it is difficult for a computer to understand the 
concept of "a month ago" until one realizes that humans don't even 
agree on its definition... :)

My conception of a month ago is month-1/day/year, where months wrap (0->
12) and the day is rounded to the nearest existing date.  i.e. for me, 
a month back from June 30th would be May 30th.

cbbrowne@hex.net said:
> My inclination is to treat the last day of the month in a "sticky"
> manner; a month back is always the last day of the month, regardless
> of number.  The 30th of a month with 31 days would move to the 30th of
> the previous month.  And, perhaps, "refuse to be sticky."  

Are there ISO or generally used accounting standards that specify a 
standard on this issue?

The stipend that I get from MIT comes in once a month at the end of the 
month.  I'll have to check to see exactly what date I get it, but I 
think I get it on the 30th for all months except February, whence I get 
it on the 28th/29th.  Anyone else make payments/get paid every month at 
the end of the month?  How is "the end of the month" defined for those 
transactions?

rgmerk@mira.net said:
> I hereby declare that from now on, the year to have 256 days :)

...and there will be 16 months, each with 16 days separated into four 
weeks of four days each... (provides nice symmetry, plus, since all of 
us think in hex anyway, we'll be able to compress month/day 
representations to two characters :)

Jason D Rennie                      www.ai.mit.edu/~jrennie/
MIT:  (617) 253-5339                      jrennie@ai.mit.edu
MITRE: (781) 271-7249                      jrennie@mitre.org