Blog

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!

Last Friday we discussed how to manually track seniority for employees. While this is a great feature, Escape Online has another great way to track seniority that is automatic. This automated method calculates and creates seniority records every time you process payroll. It is easy to set up and easy to use.  Check it out. Seniority granting is controlled through the employee’s assignments and addons and the job category to which they are associated.

The automated method creates detailed transaction records of an employees’s seniority based on the hours and days of assignments and addons, adjusting for time off due to leave of absences.

These are the seniority records for a Child Care Assistant.

They have these records because their job category (Daycare) is setup to track seniority by hours.

Notice how there is a seniority record for each month, tracking the number of hours worked in that month.

If this employee had two assignments that both tracked seniority, you would see two records for each month, one for each assignment.

There are several ways to define seniority:

• The Single and Academic Department methods calculate the earliest date for paid assignments.

• The FTE method calculates the earliest date and highest FTE for paid assignments.

• The Hours method tracks both assignments and addons. For assignments, it compares the pay cycle period dates to the calendar paid days to calculate how many paid days this assignment had during the pay period and then multiplies that by the hours worked. For addons, it checks the employee’s pay detail to get the exact time worked.

No matter which method you select, though, Escape Online factors time worked, cancelled assignments, assignment changes, and backdated assignments.

Every time you process payroll, these records will be created and posted to the Employee record.

No manual intervention necessary!

The fabulous news this year is that some school districts are hiring again! So, for the next couple of posts, I am going to talk about the Employee record. Escape Online provides great flexibility in the Employee record. As you can imagine, with over 300 organizations tracking over 100,000 employees in Escape Online, we need to have a variety of ways to accommodate employee management tasks.

In particular, we have several ways to track seniority: automatic granting based on assignments and addons or manual tracking by employee, job class or FTE.

In this Friday Feature, we are going to discuss the manual method. Check it out.

The simplest way to manually track seniority is to use the Seniority Date field on the Employment tab of the Employee record. You can search and report on this date.

But what if you hired 10 people in one day?

No problem. You can use the Seniority Rank field to qualify each employee for that date.

But what if you want to differentiate between different classes (Teachers versus IT staff versus Administrative Staff versus Management)?

Again, no problem. If you wanted to manually track seniority by job class, then you would bypass the fields on the Employment tab and go straight to the Seniority tab of the Employee record. Check it out.

As you can see here, the Seniority tab is chock-full of options. I can base seniority on position, FTE, addon, job category/class or academic department.

Then, within those options, I can add a ranking. So if the district has around 500 high school teachers, I can rank the teachers from 1 to 500, using a random or matrix methodology, whatever is defined by the district.

Of course, the manner in which a district implements and uses seniority is unique to each district. It is up to your district standards which manual method you use.

On the other hand, if what I have described here sounds like too much manual data entry, have no fear!  Next week, we will be discussing the automated seniority feature of Escape Online.

Testing, testing, testing. Escape Online gives you the ability to generate PERS test files for this month, and next month, and the month after that. And, they let you create test files in both the XML format and the older “standard” format. Check it out!

All you have to do is select the Generate Test task in the PERS Processing activity and Escape Online is going to prompt you for a reporting period month and organization (optional if you are an all-org user).

As you know, PERS is currently supporting two file formats (XML and standard). So, Escape Online does too! See how Escape Online wrote two history records for my single request, one for each format.

That means you can use either file, or both, depending on your needs. Nice!

The old saying, “Measure twice. Cut once.” applies to more than just carpentry. It can apply to W2 processing too! As you probably know, the Social Security Administration provides employers with the AccuWage software to identify the most common format errors in wage submissions. And, as you also probably know, Escape Online includes a task that generates a test W2 file you can upload to AccuWage, ensuring that you have “measured twice” before handing out W2s to employees. Check it out!

Of course, the testing of your file is at the tail end of your processing.  Once you have verified all of your information is complete, you are ready to select the Generate Test task from the W2 Reporting activity.

It is that easy!

Now you can upload that file (copied from \escapeserver\ InputOutput\ PayrollTaxes\ TEST_EFW2-CalendarYear) to the AccuWage software.

And as the old saying generally works in real life, that second measurement is the same as the first, but now you have the peace of mind to make that final cut (of W2s!).