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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.

When a new employee is hired, whose responsibility is it to enter the CalPERS Id into the new Employee record? Well, the short answer is the county because legally counties are responsible for retirement reporting unless a district is fiscally independent. But, the longer answer is that HR is already entering the employee’s name, address, social security, and everything else on the planet. Why not allow them to enter the CalPERS Id too (if they have it) and save the county personnel the extra step of entering the data?

Escape encourages and supports this type of cooperation with some special logic for the PERS Member ID field in the Employee record.

See the red arrow pointing to the PERS Member ID field in the Employee record. Normally, this is a read-only field (marked with the lock icon like you see in the field above), but this is a new employee, not just a new employee for the district but a new employee for the county, so the field is unlocked and available for editing.

How does Escape Online know whether or not to make the field editable? Excellent question. In a county-wide system, Escape Online tracks retirement at both the county and district level, ensuring that all earnings at all district locations are tied together in one easy county record.

So, when the HR technician enters the employee’s Social Security Number, Escape Online checks the database to see if that employee already exists. AND, if that employee does exist, Escape Online loads information for that employee, saving the district data entry effort.

And, that’s the point!

By using special logic, the district can save the county time by entering the PERS Member ID, and the county can save the district time by automatically pre-filling fields for employees that are already in the system.

Now that’s some automatic and purposeful cooperation.  Go team!

Here we are on the last Friday of March and the last feature regarding budgeting. But don’t be sad. Spring is in the air so we shall rejoice in the budgeting of non-positional pay or what we like to call Addons.
In Escape Online, addons define any employee pay that does not come from position assignments. Examples are stipends, longevity, furloughs, bonuses, coaching, and substitute pay for non-regular employees. Obviously, addons affect an employee’s pay and retirement. And, obviously, addons need to be considered when budgeting.

As you probably guessed, Escape Online automates the budgeting of addons. Check it out.

Here is an example from a LIVE database. The graphic shows the line items for a Teacher that gets one stipend for acting as the Department Chair and another for having a master’s degree.

The Department Chair is an addon that is associated with the EMPLOYEE, regardless of position. You can see that because the position number is zero (0).

The Master is an addon that is associated with the employee’s POSITION. You can see that because the position number is the same as the teacher line item.

The Budget Management activity picks up all of this information when you load from HR/Payroll. Very easy; a simple task selection is all you need.

But what if there are addons that are associated with employees that you do not want to budget? Addons like bonuses and coaching, addons that lend themselves to a single budget line item instead of employee line items?

No worries!  Escape Online has you covered there too.

Check it out. Here is a LIVE example of a Coach addon.

As you can see, the “Include in Budget” flag is set to No. This tells Escape Online to exclude this addon from budget calculations. Then districts can manually enter a figure for all of the coaching stipends, which is much more appropriate.

This level of control let’s your budget blossom beautifully!

Last week, we went over how Escape Online determines vacancies through available FTE. That is perfect for some assignments (teachers) but not so much for others (volunteers). And, that is why Escape Online considers the type of assignment when determining budget figures for salaries and vacancies.  Check it out.
Escape Online supports six different types of assignments, some of which are included in determining FTE for budgeting purposes:

• Paid – (Included) Employee is assigned to a position for a period of time. The assignment has a salary.
• Timecard – (Included) Employee is assigned to a position for a period of time. The assignment is paid from a timecard. The hours are entered through the Adjust Payroll activity.
• Extra – (Included) Employee works over 1.0 FTE. For example, this is used for a teacher that is working an extra period (6/5 of a day).
• Leave of Absence Paid (LOAPaid) – (Included) Employee is on a paid leave of absence from a position. The assignment has a salary.
• Leave of Absence (LOA) – (Excluded) Employee is on unpaid leave from a position. The assignment does not generate pay.
• Unpaid – (Excluded) Employee or volunteer is assigned to a position for a period of time. The assignment does not generate pay.

Looking at a typical district on one of our LIVE customer systems, we can see how this automation really makes great sense!  This particular district is a Joint Union High School with 905 paid assignments, 314 timecard, 52 extra, 2 paid LOA, 12 unpaid LOA, and 2 unpaid.

Using these figures, Escape Online will budget for 1,273 assignments (paid, timecard, extra, paid LOA). Escape Online will NOT budget for the other 14  assignments (unpaid LOA and unpaid). Perfect!

This type of flexibility gives you the freedom to create employee assignments for all of your changing needs without forcing you to manually include/exclude certain types from your position control budgeting for salaries and/or vacancies!

It is that time of year again: time to create next year’s budget. To celebrate, I will be focusing on this most important task for the next few weeks.
One of the more tricky concepts for budgeting is vacancies. But Escape Online makes this easy by determining where vacancies exist, automatically.  How does it do this most wondrous feat?  Check it out.

First, Escape Online looks at your positions to see what is filled and what is not (has available FTE). See how the position list below shows the Data Entry Clerk (position 1455) has 0.125 FTE available.

Escape Online determines the available FTE by subtracting the Used FTE from the Authorized FTE. Nice!

Now, let’s  take a closer look at the used FTE.

Here are the assignments for that position. We see that Celeste has held the position for three years, using 0.25 FTE (or working for 2 hours a day).
Armed with this information, we can now go see what Escape Online loads into next year’s budget, both for Celeste’s position and for the vacancy.

Check it out!

Escape Online creates FOUR lines in budget to cover all of the information, giving you precise figures. Let’s look at each line:

• Line 1: This is the Available FTE being budgeted as a vacancy. (Notice the Type is V.)
• Line 2: Celeste only works for a few days in the first month of the year (August). Escape Online budgets these “pay actual days” separately.
• Line 3: Celeste works full-time for most of the year (September – May). Escape Online summarizes this monthly activity to make budgeting easier to read and understand.
• Line 4: Celeste only works for a few days in the last month of the year (June).

I am sure you will agree, Escape Online’s budgeting of vacancies (and salaries) is a truly wondrous feat!