This is a rubbish picture and due to the confidential details in the email, most of what I did photograph had been obscured but, it was the best email I've had for weeks.

I work for a food manufacturer, we produce items that don't attract VAT and our invoicing procedures have just 'worked' since time began. Then, 4 weeks ago we found out that not only were four of the products we were launching going to need to have VAT added but they would be mixed on invoices with items that don't attract VAT. And we found out about 3 days before the invoice needed to be sent.

Our ERP system produces an invoice file that needs to be transmitted to our customer but unfortunately on VATable items, it produces the numbers in the wrong order and it doesn't total correctly. So, a file of over 450,000 had to be corrected. Manually.

It's taken half a dozen transmissions but I've finally found the combination of numbers that was accepted. Now I've just got three mores files to correct and a spec to write for a new invoice file to come from our ERP system