This release review, Terri covered 19 CRs. Attendance was high and so was the interest level.  Almost every attendee group had questions.  Here is a summary of the questions with answers.

Q:  Will the copy function be on Budget Transfers also?
A:  In this release, the copy button is displayed but unavailable.  This functionality will be available in a later release (CR 7487).

Q:  Do independent contractor totals get reset after they have been reported? 
A:  No, they get reset on January 1st of the next year.

Q:  When you set the amount in the Independent Contractor Vendor activity to $600 does Escape aggregate the amount on all requisitions for the vendor that fall into the date criteria? For instance, if I have a vendor with three requisitions of $250 each between Jan 1 and Aug 14 will this vendor show up on the list because the total exceeds $600?
A:  Yes. The software is totaling all vendor requisitions and will report the vendor as soon as they reach the $600.00 limit.

Q:  Why doesn't the EDD script include the direct payments for the automatic update?  The majority of our payments we report are direct payments and we have several hundred that we would need to manually update.
A:  The answer to this question is two-part.

First, the script only updates vendor records.  It marks all 1099 vendors with a Federal Tax Id like a SSN as independent contractors.

Second, at this time, direct payments are not included in the automatic totaling for reporting vendors. For this release users will need to manually update the Vendor record's Contract Amount to add these vendors to the EDD Report.  This functionality will be available in a future release (CR 7410).

Q:  When Terri was verifying the unpaid balance in the Enter Payments activity, we couldn't see how she was doing it.
A:  Unfortunately, the Webinar software we use does not display tool tips or show how columns can be manipulated.  Terri was moving the columns over to show the full Vendor message.  She also hovered over the field to display the tool tip. 

On any list in Escape Online, users can move columns by clicking and dragging.  Tool tips are available throughout the system:  on lists and forms when the entire text is not displayed and on search pages (at the bottom of the search dialog).

Q:  What is the ‘Favorites’ showing on Search pages now?
A:  Favorites is a new feature that allows you to save searches.  This will be shown in the next Software Review on September 11th at 9am.

Q:  Where can we find the Independent Contractors Knowledgebase Item that we saw during the Release Review?
A:  Here is the link to our Knowledgebase item: Reporting Independent Contractors with Release v08.07

****

If you missed this last release review, take heart we recorded it.  Go to the webinar archive on our website to download the recording.  Note that it is an hour long.

Please join us for the next Release Review.  They are held every second Thursday of the month.  If you would like an invitation or if you have any trouble registering please contact Terri:

 

It's our intention to continually improve Escape Online 5 based on customer requirements, such as those that are imposed on them by government agencies. 

The California Employment Development Department (EDD) requires school districts to report vendor information to the EDD within 20 days of making payments or entering into a contract that in aggregate equals or exceeds $600 in any calendar year.

Our customers were manually determining who these vendors are, and creating the reports by hand.  Several customers asked Escape to automate this report generation and we have done so. 

The new Independent Contractor reporting activity is provided to all customers within the annual Software Maintenance Plan, at no further charge.

Independent contractor reporting is now available in Escape Online!

Using this new activity in the Purchasing group, you can quickly search for and report to the State independent contractors in accordance with the law.

The search allows you to find all Vendors that are flagged as independent contractors that have active requisitions within a date range with an aggregate total of $600 or greater.



From the form, you can directly modify IC vendor fields, including Contract Amount, Contract Dates and others.
A "snapshot" report updates the vendor records listed with the EDD information and automatically creates the file for EDD reporting.

Here is a link to the article that contains detailed instructions and screen captures to walk you through the process:  http://www.escapetech.com/kb/questions.php?questionid=82

If you follow our many blog entries describing the array of implementation projects, or attend the Escape Online 5 Release Review webinars, you may have noticed that we have a lot of software updates for Escape Online 5.  Actually, we have a release every month.  And each release has somewhere between 50 and 100 modifications to the product.  How can so many changes be necessary?  Good question.  Escape Online 5 is still a “young” product with a list of features to be added.  Each implementation project adds to the list, as does feedback from live customers.  We constantly work to make performance enhancements.

As the product matures and we have more customers live on the software, the number of releases will surely be reduced - probably to semi-annual updates.  For now, however, this release cycle requires the efforts of much of the Escape team.  Our support staff and project managers document the requirements.  All of our developers work on enhancements.  Our QA Coordinator, Stephanie Fury, does her best to make sure the product is good to go.  Our technical writer, Leslie Bailey, has to document all the changes.  Our Training Coordinator, Terri Hammond, manages our Release Review webinars.  And our IT Manager, Mike Long, packages the releases and works with customers to get the software installed.

Most importantly, our customers take the time to share the ideas that will make Escape Online 5 the best product possible for years (and customers) to come.  Thank you and keep the feedback coming!

We are very excited about how popular and effective the release reviews are becoming.  Nearly 50 people registered for this month's webinar, and that doesn't include all of the people that watched the review in groups.  Actual attendance was almost 80%.

Terri demonstrated 18 CRs, plus two bonus CRs.  She carefully walked through each of the CRs, explaining the change and what it means to you, the user. 

Of course, we cannot cover everything, so there were a few questions submitted via the Chat box:

Q:  I see that six CRs are still in a status of testing.  Have any of them passed? 
A:  ALL of the CRs in the release notes have now passed testing!

Q:  I don’t see an Export button on my list.  Why not?
A:  You will only see an Export button on your list if Microsoft Excel is installed on your work station.

Q:  How do I export a report to Excel?
A:  As stated above, when you are on a list, there is an Export button that looks like an Excel spreadsheet.  If you click this button, Escape Online automatically launches Microsoft Excel with the exported data. 

It works a little different for a report, however.  In the report viewer, you use the Export button that looks like an envelope. This opens a dialog box where you can choose the file type (i.e., Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word and Rich Text Format).  You can save this file anywhere on your hard drive or the network.  Then, you can open the file using the associated program.

Q:  What version(s) of Crystal Reports are compatible with Escape Online 5?
A:   You only need to purchase Crystal Reports if you plan to develop custom reports on your own.  Otherwise, the correct version of the Crystal Reports Viewer is automatically installed when you install Escape Online 5.

Having said that, we use Crystal Reports Professional version 9 to develop reports and the Crystal Reports Viewer .Net version 1.1 to view them.  For more information about Escape Online and Crystal Reports, please see the FYI on our web site.

Q:  How do I enter a vendor credit? 
A:  You can enter negative amounts in the Amount field on the Enter Payments activity to create a “credit memo” (a negative invoice) for vendor requisitions in the Printed, Ready for Payment, Check Pending and Complete statuses.

Q:  Concerning zero dollar amounts in budgets, if I don’t enter any amount for an account will the search list the account? 
A:  You will only see accounts where you have manually entered zero or set the amount to zero using the task in the Budget Management activity.

****

If you missed this last release review, take heart.  We are working on the recording we made of the session.  We are hoping to post a link in a comment to this blog very soon!

Please join us for the next Release Review.  They are held every second Thursday of the month.  If you would like an invitation or if you have any trouble registering please contact Terri:

 

On Tuesday, we had a first ever Year End Webinar.  Of course, we have been holding Release Review sessions over the web for a couple of months, but this was the first time that we had a training.  It went very smoothly.  Considering the specificity of the topic and summer vacation schedules, it was well attended. 

Participants were from across the spectrum of our customer base, including departmental customers, customers who have just converted to Escape Online 5 and those who are about to. 

Our very own Terri Hammond ran the webinar with grace and expertise.  The hour-long session covered the entire Finance side of year end processing.  But, of course, there were questions at the end of the session.  We only had time to answer one, so here are all of the questions submitted and the answers.

Q:  Is there a way to automate the running of financial statements for all districts within a county? 

A:  Yes!  Escape Online has the ability to set up distribution groups that take a user's permissions into consideration.

For a county to distribute reports to multiple organizations, you would want to set up a System Report Distribution group.  This automatically filters the report parameters for each user, in the distribution group, based on the organization(s) to which they have access.

For example, you could create a CBO Distribution Group that included the Escape user id of each CBO at each district and then run the Financial Statement-Fiscal13 (or even the Fiscal Year End Checklist- Fiscal15) report for that distribution group.  Each user would get the report for their organization only delivered directly to their My Reports activity. 

You (as the requestor) would receive a report that listed each user and the status of their report.  So, if one of the reports had an error, you would know.  You could also add yourself to the distribution group and then you would get a county-level report, with a page break for each organization.

To create a system distribution group, you would use the System - Reports - System Distribution Groups activity.  To specify the group for a report, you would use the lookup for the Distribution Group field in the report parameters form.

Q:  As a departmental only district do we need to create the closing JE before closing the fiscal year? Do we need to create the starting balance JE and post it? 

A:  No, at this time Escape Departmental users cannot close their fiscal year without help from Escape Customer Care.  So, contact us and we will enter the close dates for you.  Our plan (we created a change request - CR 7290) is to create a Close Fiscal Year task for departmental users. 

Q: Where do I set the year end processing dates for requisitions?

A:  For vendor requisitions, department requisitions, stores requisitions, invoices and work orders, you would set the dates in the department record (Finance - Setup - Department - Departments activity). Remember, you only have to do this once.  It does not have to be changed every year!

For AP payments, direct payments and employee payments, you would set the dates in the organization record (System - Setup - Organizations activity).

Q:  You mentioned accruing an invoice that has already been accrued could have problems.  Can you explain that again?
 
A:  Unfortunately, AR invoices that have been accrued from prior fiscal years cannot be accrued again. You have to close the invoice from the AR-Invoices activity. Then, you need to copy the closed-out invoice to the current year.  Finally, you can carry over the "new" invoice to the next year from the Requisition Year End Closing list. (We created CR 7184 to address this and other year end issues.) 

Q:  What are the other known issues?

A:  Here is a list of the issues that CR 7184 will address:

• June Close Date. Fiscal Year Status record for year that is being closed CANNOT have a date in the June Close field. If there is a date in this field, journals for this year will be created but not posted.
  
• Use the Enter key on the Requisition Year End Closing list. Using the tab key in this list doesn’t always update the defaults properly. The Enter key works better.
  
• Multiple Expense Accounts from Prior Accruals. Vendor requisitions that have multiple expense accounts and have been accrued from a prior year (i.e., accrued in 2007 and now again in 2008) and are then paid for less than the full amount will have the liability cleared and the remaining liability amount will be evenly distributed to the expense account regardless of their original distribution. If this is not correct, the user will need to manually fix the distribution.
  
• Comments on Accrual JEs. The accrual JEs are not getting a Comment. This is only happening on journals that are “clearing” a liability.

And, that's it.  If you have any other questions, please post a comment to this blog or contact Escape Customer Care.

Don't forget to sign up for Release Reviews, every second Thursday of the month.  If you have a suggestion for a topic-related webinar, please feel free to contact your Escape Customer Care representative.

That got your attention eh?  No it isn't me; I have way too much work to do!

This post is for Bob Schultz, the Superintendent at the Eureka Union Elementary School District here in Placer County.  This is the district that my kids went to school in, and is the district that benefits from the Eureka Schools Foundation, of which I'm a board member (at least for a little while longer). I just attended a dinner banquet to honor Bob, as he is retiring.  Let me tell you a little about him.

Bob Schultz at this year's Eureka Country Faire.

Bob was appointed Superintendent about the same time I joined the ESF Board (four years ago). He had been in the district for about six years at that point. He began his educational career as a teacher some years ago in Southern California.

When he got the job, Bob said, "I just can't fill my predecessor's shoes.  I'm just here to continue the good work he has in place."  Bob was following a fairly legendary Supt., him having been at the district for 17 years.

The Superintendent attends our monthly board meetings and reports on the significant fiscal and other district matters. Bob is also our chief conduit to principals and other administrators, needed so that we can determine our policies and priorities.  Bob's reports are always upbeat.  In the past couple of years, we began to suffer declining enrollment, and so politics and board meetings got increasingly difficult.  Bob treated these as "challenges" as opposed to problems, and did a great job bringing parties together during tough times.

I think what really sticks in my mind is Bob's notion of "support" or "encouragement."  I have seen this with students, teachers, board members, foundation board members, and the public at large.  I really don't think I ever saw Bob unhappy or mad.

In our September ESF Board meetings, his report often focuses on the start of school.  One year he reported that "Well, we only had one school bus vs. car incident this year!"  My ears perked up.  "A mom with several kids hit a school bus, no one was hurt, except the car, but the mom was pretty shook up."  One of us said "Wow, what did you do?"  Bob responded that he already happened to be at the school (the first few days of school he always visited each school several times) so he loaded up the remaining kids from the car and dropped them off at the other school they were going to.  No doubt he returned to the original school and comforted the mom!



Bob greets each of over 2,000 guests while loading on buses to attend the
Granite Bay Home Tour, one of our big fund raisers.

Over the past four years, we worked on about 10 fund raising events together.  Bob was always an unofficial committee member, and helped out however he could on event days.  He most often was thanking the attendees for supporting the district and thanking committee chairs and members for their great work.

Some of our event committee meetings were held at the district office, and Bob would always come in to thank the committee for the effort and support of the district.

Bob even inadvertently was the genesis for an important Online 5 feature.  At one ESF Board meeting, we happened to be sitting together, and Bob whipped out a new digital camera.  "Hey, look at this camera I won at the ACSA conference!"  "Cool, what are you going to do with it?" I asked.  Bob said, "It's the greatest, I just carry it around.  When I see something that needs fixing at a school, like a leaky faucet or a broken bench, I take a picture of it, then my secretary sends that over to Maintenance."

The wheels immediately began turning for me... Accompanying the picture would be the necessary information like what school site, location, priority - hey all the data items in a work order!  So I decided that all of our main records would have "attachments."  This very useful feature now allows our users to attach pictures, spreadsheets, pdf's, you name it, to our records such as employees, journals, fixed assets - all the main ones.  Thank you for that one Superintendent Bob!

One of my prouder moments was being asked to join Bob and our Foundation President to craft a letter trying to explain school finance and how declining enrollment would affect our district.  This letter was sent to the parents of each student.  Bob even taught me something about school business at that time. I presumed that when districts were getting a 5.9% COLA, well, they would have 5.9% more money to work with.  Not if they were in the second year of declining enrollment!  The effective COLA for our district was 2.9%.  Try to explain that to the teachers!

During his last year, Bob not only ran teacher salary negotiations in this environment, he headed up the group that would decide whether one or more schools needed to be closed since our forecast is for continued declining enrollment.  At a meeting early this Spring, I asked Bob how that committee was doing and mentioned that the process must be pretty gut wrenching.  He remarked that progress was being made, it had to be done, and he wanted to get it all taken care of before he left, so the new Supt could start with a clean slate.

How's that for being a stand up guy?  In my school business career, I have met several Superintendents, but have never gotten to know any of them as well as Bob Schultz.  I feel really fortunate for this opportunity.  His encouragement definitely provided inspiration for our "all volunteer army" as I like to call our Foundation.   I'm sure the enthusiasm also encouraged administrators and teachers to do the best job they can with our students.  I definitely learned from Bob and am a better person and businessman for knowing him - I guess he's an educator no matter who he is working with, eh?

Succeeding Bob is Dr. Tim McCarty, most recently of Dublin USD, coincidentally the first customer to go live on Escape Online 5, in March of 2007.  Here is the announcement.   I have met him before, and look forward to working with him.

Enjoy your retirement Bob Schultz, and thank you for your contributions throughout your career!

Last week we had the best attended and largest release review webinar EVER!!  Of course, we had some great questions.  And, we took a poll about having a Year End webinar.

Q:   It appears that any existing user record  with any HR role other than ADMIN is showing up with the “Can Access Emp Notes” set to YES.  User records with no HR role are showing with Note access set to NO.  Is this correct? 
A:    Yes.  All HR/Payroll users, except Admin, will automatically be able to access all note categories.  This allowed us to introduce the feature without affecting current access. 

Q: Is there a lookup for entering the categories in the User record?
A:  No this is a comma delimited field where you can enter more than one category.

Q: If I leave the field blank, what will the user see?
A:  If the Emp Notes Categories field is left blank in the user record, the user will be able to see ALL categories.

Q:  Is the note permission linked to the role for new users or will it default to NO for all new user records?
A:  It is not linked to a role.  When you add a new user it will default to NO.  If you copy a user record, the Can Access Emp Notes and the Emp Note Categories fields will copy the entries.

Q:  Who can set up the Note categories? 
A:  Only all-org users can create note categories (or other users with user based permission).  The categories are system-wide, so they should be set up by the county.

Q: Can org users see the categories?
A:  Yes. Org users have read-only access to the Note Categories activity. 

Q: How do the categories work in the employee record?
A:  They will appear in the lookup when they enter a note.  You must select a category to save the note.  However, we discovered that if you copy a note that has an undefined code, the software will let you save it. The goal is to have all employee notes use the categories defined for your system.  Please contact your project manager or Escape Customer Care for help with standardizing your employee note categories.

Q:  What records use these categories?
A:  The categories only apply to notes created in the Employees, Employee Benefits and Employee Payroll Setup activities.

Like I said earlier, we took a poll to see if we should hold a Year End webinar, and it was a resounding YES.   Check out the stats from the polling:



So, at 9am on July 8th, we will hold an hour-long Year-End webinar that will summarize and detail the year-end process in Escape Online 5.

If you are interested in attending the Year End webinar or the next release review, please contact Escape Customer Care.

 

It's always great to announce that we are bringing new employees to our company.  This month, we have a first - three new employees at the same time!

From left to right: Philip Wong, Jennifer Stahr, Jennifer Escamilla and Sue Vroomman.

Pictured here with me are two new Customer Care representatives, Sue Vroomman and Jennifer Stahr.  Also we have Philip Wong, our newest member of the Escape Development Team.  Philip reports to Ramona.

All three are going through an intensive training process.  We have high hopes that they will be productive team members quickly, working to help out our customers in many ways.

Please watch the Escape News page over the next week, as each of them will be introducing themselves.  I want to thank each of you for joining Escape Technology!

 

For the past few months, we have been having Release Reviews via a webinar.  For those of you who have never been to a webinar, what we do is send all the attendees a link to a website. When they click on it and login, they see Terri’s screen, exactly how she sees it!  They hear her voice over a telephone connection. 

It’s the next best thing to being right there!  The review lasts about an hour and lets you know all about a release's new features without ever having to leave your desk. Attendees can even type questions into a chat window, which we answer, live, for everyone.

Terri Hammond and Leslie Bailey present the Release Review the second Thursday of every month.

We started small, inviting only a few customers.  Then, we invited some more.  And, now we are opening it to all of our customers. Today, Rose of Sierra COE was a first time attendee.  She thought the session was "Awesome." 

We have had similar comments from other attendees regarding how easy it is to sit at your desk and get a detailed review of the new software.  We agree.  This is a great way for you to find out about a new release in an easy-to-use, easy-to-attend format. 

We have Release Reviews scheduled for the second Thursday of every month.  During the session, Terri Hammond walks you through the most exciting changes and enhancements, while I monitor the chat room.  The webinar includes the ability to chat (you ask us questions) and poll (we ask you questions). 

In fact, at today's Release Review, we polled the attendees to see if they were interested in going to a Year End Overview. Seventy percent said, YES.  So, we are going to work out the details and let you know.

At today's review, we had 22 attendees, and some of those attendees were actually large groups watching the session in a conference room.  If you would like to join us, please contact Escape Customer Care so we can add you to the invitation list!

Just wanted to update everyone on two elements of the performance enhancement plan:

1. Phases

We are adding a phase, and inserting it as Phase 2.

1. Performance enhancements in existing software, via monthly releases.
2. SQL 2005. Take advantage of higher performing commands and procedures available in SQL 2005.
3. Business Process evaluation. Making sure users are using the software as intended. Changing or adding to the software to work better for end user workflows where possible.
4. Gathering automated user experience statistics. Measuring what every user actually sees, and being able to analyze this data across activities, across releases, across organizations and even from customer to customer.  This will provide feedback for what should be resolved by step #1.
5. Altering our plan for moving from .Net 1.1 to 2.x and 3.x to get the best software into end user hands more quickly.
   

2. News Items

Entries on the Escape News Page are now available for your reading pleasure, regarding Phases I and II.