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Last week, I talked about the new Seniority Rank field in the Employee record. In that post, I briefly mentioned the Seniority Dates Extract (Employee59) report.

This is an exciting new report that really deserves more than just a few words. So let’s take a closer look.

Like so many of Escape Online’s extract reports, the Seniority Dates Extract automatically launches an Excel spreadsheet with data that you can slice and dice any way you want.

Check it out.  There are so many ways to filter the extract that you can make the perfect set of data for your analysis.

Plus, did you notice that some of the fields have an “s” in parentheses? Oh yeah, that means that you can select multiple items from the lookup.

So, if you want only three bargaining units to show up in the data, you can select those three from the bargaining unit lookup and the report will filter out any employees that do not belong to one of those bargaining units!

The extract includes dozens upon dozens of columns, with everything from the seniority rank field you read about last week to credential information to custom information that only applies to your organization to job category/class.

Getting the data you want in the format you want is powerful, and this is one powerful extract.

Ok, this might sound weird, but I like evaluations. I like the feedback and the goal setting.  Here at Escape, we have annual evaluations. Regardless of your timing, Escape Online helps you create these records in a batch-mode that is really easy to use.

Say you need to create evaluation records for all employees in a bargaining unit.  All you have to do is create a list of those employees and then use the Mass Add – Evaluations task.

This can be a small list or a large list (like 867 employees). No worries. As soon as you select this task, Escape Online quick links you to the Mass Add Evals activity (under the Processes group activity) where you can set the defaults.

You have access to all of the fields of the evaluation record. You can set as many or as few fields as you would like. With a click of the mouse, you can copy these defaults to all of the employees on your list.

There is a lot of flexibility with this activity. It provides you with a line item editor where you can change the defaults for a few employees, add more employees, or even delete a few.

When you are all set, you can post them to the employee records.

We even included the ability to rollback, so you can start over if you change your mind. Whatever makes it easier for you to create and manage the evaluation process!

As the mother of a teenage son, I let him borrow my car but not reprogram the radio stations. (You know what I mean.) Well, Escape Online has a similar concept.
For example, hundreds and hundreds of users have the ability to create, edit, and submit vendor requisitions when there is enough money in the budget to cover the total amount of the requisition.  That seems reasonable.  But, there are also a handful of power users that should be able to override this budget constraint.  How do you handle that?

The answer is through the miraculous feature called Task Permissions. They are controlled through the User record. On the Finance side, the most popular task-permissions given are for “overriding budget” and “bypassing approvals.”  On the HR/Payroll side, the most popular is giving the ability to generate test retirement files.

Let’s take a peek at a couple of lines in the Activity Permissions tab in the User record, where you can define access to activities and/or the tasks associated with those activities.

Using lookups, I can select the activity, and then the permission.  I assign an edit or read role and then “allow” it.

Reading from the top of this screen shot, the first line deals with the Checks activity.  This permission will be for the whole activity. We know this because the Activity Task is blank. Notice how the Edit Role is also blank, but the Read Role is specified. This means that this user will have read-only access.

The next two lines define tasks for the Vendor Requisitions activity. They give permission to override approvals and budget. They have an edit role defined because these tasks will edit or affect the record.

These permissions mean that when my selected power user goes to the Vendor Requisition activity, those tasks will be available on their Task menu.

Remarkable! If only I could use this on my car radio.

Sometimes it is the little things in life that make it so outstanding. That’s why I want to say something about the Outstanding Amount column in the Vendor Requisition list.
This little column is such a time saver: it shows you the total requisition amount minus the expensed amount. It saves you from having to open the requisition to determine this information, which can be quite convenient.  Check it out.

At a glance, we can see that these supply reqs from last year are still being expensed. Slowly but surely, districts are buying the supplies they need as the year progresses.

This truly magnificent column was a suggestion from not one, but two customers. Then it went through our CR Voting process and it was one of the CRs with the most votes (3rd place in Finance) in the 11.04 CR Voting.

Now that’s outstanding!

It is that time again, time for 2nd Interim reporting to SACS. Escape Online makes this easy with a report.

All you have to do is fill out a few fields on the SACS Extract (Fiscal51 or Fiscal151) report.  Check it out!

This is how most customers fill out the report parameters, although some use a date instead, especially if they haven’t loaded their budget transfers into a budget model.

Once you enter these two fields, all you have to do is choose Excel Data from the Go/Export menu and Escape Online launches Microsoft Excel with the data from the report.

Then you can save it and send it to State of California.  It is that easy!

TIP:  Are you having trouble matching your numbers?  Take a look at JEs that fixed actuals.  A common mistake is that those JEs are not actually in the second interim time frame.  For journal entries to be included in the second interim, they MUST be back-dated to the correct time frame, which is on or before January 31st.

Note that the date 1/31 is hardcoded for the date for actuals. But, if you need to specify something other than 1/31 for your Revised amounts, then you’ll enter your target date in the Board Approved Operating Budget Date field (column B of the SACS form).

As you prepare for the upcoming fiscal year, one of the most important records you need to check is the salary schedule which defines the pay rates, time units (daily, hourly, monthly, annual), anniversary movement and budget amounts for employee salaries.
Indeed, salary schedules have both “actual” amounts (the amounts used by payroll) and “budget” amounts (used for what-if budget analysis in finance).

Very often, you need to make mass changes to salary schedules, actual or budget amounts. Boy oh boy, wouldn’t it be a tedious task if you had to go into each salary schedule and change each step and column? Good thing you don’t have to because Escape Online has  several “tasks” that automate the changes.

With a few clicks of the mouse, you can open a salary schedule and then use a task to change the budget amount by copying from actuals or vice versa: copying budget to salary step and column.

You can also change cell amounts (where step/column meet) by a percent or a fixed amount.

Each of these changes have separate forms so that you can specify just the right steps and columns, and percent, amount, and rounding option.

Let’s take a look at the Mass Change by Percentage option!

The first thing we did was to say that this is going to apply to “actuals” meaning that this percentage should be applied to the salary schedule cells, not the budget amounts.

Then we specified the percent increase (2.25). Of course, we could also have specified a decrease.

Next, we rounded the total (current amount + percent increase) to the nearest penny.

Finally, we left the from/through cells blank so that the percent increase would apply to every step and column in the salary schedule.

All that is left to do is to click GO! Escape Online does the rest, updating each cell to the new amount. What a great time saver!