This is exactly why we should adopt a 13 month calendar, with a Year Day as the last day of the year. If it's a leap year, there'd be two consecutive Year Days. These days should be special: they are holidays, so everyone has them off. This immediately solves the payroll problem for most people: just don't pay them for this day (obviously adjusting the numbers such that if you make $60,000/year, you still get that).
For those who work on this day (medical professionals, etc.) the rate is different (being a holiday and all), so they just get paid by the hour, regardless of what they do throughout the year.
Your payroll can now be weekly, biweekly, monthly, or whatever you want: you still get the same amount of money per month. This is nice because you don't get weirdness with things like rent/mortgage payments which are monthly. For example, for those who get paid biweekly, you get two months a year where you get an extra payment. This is silly and leads to more difficult accounting and budgeting.
Monthly is nice, but lots of your expenses are likely one a week-by-week basis: groceries, entertainment, etc.
Weekly is AFAIAC the nicest: it is the easiest to budget because it's as close to the common denominator as possible. However, it is not the LCD, so it still has the weird problem of getting more money in some months vs others.
I like the idea of a day that everyone has off, but I'm not sure you realize how drastic a change that would be. NO places of business open, no gas stations, no drug stores, no hospitals, no toll collectors, no trains, plains, or mass transit -- no police or firemen?
Of course, changing the calendar isn't a realistic plan anyway (Americans still won't accept the freaking metric system, that's too much change! and of course there would be costs to having a calendar different than the rest of the world, unless we get EVERYONE to change). But making _everyone_ have off is even less realistic. So payroll systems would still probably need to account for the days.
But I do like the idea of a day or two that literally everyone has off, and would subscribe to your newsletter.
Well Arabic countries traditionally use the Islamic calendar (luna based) rather than the Gregorian calendar (solar based). If memory serves Myanmar (nee Burma) uses a different calendar as well.
There are a variety of different traditional calendars from different cultures, but I strongly suspect business people in, say, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, or UAE use the same calendar we do. I in fact strongly suspect _everyone_ in those countries do, for their day-to-day non-religious date-related tasks.
Wikipedia confirms "The Islamic calendar is now used primarily for religious purposes, and for official dating of public events and documents in Muslim countries". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_calendar#Uses
What's your point? They can afford to switch from Islamic calendar to Gregorian, because the majority already use Gregorian. It doesn't mean that it will be easy to make a country switch to a 13-month calendar that nobody else use
I don't exactly know why I am responding to the comment with the snidest tone... but it's not just a software problem. Everyone has to budget their money, and a 13 month year makes that easier. Businesses spend huge sums of money trying to reconcile their finances because of our current calendar. The amount of human effort wasted on looking up what day of the week something is, is monumental. Aside from inertia, our current calendar doesn't have much going for it. No, I have no delusion that we'd ever switch, but it doesn't mean that staying with the current calendar is actually a good idea.
Yes, but ... most existing computer systems are subtly broken for date/time in different ways anyway. Leap days, leap seconds, daylight savings shifts, timezones in general, the above mentioned "year of the week". You'd be substituting a certain number of "this is subtly broken" bugs for a certain number of "this is obviously not implemented correctly" bugs.
For those who work on this day (medical professionals, etc.) the rate is different (being a holiday and all), so they just get paid by the hour, regardless of what they do throughout the year.
Your payroll can now be weekly, biweekly, monthly, or whatever you want: you still get the same amount of money per month. This is nice because you don't get weirdness with things like rent/mortgage payments which are monthly. For example, for those who get paid biweekly, you get two months a year where you get an extra payment. This is silly and leads to more difficult accounting and budgeting.
Monthly is nice, but lots of your expenses are likely one a week-by-week basis: groceries, entertainment, etc.
Weekly is AFAIAC the nicest: it is the easiest to budget because it's as close to the common denominator as possible. However, it is not the LCD, so it still has the weird problem of getting more money in some months vs others.