Y2K will be upon us in a mere 19 months, and accounting VARs will benefit because of simple greed, which will feed a new business frenzy. That greed is not on the part of the VARs, but that of the client companies that have waited until the last minute to upgrade their systems. Those companies, which previously didn't want to spend the money to update (and therefore qualify as greedy), will feed the massive increase in the VAR workload.

Because of the extra workload- which will be way beyond the normal flow of business-staffs will need additional training, and resources will need to increase. In turn, costs will accelerate.

Larger workloads, new clients and new resources will push the available financial resources of the small to midsize VAR. VARs already working on the edge will need to generate additional revenue.

"People will be coming out of the woodwork," says Clayton Pitts, of Pitts Financial Group in New York City. "Our approach is to be equitable and fair to our loyal and current client base. These last-minute companies will end up being charged a premium for the work we will be performing."

That is echoed by several VARs I spoke with. They will be dividing up these new clients into two categories-those who are progressing from a Y2K-compliant system to another, and those who are upgrading to be Y2K-compliant. That latter group will be charged a premium rate.

"People will end up getting systems that are not quite the best fit, since they haven't properly planned," says Sandy Needham of American European Consulting Co., based in New York. "Many of them were on the System 34s and 36s, and they are starting to panic. Performing these migrations is difficult, because many of those clients don't even have networks."

So greed, at least as it relates to Y2K, is good; as an accounting VAR, you should start planning for a dramatic increase in sales, services and the requisite needs and demands it will place on your business. Push your current clientele to upgrade now, so that you will have the time to service new, higher-paying clients, without jeopardizing your current crop of loyal customers.

-Wayne Spivak is the president of SBA.NET.WEB, a Bellmore, N.Y., VAR.