Sometimes, you want to see everything from TODAY forward, or even TODAY backward, or for that matter, any day forward or backward. Escape Online lets you do this on search pages using the dot-dot feature.
Similar to an ellipsis but with only two periods instead of three, the dot-dot feature lets you specify a date and make it part of an unending range. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s take a look at how this looks!

First, we look to the future. This date range would give you every journal entry with a post date that is today or at any date in the future.

The next graphic is the opposite. It is going to give you every journal entry with a post date of today or at any date in the past.

Now, in most cases, you would enter a fiscal year in this backwards search, but maybe not. Maybe you want to find every journal entry with a particular source that was ever posted. You could do it.

You could also use the dot-dot to create a specific range, like 01/01..01/31 to get only those journal entries posted in the month of January.

This is a never ending story, kind of like the feature list we provide our users!

Happy New Year! Happy 1099 Processing! Yes, it is that time again and there is always room for a favorite 1099 feature. This year, we are going to take a look at the fantastic Print Account Option, which allows you to print the Vendor ID or your customer account number on the 1099.
This can be a great time-saver when answering questions about 1099s!

In case you forgot since the last time you did 1099s, some of the setup is in the Organization record, in the AP 1099 section on the right of the form.

As you can see, there are some requirements and some optional flags. The Print Account Option is the last field in this section. It allows you to leave the Account Number section on the 1099 (see below) blank or fill it with information that is important to you and the vendor, like your customer account number or their vendor ID.

Let’s select customer account number and see how that plays out.

If you select an option in the Organization record, when Escape Online processes the 1099s, it is going to look to the Vendor record (under the Purchasing activity group in Finance) to see what information you want to print on the 1099.

These are your two options: Vendor ID and Customer Account number. As you can see here, both are filled out for this 1099 vendor.

Now, when you process the 1099, the customer account number (because that is what we selected) prints automatically on the 1099.

Fantastic!

I am on a roll with footers. We already talked about purchase orders. Now, for the last Friday Feature of 2014, I would like to show the same functionality for work orders. I will start the new year by covering invoices. Woo hoo! Here is a screen shot of the Department record, Work Orders section. The WO Copy Captions lets you set a default, just like the purchase orders. And, of course, you can change it on-the-fly, just like purchase orders.

And, here is a screen shot of the Print Work Orders activity. Notice how I entered only the word “Managers.” This will OVERRIDE the footer from the Department record. There will be only one copy for the manager; the technician doesn’t need one.

That’s it for the 2014 Friday Features. I hope you continue to follow our blog into the new year and that you, your family and your friends have a safe and happy holiday vacation.

Last week, we talked about how you can define a footer for a purchase order in the Department record. This week, let’s talk about how you can override that footer, dynamically. What if I want to print some PO copies for a particular vendor, for say the month of November, but I don’t want 6 copies? Escape Online has got you covered there, too. This is a screen shot of the PO Copies activity. Notice how I have entered some search criteria and entered a new footer. The footer I entered will OVERRIDE the footer from the Department record. So when I get my list of purchase orders matching this criteria, “November PO Copies” will print as the footer, instead of Accounting or Receiving or whatever.

The footer prints just above the page numbers, like this.

Purchase orders obviously require copies. Sometimes all you have to do is print one for you and one for the vendor. Sometimes you have to send printed copies to a lot of different departments. Whatever your workflow, Escape Online has got you covered.
Escape Online uses “departments” to give organizations the opportunity to control requisitions, journal entries, invoices and purchase orders separately. Many of our customers will have a Business Department, a Purchasing Department, a Maintenance Department, you get the idea.

Along with defining the documents (requisitions, JEs, et al), the Department record has numerous options for the processing of those documents. In today’s Friday Feature, I want to show you how you can customize the footer of purchase orders.

Check it out. You can see that this LIVE example shows a complex footer. The trick here is the comma. When you define a footer for a purchase order in the Department record, the comma means, “make a separate copy.” See how I have pointed out the first two commas, and that the footer has several department names separated by commas. This means that when you print the PO, Escape Online will print two with no footer, one with the footer “RECEIVING,” one with the footer “ACCOUNTING,” and on and on. This particular customer prints 6 copies of each PO. That may seem like a lot, but Escape Online allows each of our customers to define what is appropriate for their workflow.

Pretty cool, but there’s more. Escape Online collates those copies for you, too! If more than one “group” is defined, Escape Online automatically collates the copies for you. That is, all of the receiving copies print first, then all of the accounting copies, and so on.

By defining PO Copy Options, you are setting up a default footer for printing purchase orders. Next week, we’ll talk about how you can override that default, dynamically changing those footers.

What about emailing, you ask?  Great question! While this mini-series of Friday Features will cover printing POs, we will be introducing the ability to email POs in 2015! Stay tuned.

I want to focus on the reality of people having jobs at more than one district within a county. Just like Escape Online lets you see accounts across districts (and fiscal years), our retirement activities let you see employee retirement information across districts (and across fiscal and calendar years). The Person record in Escape Online ties the employment records of each district to a single individual record for both PERS and STRS processing. From this single activity, you can view employee demographics, assignments, retirement information and pay detail. It is super handy for researching. Check out the Assignments tab of the Person record, which shows all of the assignments and addons for an individual.

First, let’s look at a PERS member with assignments at two districts. Here we see the member has an assignment in the cafeteria at one organization and an assignment in custodial at another. Having assignments at multiple organizations is very common. At one of our LIVE customers, of their 26,748 active employees, over 2,447 had jobs at more than one district.

Of course, it isn’t just PERS members. Lots of substitutes work at multiple districts. Now, they don’t have “regular” assignments, they have what we call Addon Pay, or pay that is not associated with a position. In this example, we see that this person has multiple substitute jobs. She works as a Study Hall Substitute at orgs 618 and 616, and she works as a Substitute Teacher at orgs 603 and 618. And, she has been doing this for years.

It is all there, all the information you need, across the county, making your job easier.

Not all employees fit into specific categories. Take for instance, this real-life employee at one of our customers. The employee is a Behavior Intervention Specialist and a substitute teacher. Now, that may not sound amazing, but it is because those two positions have different retirement plans. The Behavior Intervention Specialist requires membership in PERS and the substitute teacher requires membership in STRS. What is even more amazing is that Escape Online supports this person in being a member of both retirement systems. It is called, “Dual Retirement.” Check it out.

From the Persons record in Retirement, you see the employee has defined addons for these positions. (Addons are Escape Online’s way of tracking work that is not related to a position, like substitutes.)

In that same record, you see two retirement records, one for each retirement system. It is really that simple.  Just a few setup records and Escape Online does the rest. (You can see all of this setup from the Employee record, too!)

Finally, if we look at the employee’s payroll snapshot, we can see that Escape Online keeps track of each of the retirement systems separately, but completely.

Maybe say something like although not many employees are in multiple systems, those that are cause quite a headache for retirement techs. We go the distance for all our users.

Now, that really is amazing!