Q:I’m having a hard time getting prior years’ data out of my accounting system, especially when the data crosses over a fiscal year-end boundary. The Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) came in recently for an audit and requested information from July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007. It took us nearly an entire day to manually summarize the information from a compilation of printouts. Do you have any suggestions? FranA:Many outdated accounting applications use a hard-close system, which is designed to prevent users from posting data in periods that have already been reconciled.  Unfortunately, you have described just one disadvantage to using such a system. Date-sensitive systems, in contrast, allow users to access any report, including historical data from any date...