Spotting dates parsed in the wrong month order

Seeing the swap on the card

A date written as 06/07 can be June 7 or July 6, and a tracker that guesses wrong will put the card in the wrong bucket. The tell is a card that shows as current while the paper says it is late, or a reminder that arrives a month early. Dwayne Porter's forklift evaluation, listed at 24 days out, is worth a second look because an evaluation date near a month boundary is exactly where the swap hides.

Testing one record against the paper

Read the month and day straight off the certificate PDF or the phone photo, then read the same two fields in the record. If they are reversed, correct the record to match the paper and leave the original entry visible in a note so the change has a trail.

Example: the evaluation card reads 07/06, and the record held 06/07. Before the fix the item sat 30 days out and looked calm; after entering 07/06, the item moved to 24 days out and the 30-day email went out on the right schedule.

Stopping the next swap

When a date could be read two ways, write the month as a three-letter abbreviation on the paper copy and key the record from that. Spot-check the first ten rows after any bulk entry, sorting by what runs out next, because a swapped month usually pushes a card into the wrong week. If several rows share the same wrong pattern, fix them together and note the source file on the roster.

Related: Cert Expiry Tracker features.