diff --git a/build.xml b/build.xml
index acf559dd4..896fd23a9 100644
--- a/build.xml
+++ b/build.xml
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ under the License.
 
     <description>The Apache POI project Ant build.</description>
 
-    <property name="version.id" value="3.8-beta6"/>
+    <property name="version.id" value="3.9-beta1"/>
 
     <property environment="env"/>
     <!-- the repository to download jars from -->
diff --git a/src/documentation/content/xdocs/status.xml b/src/documentation/content/xdocs/status.xml
index ef6a7f8a2..0dac8461a 100644
--- a/src/documentation/content/xdocs/status.xml
+++ b/src/documentation/content/xdocs/status.xml
@@ -33,7 +33,10 @@
     </developers>
 
     <changes>
-        <release version="3.8-beta6" date="2012-??-??">
+        <release version="3.9-beta1" date="2012-??-??">
+
+        </release>
+        <release version="3.8-FINAL" date="2012-03-26">
            <action dev="poi-developers" type="add">52928 - DateFormatConverter: an utility to convert instances of java.text.DateFormat to Excel format patterns</action>
            <action dev="poi-developers" type="fix">52895 - show SSTIndex instead of XFIndex in LabelSSTRecord.toString()</action>
            <action dev="poi-developers" type="fix">52835 - Tolerate missing Count and UniqueCount attributes when parsing shared strings table in XSSF eventusermodel</action>