I did some additional testing today and discovered that it appears the Lcd4Linux plugin is causing a conflict. If I remove the plugin and reboot is shows the correct date.
I installed the 7.3-20201026 firmware in slot 1 without backup and the date was correct.
I then reinstalled 7.3-20201026 in slot 1 with backup from slot 2, my original 7.3-20201026 image. The problem followed the reinstall with backup.
I also have a problem with no front panel display.
It displays boot on startup and then remains blank for all operations.
I have had this with all of the openpli releases I have tried.
This is the reason I installed theLcd4Linux plugin initially.
I removed the Lcd4Linux plugin to see if it changed the front panel problem and that is when I found that it was causing the date issue.
To confirm this I removed Lcd4Linux on the slot 2 image also and after reboot it also shows the correct firmware release date.
Maybe this will help someone else if they are having this problem.
Any suggestions for the front panel display problem?