Hi everyone, Firstly, thanks Alan for your help with my acct_start_time problem, that was exactly what I was after. The only problem that remains for me is getting the value into a different format so I can store it in my database table. So I have the following setup currently: share/dictionary.freeradius: ATTRIBUTE FreeRADIUS-Acct-Session-Start-Time 2 date Then in my preacct section: update request { FreeRADIUS-Acct-Session-Start-Time = "%{expr: %l - %{%{Acct-Session-Time}:-0} - %{%{Acct-Delay-Time}:-0}}" } Then I can use %{FreeRADIUS-Acct-Session-Start-Time} which is in the date format: "Dec 8 2009 09:14:14 GMT". The database field I will be writing into is a MySQL DateTime field, which is in the format "YYYY-MM-DD HH:ii:ss", eg: "2009-12-08 11:27:34" Is there any way for me to get my FreeRADIUS-Acct-Session-Start-Time attribute value into that date format? Any advice would be very much appreciated. Many thanks, Patric