If you ask a computer to do a job, much of its resources are expended upon interacting with you rather than actually doing the job, and in the days when there was a shortage of computer power, this was an issue. The solution was to put your job in a queue and do it overnight along with a batch of similar jobs. This is called batch processing and it is more efficient than trying to serve everybody at once.

Maybe batch processing is no longer used, but we never can tell, and there may be many old “legacy system” computers around which are still doing it. Where it will be noticed is if something like a tax return is submitted. The accountant can log on to the Revenue computer and view the submission, but it often takes a day for the submission to be acknowledged and to appear on the Revenue system in the expected manner.

Many other Internet processes also take a day to go through. For example, if we use an unusual word, say Tarraby, and then search on Google for “tarraby batch processing revenue tax”, then this page should be visible, but it will actually take about a day for it to happen. If you are in the process of promoting a website, then it is best to work with this 24 hour cycle by doing a little every day and being patient.

Google Images appears to take 2-4 days, as does Google Videos and maybe Google Maps. Once the characteristic time for something to happen is known and understood, then we can patiently work at it until we get what we want. It can be frustrating at times, but do other things in the meantime and treat it like growing a crop.

David Porthouse & Co is a firm of accountants based in Carlisle in North West England. We have a keen interest in new technology with the aim of speeding up accounts production and making accountancy more affordable for our clients. We are pioneers in the introduction of automated processing and optical character recognition.