Blog

Changes matter. When working with public funding or personal information, it is important to keep an audit trail of field level changes (like a social security number in an employee record or the number of items ordered in a requisition) and processing events (like the denial of a requisition or the generation of a PERS retirement report).
Escape Online has this audit process built-in.  Almost every activity includes a History tab where “old” and “new” field values are stored and processes are documented.  Check it out.

Here is a LIVE example of a completed requisition’s history (with changed user names). Starting from the bottom, we can see that an account amount was changed, precipitating a change notice and a warning that the threshold was exceeded. The requisition went on, though, proceeding through year end processing and (at the very top) having two checks printed for payment of the goods.

On the HR/Payroll side of the software, here is an amusing example for fans of the old TV show, “Alias Smith and Jones,” of how Escape Online keeps track of name changes in the Employee record.

Depending on the record and where it is in the processing cycle, Escape Online writes history records to help you audit the fields and processes that are important to your district’s integrity and standards.

Now, that’s change you can count on.

Everybody loves to receive money. School districts are no different.  There are a lot of reasons why schools receive money: insurance payments from retired employees, developer fees, facility use rent, and the ever so lovely – donations.
Schools not only receive a lot of small amounts throughout the year, they also receive them in a variety of ways: checks, cash, bank cards, etc. Escape Online helps the business office receive the money and track the type of receipt.  Check it out!

Here is a graphic of the lookup for all of the receipt types you can use to classify the money you receive. This list was developed with the input of our customers, portraying their real life needs for classifying receipts.

In fact, let’s look at the LIVE data from one organization in one of our county customers. For the fiscal year 2013:

This classification of receipts allows district offices to quickly accept payments, reconcile deposits, and make corrections if necessary. They can use Escape Online’s list, grid or reports to get detail on their receipt processing, even exporting the data to Microsoft Excel for some in-depth analysis.

And that is something everybody loves.

Last week we talked about testing W2s; this week it is STRS’ turn. With all of the changes coming at you from AB340, now is definitely the time to test your STRS file before uploading the “real” file. And, of course, Escape Online is helping you out with all of this, providing timely updates for AB340.
While you have had the ability to generate STRS test files for many releases, now it is more important than ever.  And, it is so easy. Check it out!

All you have to do is select the Generate Test task in the STRS Processing activity and Escape Online is going to prompt you for a reporting period month, type (supplemental or not), and organization (optional if you are an all-org user).

But that’s not all. Escape Online is also going to prompt you for a location to save the file.

But wait there’s more.  Escape Online is going to write a history record listing the period, type, org and user Id of the person who generated the test file.

Once generated, you can upload that file to the STRS web site to make sure everything is perfect, giving you that piece of mind to make the final cut.

As Huell Howser would say, “Amazing!”

(Stay tuned for next week, when we discuss PERS test files!)

As part of our new year celebrations, we must report to the Feds all 1099 payments made in 2012.
Escape Online automates the process by finding all vendors that are marked for 1099s and finding all payments to any vendor with a particular object code.  Escape Online takes that information and creates a fully stocked list of vendors for you to review, including a column that states if the amount is great enough to deserve a 1099, if the vendor is set up correctly, and other important tidbits to help you in your 1099 party planning.

As all of us party planners know, sometimes you think you are done but you come to find out that another department made a payment you didn’t know about or one of your vendors has changed their address.

Escape Online has you covered here as well. Happy days!

If a 1099 has been printed and it needs to be changed, you have to unprint it. No worries. Escape Online gives you three ways to unprint.

For all organizations (the entire county): Select Unprint ALL 1099 from the Task menu at the top of the form of the 1099 Reporting activity.

For a single organization (district): Highlight an organization and then select Unprint 1099 Vendor Forms from the Task menu in the Organizations section of the 1099 Reporting activity.

For a single vendor: Open the individual 1099 in the Vendor 1099 activity and select Unprint from the Task menu.

Once unprinted, you can make those last-minute changes and print again, making for a very happy new year!

While most people think of “tax time” as happening in April, we all know that there is really an earlier tax time, like right now, when we are processing W2s! Working your W2 list in Escape Online is especially easy because of three helpful search options: changes, problems and reload.  Check it out.

So this is the search criteria for W2s. It has all of the usual suspects, but the bottom three options are pretty slick.

If you set the With Changes flag to YES, you get a list of employees with changes (as created using the Edit task) to their W2 information.

If you set the With Problems flag to YES, you get a list of employees with problems (errors).

If you set the Reload Now flag to YES, Escape Online reloads employee data that has changed or was not previously loaded. This is the coolest one!  Let’s talk about it some more.

There are lots of reasons why you might edit employee data: they changed their name or their address. Or, they may have lost a check. Or, you are working this list in December before the final pay date and their pay is changing.

If you make any of these changes, you need to “reload” your list. This flag makes it so simple!

All you have to do is change it to YES and click GO. Now that isn’t taxing at all.

Retirement is one of the most complex parts of a school business employee’s pay. Both STRS and PERS had major changes recently and both are undergoing even more changes with the signing into law of AB340.
When Escape Technology first implemented retirement processing into our payroll system (way back in the mid-90s), we knew users were going to need help staying in the game, keeping on top of all these rule changes, so we built in the Error Matrix released by STRS and the Payroll Reporting Element Relationships chart from PERS.

This is an awesome strategy! Check it out.

This is the PERS Editor where you can see the error and all of the information you need to fix it. Of course, we have this same type of functionality in the STRS Editor.

Both the STRS/PERS Editors also have the ability to find ONLY those employees with errors. Sweet!

AND, Escape Online regularly checks for errors: when you are processing payroll, when you are importing persons, and of course when you are editing retirement lines.

Now that’s keeping you ahead of the game!

Most often HR/Payroll users just need the basics, like opening an individual employee record or getting a list of employees. Mostly, they use last name or an employee Id, or sometimes job class (all of the teachers).

But we all know that sometimes you need to target a very specific group of employees. When that happens, Escape Online has almost 200 searchable fields to help you out!

And, if you are one of those users that is frequently doing similar complex searches, employee search favorites are a huge time saver! I know, I know, I have written a lot about favorites, but this activity is my favorite for favorites!

Let’s take a closer look.

Check out the values (circled in red). Sure, it is only a couple of fields to fill out, but with employee search favorites I can continually shave seconds off of entering search criteria.  And, you know me, every second counts.

Now take a look on the left, where I have defined the “favorite” searches that a typical user might run on a regular basis.  There are 14 shown, but I can save up to 20!  Now we are talking about a real time saver.

It is so easy to set up favorites: enter your criteria and click Manage under the Favorites. From there all you have to do is decide whether or not you want your search to be automatic (Auto Go) or if you want Escape Online to load the defined search criteria and WAIT for you to add more.

The other wonderful feature about Favorites is that you can call them from Quick Starts.  For example, I could enter EM F2 to run the favorite I created for the location search.  The reason it is F2 is because it is the second favorite on the list. (Favorites are saved and numbered sequentially. Of course, you can also rearrange them using the arrows at the side of the Favorites list box.)

So, by that standard, if I wanted a list of employees with less than 1.0 FTE, all I would have to do is type EM F10 in the quick start.

Indeed, the time-savings is fabulous!