Blog

I am happy to report that many of our customers are hiring new employees. Yay!  And, I am happy to report that Escape Online helps you enter all of the data a new employee requires.

First, if you are in a COE-wide implementation, you get to piggyback on the data already entered by other organizations in your County Office of Education. (Often times, even though an employee is new to your district, they have worked in another district within the COE.) Second, even if you are a district-only implementation user, we have lots of helpful features.

Let’s start with the COE-wide user. You have the benefit of others already having entered credential and retirement information. So, when you create a new employee record for a teacher, if that teacher already has credentials in the system, Escape Online is going to “hook” into that and display those credentials automatically in the record you just created.

But that’s not all.

If the teacher has an employee record in another district, Escape Online is going to “hook” into that teacher’s retirement record and download a ton of fields for you, like (take a deep breath because this is quite the list!) first name, middle name, last name, address, home phone, cell phone, birth date, gender, emergency contact name, contact phone number, contact phone extension, contact relationship, emergency doctor, doctor phone number, doctor phone extension, and PERS member Id.

It is all based off the individual’s social security number.

When you enter the SSN for the first time, Escape Online searches the database to see if any Person (retirement) records have that SSN, and if there is one, Escape Online loads the info.

(BTW, you can tell this is the first time I entered the SSN because (1) you can see the whole thing, and (2) the header of the record doesn’t have a status or type or pay cycle or anything.)

But what about you district-only implementation users? Well, we have some helpful features for you too!

We know school business, so we know what information simply must be input.  We make those required fields.

Hiring new employees is always joyous. It’s great that Escape Online can help make the data entry pleasant too!

Almost every record in Escape Online now supports attachments. And, almost every type of file can be attached.  Here is a comprehensive list of the types of files you can attach to a record:

• Adobe PDF

• Microsoft Word (rtf, doc, docx)

• Microsoft Excel (xls, csv, xlsx)

• Report/Documents (eodf, rpt, xps)

• Text files (txt)

• Graphic files (jpg, gif, png, bmp)

• Video files (swf, flv, mpeg, mpg, mpe)

• Audio files (mp3, ra)

• Emails (eml)

• HTML files (htm, html, css)

• Script/App files (xap, xbap, js, vbs)

• XML files (xml, xaml)

• Help files (chm)

Now that’s an ABUNDANCE of file types.

But, that’s not all.

Attachments are smart, too.

Attachments can  be viewed by anyone (except for employee attachments, which have permissions), but only edited by the user  who attached them.  They can be deleted and updated. They can be generated automatically (like change notices for vendor requisitions or using the new Mass Attachment feature for employees).

Our customers love the ability to attach files. Every single one of our customers uses this feature, no exception!

And, just like the Superintendent at Placer COE, our customers keep giving us great ideas for how to improve them. So, we are currently looking into adding the ability to print and email attachments, and to provide a “quick-link-like” access for easy viewing from a list.

Now that’s an abundance of smart thinking.

July is a beautiful month. The sun is shining and life is green. And Escape Online snapshots keep our world shiny and green. In case you are new to Escape Online (welcome!), a snapshot is a “quick” report of an individual record (e.g., a vendor requisition) that is generated by clicking the Snapshot button or selecting a task within an activity. Snapshots are shown immediately, a great time saver. They can also be saved to your workstation as a PDF or emailed.

What makes them so beautiful is the depth of information you can get with a click of a button. Check it out.

Here you have a list of requisitions that are awaiting your approval.

There’s some great information on the list but you want to know more, like who has already approved these requisitions and what accounts were used.

With a click of the Snapshot button, you get a choice of running a report for the whole list (All Requisitions) or just the one you have highlighted.

Snapshots can also be run from a task. For example, in the Year End Closing activity, if you run the Year End Processing Report snapshot from the Task menu, you get a big picture of all the items on your list, including account information for each requisition, invoice, etc.

Sounds great, but there’s more.

Snapshots can be smart, too.

There is logic built into the Year End Processing Report snapshot. So, if you run the report and there is nothing on it — meaning you have completed your review of all finance documents — then the snapshot unlocks the the Close Fiscal Year task, letting you move forward in your year-end processing activity.

So, snapshots are quick and smart and green, giving you lots of information fast without wasting time or paper.

Now, that’s a beautiful thing!

Today is the last working day of the fiscal year. For some employees, that means that if you didn’t use all of your leaves — vacation, sick leave, personal — it is too late, that time is gone.  For others, the unused time rolls forward to the next fiscal year. The roll forward leave balance process in Escape Online is very easy with tons and tons of automation. Check it out.

All you have to do is select the Roll Forward Leaves task in the Fiscal Year Status activity. Escape Online automatically creates an appropriate “balance forward” transaction for every employee.

Let’s take a look at the setup of two different LIVE Leave Balance Profiles to see how this works.

One Limit for All. In this case, the Limit Carryover flag is set to YES and the Carryover Max field is set to 50, limiting all employees with this balance to 50 hours for carrying over.

Limits Based on Years of Service. You can also create a matrix. As you see here, you can limit the number of hours carried over based on the number of years of granting.

• Row 1. An employee working for the district for 0-4 years receives 8 hours every year, with the ability to carry over up to 2 years of granted leave (or 16 hours).

• Row 2. An employee working for the district for 5-9 years receives 10 hours every year, with the ability to carry over up to 2 years of granted leave (or 20 hours).

Pretty tricky, huh?

Just imagine if you had to open every employee, calculate years of service, hours granted, and the carry-over limit and then make an adjustment.  That’s one crazy imagination!

That’s why Escape Online calculates everything for you.  With a click of the mouse, all of the calculations and balances and transactions are automatically posted for you!

NOTE: The Roll Forward Leaves task is time sensitive. You must do this AFTER June leaves have been entered and BEFORE July leaves have been loaded.

I attend all of Terri’s Escape Online webinars. You might think that after 13 years at Escape (wow!) that perhaps I wouldn’t go, but I find there is always something to learn, if not two or more things.
So, it was no surprise to me that when I attended her Year End Webinar a couple of weeks ago, I learned how awesomely convenient it is to see multiple fiscal years on the journal entry list.

Check it out.

Let’s say that I want to see all of the journal entries associated with a single requisition across fiscal years.

Super easy!

1. Go to the Journal Entries activity.

2. Enter the Requisition Number.

3. Clear the Fiscal Year field. (Escape Online defaults it to the current fiscal year.)

4. GO!

And just like that, lickety-split, Escape Online gives you a list, where you can readily see the requisition was originated on 7/17/09 (highlighted) and carried forward in 2010, 2011, and 2012 (first three lines).

Of course, the list also shows all of the encumbrances and expenses, too!

I am a big fan of “working lists.” At the end of every work day, I make a list of tasks I have completed and list of tasks for the next day. My whiteboard has a list of tasks for the month.
This deep-rooted need for working lists is why I love the “Only Uncompleted” flag in the Vendor Requisition search.

The Only Uncompleted flag allows you to focus your list on only those vendor requisitions that have not been cancelled or completed.

In other words, requisitions in the Open, Submitted, Approved, Denied, Printed, Ready for Payment, and Check Pending statuses.

As you can see, it is as simple as setting a flag to YES. What a fabulous feature for Year End or any time.

For Year End, this flag allows you to work your requisition list BEFORE using the Year End Closing activity, letting you get ahead of the game.

For any time, you can use this flag in conjunction with the Requisitioner field (requisitions created by you that are not yet done) or the Buyer field (requisitions assigned to you that you are still working) or any of the other three dozen-plus fields on the Vendor Requisition search.

Now that’s a list worth making, and a list worth working!

Last Friday, we talked about prepaying requisitions associated with a vendor requisition. Now, let’s talk about the other side, prepaying for items that are not associated with a vendor requisition, or as we like to call it — a direct payment or an employee payment.

These prepay payments have the same types of rules as the prepay vendor requisitions: accounts have to be rolled forward and multiyear processing has to be turned on.

The processing of these payments is also super easy, just like the vendor requisitions.

For example, let’s say Celeste Michaels, an employee, has a conference she’s attending in July but needs to have her per diem before she leaves. This is what we would do:

Notice how the fiscal year and the invoice date are not the same. This is the essence of a multiyear payment.

Escape Online will automatically create the liability and expense journal entries for each year when the payment is processed.

The ability to achieve this most awesome feature is controlled in the Organization record. The system manager can decide when the prepayment extravaganza begins.

Some organizations do not enter any dates in these fields; thus disallowing multiyear processing for employee payments. Others enter May 25 or June 25.

Escape Online provides separate dates for employee payments and direct payments, and for each department’s vendor requisitions (e.g., purchasing and the business department both set up multiyear processing, but each wants a different start and end date).

That’s the kind of flexibility you need for year end!

There is no denying it: cash is king. Really, at any time, but especially at year end. When it is time to stop spending cash, cash must be closed (by order of the king or COE or district). Escape Online gives you an easy-to-use tool to enter cash-close dates and a cascading hierarchy for COEs and districts to work in tandem.
We actually give you two activities to control the dates: the Fiscal Year Status (System) activity for COEs and the Fiscal Year Status activity for districts. Of course, the system activity takes precedence. But they both work on the same premise.

The dates entered control when each accounting period stops allowing changes to cash (no journal entries – manual or system – can post to cash), and when the period is completely closed (no transactions can be posted).

Check it out!

See how you can enter separate dates for cash and close. I took a peek at how our customers are using this and there is a wide variety of philosophies.

Some COEs enter the dates in their activity and then their organizations enter even more restrictive dates. Other COEs don’t enter any dates, giving their organizations complete control.

One of our stand-alone districts only has close dates for interim reporting. Another stand-alone district only has close dates for the end of the year.

As always, Escape Online provides tons of flexibility!

Let’s take a closer look at the live sample shown here, particularly the June dates, marked with the red arrow.  Notice how the dates are different. Let’s talk about what that means.

The June Close Cash date is 7/31. If a user tries to post a journal entry (manually or through a system process) that affects June cash after July 31, Escape Online is NOT going to post that journal entry. Instead, it is going to give the user an error message, put the journal entry on hold, and write a history record to the journal entry stating why the JE did not post.

The June Close date is 9/30. This works the same as the close cash date, except it goes past worrying about affecting cash. It simply won’t allow any journal entry transactions to post for June after September 30.

Now that kind of control is worth a kingly sum.