Problem

Due to VAT legislation changes related to COVID-19 in Germany, Austria and Czech Republic, on July 1st, we were performing a migration of relevant accounting items. A portion of accounting items were unfortunately migrated with an incorrect tax rate. As a result of this, our customers had to resolve some of the issues with their settings manually.

Specific issues

• In Germany, some accounting items was migrated to a tax rate of 50 %, instead of 5 %.
• All accounting items prior to 1st of July were also migrated if they have been in property’s Editable Accounting History Window.
• In some cases, tax rates were completely removed from accounting items and property settings.

Actions

• We established a special project team the moment we uncovered the fact the migration didn’t run successfully. This team was responsible for fixing the related issues in a shortest possible timeframe and communicate with customers affected by this.
• We started fixing the accounting items using a database backup and a revised version of the migration script.

Causes

• These changes were announced by relevant governments with an extremely short lead time, leaving us little time to prepare, creating a pressure for all involved parties.
• Misconfiguration of the migration tool, specifically, by mistake, setting up 50 % tax instead of 5 %.
• Migrating items inside Editable Accounting History Window is a standard practice when it comes to tax migrations. However, this time, we did not communicate clearly enough the impact of this to our customers. As a result, some of them chose not to close certain accounting items on a bill, hence keeping them open for the migration.
• When fixing the initial problem, we executed a recovery plan that needed cooperation of our customers, rather than spending more time seeking for a plan that would display issues for a longer time but would allow for a completely unattended recovery.
• Mews did not offer a functionality that would allow for a batch update of accounting items.

Solutions

• We have updated our processes with steps, communication templates and new mandatory checks and validations that cover the aforementioned issues. This includes processes for recovery, in case that’s needed.
• We have added new testing automation that prevents regression of the above issues, where possible.
• We have implemented mechanisms that make it impossible to set up a tax rate that’s outside of the usual range.
• We have designed an unattended recovery strategy.
• We have introduced a product batch update form that allows our customers to update already posted accounting items. We are also looking to introduce other ways for other types of items like rates and nights.