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Nearly 900 students woke up on the first day of classes to see that their entire schedule had been dropped because of a computer glitch.

The registrar’s office is fixing the problem, and all of the affected students should have been re-enrolled in their classes by Monday night, said Associate Registrar Anita Cotter.

“Those students who were dropped in error will be reinstated in the classes they were enrolled in Friday night,” Cotter said.

Only students who paid their BAR by credit card between 3 p.m. last Thursday and 2:45 p.m. last Friday will be re-enrolled.

All payments in this time period were included in one file, which was not processed correctly through UCLA’s administration.

As a result, the registrar’s office was incorrectly told that these 890 students did not pay their fees. James Hardy, a first-year history student, paid on Thursday, but checked back a few days later and found that his schedule had disappeared.

“I was panicking,” he said.

The official deadline for all BAR payments is the 20th of every month. The extra time between deadlines ensures that cashiers have enough time to process payments before students’ classes are dropped.

Jeff Brigman, student accounting database manager, said that UCLA’s Administrative Information Services department did not correctly pull a daily electronic file indicating which students had paid their fees.

“There’s not much we can do to prevent this from happening again,” Brigman said. “But I would hope they (AIS) are really sensitive to this and will make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Officials from AIS declined to comment while they’re still investigating the problem.

Both Brigman and Cotter said there has never been an accounting problem on this scale before.

All students were notified of the problem today through MyUCLA, regardless of whether or not they were affected.

“That was the quickest way to contact people this morning,” Cotter said.

No one in UCLA’s administration discovered the problem before Monday morning.

Given the scope, “a fair number” of people have come to the registrar’s office to complain, Cotter said.

Kevin Graham-Caso, a first-year history student, received an e-mail Thursday instructing him to pay his fees or his classes would be dropped Friday. He immediately paid the balance with a credit card. But by Saturday, he said, his classes had been dropped anyway.

“I was panicked at first, wondering if something didn’t go through; all my classes were already wait-listed or closed,” he said.

Students have been advised to stay calm and check their schedule and BAR account on URSA today, and come back if there are any problems.

If a student was dropped while they were on the wait list, they will be placed back on the wait list in the same position they held before. In situations where students took advantage of the drops to add classes with apparent vacancies, the registrar will recognize their enrollment.

Consequently, some classes will be over-enrolled – evidence of which could already be seen Monday evening. Departments have been notified, but Cotter said she is unsure what effects the over-enrollment could have over the quarter.

With reports from Shaun Bishop, Daily Bruin Contributor.