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According to the new IRS regulations for Form W-2 Reporting of Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage, as of 2013, an employer is not required to issue a Form W2 solely to report the value of the health care coverage for retirees or other employees or former employees to whom the employer would not otherwise provide a Form W2.

This means you now have the option to suppress the printing of W2s for employees that only have data in Box 12, Code DD. Good news for the new year! Escape Online is always moving toward more “green” solutions, so we added a flag that automates the suppression of these W2s.

The new “Issue W2s for employees with only Box 12 Code DD” in the W2 Overrides section of the Organization record allows you to turn this feature on/off by organization. (There is a matching flag in the System record that defaults to Yes (print) for the system.)

If you set this flag to NO, Escape Online will NOT print those W2s, nor will it include them in the W2 file generated for delivery to Federal and State agencies.

Of course, you will still be able to see the W2s on your list in case you want to make adjustments and print the W2 anyway.

Fabulous!

You can save a lot of paper and processing by suppressing the printing of these W2s, and that makes for a very happy new year!

For the last Friday Feature of 2013, Escape Online gives you the gift of simplicity and flexibility. Escape Online presents to you the payroll setup flags for W2s. In the W2 loading process, the pay detail records for the entire year are reviewed with Contribution, Deduction and Addon records playing an important role in placing earnings on the W2s. To help you comply with the ever-changing IRS and State regulations, Escape Online provides W2 flags in all three: Contributions, Deductions and Addons. Let’s take a look.

First up is Addons. They have a W2 Box and a W2 Category flag. The W2 Box specifies in which box the earnings generated by this Addon are reported on the W2. If the W2 Box is 12 or 14, the IRS requires you to specify a category, thus the W2 Category field.

These fields can be changed at any time during the W2 process.  Simply go into the record, change the flag and reload your W2s.  It is that simple.

Next, we see the same fields in the Contribution and Deduction records with a bonus field, called W2 Pension. The W2 Box and W2 Category fields in the Contribution and Deduction records work exactly the same as the ones in the Addon record. Notice how the W2 Category field has been filled in because the W2 Box is 12.

Now the W2 Pension flag is truly a gift to behold because it saves you a ton of work. If the person has reportable amounts for PERS or STRS or the W2 Box is 12 and the W2 Category is D, E, F or H, you don’t have to do a darn thing! Escape Online automatically puts those amounts correctly into Box 12.  You only have to concern yourself with alternative retirement plans.

Now that’s a gift that keeps on giving!

The 1099 and W2 fun just never stops! Continuing our Friday Feature journey on 1099 processing, this week we focus on how Escape Online uses the object codes from the accounts used to pay vendors to determine if the dollar amount is 1099 worthy.
As most of you know, in the Vendor record, you can specify the 1099 box for all payments. But, what if you want to have amounts loaded automatically to the appropriate box? Well, Escape Online has got you covered.

If you want Escape Online to determine which box to put the 1099 amount in based on the object code of the account, set the 1099 flag to YES and leave the 1099 box field as N/A in the Vendor record.

Next, you tell Escape Online which object codes go to which 1099 boxes.

Notice how the highlighted object code of 5803 is coded for box 14 and the object code of 5809 is coded for box 7.

Now, when you load 1099s, Escape Online reads through vendor, check and journal entry data files for the calendar year you are reporting — searching for payments made to vendors based on the object codes you specified with a form 1099 box in the Account Components activity.

When it finds checks paid (or prepaid) with accounts that contain those object codes, Escape Online writes those amounts to the 1099 box.

Now let’s see how this works using a LIVE example.

In this example, you see a 1099 that has system-generated amounts in the Non-Employee Payments (box 7 at the top) and Attorney Fees (box 14 at the bottom). Obviously, this vendor (who is a lawyer that also conducts training seminars) could not have the 1099 box set in the Vendor record because there is more than one box that needs amounts.

This is a perfect case for the reading of object codes to determine the 1099 box!

When the lawyer was conducting seminars, those payment accounts had the 5809 object and they were summarized in the Non-Employee payments (box 7).

When the lawyer was dispensing legal advice, the accounts used for payment had the 5803 object and those amounts were summarized in the Attorney Fees (box 14).

Defining 1099 boxes by object codes really makes the 1099 process easy. All you have to do is click a button to load the 1099s and almost all of the legwork has been done for you!

For those of us that prepare the forms, tax time is here. It is time to start reviewing your records, your lists and prepping for the printing of 1099s and W2s. Over the next month or so, I will be focusing on several features in both processes. Today, I am going to talk about the 1099 fields in the Vendor record.
The Vendor record has several 1099 fields. Of course, you have the tax ID fields and the address to where you will send the 1099, but Escape Online also includes some great fields that help you manage your 1099 process.

These fields can be changed at any time, so if you are itching to get going on your prep work, you can look at these fields right now!

Your first step would be to search for the vendors that you need to review. The search page has several fields that can help you limit your list to just the vendors you want to see.  As you can see here, I am searching for only those vendors that have the 1099 flag set to YES and that have received a payment this year.

Cool! Now that we have a list to work, let’s take a look at what fields Escape Online has that help you track 1099 vendors.

Of course, every 1099 vendor has submitted a W9 to you. So, Escape Online has fields to say whether you have received it and when.  (And, notice that those fields were also on the search!)

Notice that this vendor has the 1099 flag turned on, and the 1099 Form Box set to 7 – Nonemployee. This means that regardless of the accounts used in a requisition or payment, all monies paid to this vendor will appear in that box on the 1099 form. (If the box was left blank, Escape Online would read the account components of the selected payments to determine what amount is supposed to be reported in which box. But, we will talk more about that in a later Friday Feature.)

Also, let me remind you about the lookup for the 1099 Form Box. Sometimes those of us that have been using Escape Online for years forget how incredibly helpful those lookups can be.

I especially like how I can see the code (or box on the 1099 Form) and the English explanation.

Stay tuned for more on 1099 and W2 features after the break.

Have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

Last week I was talking about this wonderful electronic age and I mentioned that I never deal with checks. That is because I receive my paycheck electronically. Actually, it is an ACH that is emailed to me, letting me know that Escape Technology has transferred my pay into my bank account. Escape Online can do this too! We have several customers using this setup and they love it.

As you can read, this is an awesome feature. It is secure, safe, reliable, and saves you money. Let’s look at some of the setup.

In the Organization record, each organization in a COE implementation can define their own email information.

Of course, organizations can default to what is set up for the system, or they can get personal, like having a unique subject and an individualized intro for their emails.

Also, depending on how your system is setup, the file that goes to the bank can have several organizations combined or each delivered separately.

On the employee side, HR can individualize employee settings: turning on/off the email ACH, identifying which email address it is delivered to, and specifying what the PIN is.

This gives HR a ton of flexibility for those employees that keep forgetting the PIN option set up for the district.

I know I love getting my paycheck electronically and based on customer feedback so do district employees. And, that is wonderful!

NOTE: Obviously, it requires Escape Support, system managers and other technical/business support staff to ensure a secure and smooth rollout. If you want to implement the email ACH functionality, please contact Escape Customer Care.

A week and a half ago, I picked up my mom’s car from the mechanic. She wrote a check to reimburse me.  I stuck it in my purse and promptly forgot about it. Honestly, I don’t write checks, I don’t deposit them, I don’t even think my checks have my correct address. Seriously. The point is, in this electronic wonderland that we live in, there are a lot of people out there like me. And that is why school businesses need the ability to stale date checks. (FYI. A “stale” check is a check that has already been reported, but has not been cashed for some period of time, usually 6 months.)

Check it out.

I went into a LIVE (scrambled) database and looked at their list of stale dated checks for last year. For one organization, for one bank account, there were 40 stale dated checks. Now, a third of those checks were for less than $50, but it added up. Indeed. It added up to $11,076.18. That’s not chump change.  It is a book order, a district cell phone bill, or a district water bill.

Thankfully, Escape Online gives you two ways to stale date checks: one at a time or by creating a list.  Both are really easy to use. Let’s look at the option for stale dating checks using a list.

All you have to do is click GO.  Escape Online automatically searches for all checks that were printed earlier than the Stale Days Count* and have not been cleared. (Of course, there is a ton of search criteria for those of you that do not “clear” your checks. Using the search criteria, you can create a perfectly stale list!)

Once you get your list, you can see that the “action” defaults to Stale Date (in green in the screen shot), but just like all of Escape Online’s other lists that perform actions, you can defer the action using a lookup.

Once you have reviewed your list, you can click your mouse and stale date all of those little checks people forget about and save yourself some big money by crediting the stale date account and debiting cash.

The ability to stale date checks is essential to recapture those funds that are sitting out there unspent, and that is something no one wants to forget about.

*Escape Online lets you define the time lapse for determining if a check should be stale dated. The number of days is set in the Stale Days Count field in the Bank Account record. Note that the stale date account and cash object used for the offset are also defined in the Bank Account record.

I recently mentioned that I just moved. Well, that included selling my house. During the process, we were required to give our fingerprints. It made me wonder about the fingerprints. Of course, school employees are required to give their fingerprints and Escape Online helps you track this requirement in several ways. This week I am going to discuss the fields related to fingerprints in the Employee record, and next week I will cover the reporting requirements. As you can see, there are a lot of fields you can use to track fingerprints.

The first three fields are pretty basic. They let you define the type of fingerprint, the date of the fingerprint and any comment you need to make about the fingerprint. The type of fingerprint is defined at the time of implementation. This can be custom to each implementation. At a minimum, most of our customers differentiate between classified, certificated, and volunteers.

The DOJ and FBI Clearance fields are date fields, where you can enter the date the employee received clearance.

The last three (NLI fields) are for No Longer Interested Notification. Here is a snippet about NLI Notification from the State of California’s Attorney General Office:

California Penal Code section 11105.2(d) states, in part, that any agency which submits the fingerprints of applicants for employment or approval to the Department of Justice for the purpose of establishing a record of the applicant to receive notification of subsequent arrests, shall immediately notify the department when employment is terminated or the applicant is not hired.

It is the responsibility of hiring/approving authority to notify the Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Information and Analysis when employment has been terminated or when an applicant or volunteer is not actually retained to the position for which they applied.

Pretty serious stuff!

That’s why Escape Online has over a half-dozen fields dedicated to the tracking of your employees’ fingerprints. And, of course, all of these “fingerprint” fields can be exported and searched upon.

Next week we will talk about the reporting of these fields to the DOJ.

The 2013/14 budget for California provides many schools (K-12 and Community Colleges) with a little bit of breathing room. Of course, much of the new funding will go to smaller class sizes, additional teachers and programs, but many of our customers are also eyeing increasing current teacher salaries, including retroactive pay raises. Escape Online makes this easy. It automates the retro process for you, including retirement reporting.  And, it gives you two ways to perform the change: by salary schedule adjustments or by percentage.

Check it out.

As you can see, this is a retro for last year (7/1/12-6/30/13) based on the new salary schedule dated 7/1/13.

Escape Online automatically searches for pay cycles that have a pay period that falls within the effective date range, finding all employees with pay that matches the criteria you specified. For example, you can see that this retro was for employees in the CLAS (Classified) bargaining unit.

Then it puts those employees on a list on the second tab (Retro Pay Lines) of the form, where you can delete employees, if necessary. This retro was for 3,947 employees.

Once you have finished reviewing the list, you can run a snapshot (a report that is like a screen print, only better) and then if everything looks good, you can post the pay.

Escape Online reviews all existing Earnings records based on your selections, computes the proper retro amounts, and generates the retro adjustments.  It does not change previous payroll periods.  It adds the retro pay as an adjustment in a future payroll (either the employee’s primary pay cycle or the pay cycle/period specified on the form).

Then you are ready to process payroll as usual, where you will see the retro adjustments (in the Adjust Payroll activity) and have an opportunity to review, edit and add as needed.