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Friday Features – Dynamic Footers for Work Orders

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.

Friday Features – Dynamic Footers for Purchase Orders

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.

Friday Features – Footers for Purchase Orders

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.

Four Reasons Districts Are Switching to Web-Based Time & Attendance Systems

Odds are you aren’t lighting your hallways with torches. You aren’t using candles in the cafeteria or lanterns in the classrooms; electricity was discovered quite some time ago. And with that discovery came a new era of industry, innovation and opportunity. That era forever changed the way we work and is rivaled only by the innovation of the Digital Age.

Likewise, it’s no surprise that two-thirds of companies have embraced this new digital age by ditching old time and attendance tracking methods in exchange for web-based HR solutions. It is surprising, however, that a disproportionate number of school districts fall into that final one-third — those using outdated and risk-prone paper methods to track their time and attendance.

The good news is that each month, dozens of these school districts dip their toes in the electronic-time-and-attendance water (that sounds more dangerous than it is), and they’re saving a lot of time and money because of it.

Here are four reasons districts are tossing their paper and moving to web-based time and attendance systems.

Reason 1: Accountability

School districts that still use a paper time and attendance system have an unavoidable accountability problem. It’s no secret that employees can and have made mistakes on their timesheets or even intentionally misrepresented their time. Web-based time and attendance software increases the accountability of your employees by tracking the actual time they work. Timesheet approvers can see those actual time punches (and rounded time, if applicable) to get an accurate record of when their employees actually worked as well as what building they clocked in and out of in the case of a crime or emergency.

Unfortunately, school districts’ accountability problem does not end with employees submitting incorrect or falsified timesheets. Perhaps the most prevalent accountability problem districts report is that of their principals, secretaries or other timesheet approvers rubber stamping those erroneous timesheets. This is a people problem, one that no time tracking software can ultimately solve. But that doesn’t mean a time and attendance program can’t improve overall accountability.

Paperless timesheets carry a record of who has edited, submitted or approved a timesheet along with the exact time that action took place. In addition, you can require your approver to certify the validity of the information being approved, as well as to enter a digital signature PIN to confirm he or she is the person making the approvals. These measures can go a long way in ensuring appropriate work is put into evaluating each timesheet.

Reason 2: Compliance

A second problem school districts face is compliance. With the full effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) looming, plus FLSA and FMLA regulations, districts are scrambling to prove their compliance.

The problem? A lot of districts can’t even claim with confidence that they are compliant. With large filing cabinets stuffed with paper records, proving compliance is at best a tedious process.

Dana Lang
A+ Charter Schools

“Before, we were required to keep about seven years of paper records in notebooks, in filing cabinets.”

Then throw in this fact: paper gets lost.

Liz Walton
Contoocook Valley School District

“Two years ago [we were] terrible at using the paper time slips. We would have inconsistency on people reporting their hours. We would have lost time slips that would appear months later because they were in interoffice envelopes that didn’t come to the right person. Time slips would not be signed or approved by the approvers.”

Auditors aren’t going to overlook these problems, and they won’t enjoy a long wait while you track down the records they’ve requested. This is one of the major reasons so many many districts, like A+ Charter Schools, have chosen to implement a web-based time and attendance system.

Dana Lang
A+ Charter Schools

“At this time, they keep it online for us, in the cloud. I don’t keep any paper records. Everything is online and virtual.”

Department of Labor audits are nothing to take lightly, especially once ACA regulations are in full swing. In response, many districts have elected to implement a web-based system along with regular internal audits to ensure they’re ready when the DOL comes knocking.

Reason 3: Efficiency

The third problem school districts face is that of simple efficiency. Managing even a small school district is no simple feat. You’ve got teachers, subs, aides, maintenance, custodians, food service, secretaries, principals and more — each spread across multiple schools — all reporting to your payroll department.

Let’s say you use a paper method for your time and attendance tracking; even in the best of scenarios — where all timesheets are approved and on time, and every location has been appropriately enforcing the same standards — you’re still left with piles of paper that you then need to verify and manually enter into your payroll system. That alone takes a lot of unnecessary manual work, and that’s assuming a best case scenario.

Liz Walton from Contoocook Valley School District says, “Part of our issues in collecting those time slips would be due to a delay of school, or a snow day, or even just because somebody is out. In those particular cases when that happens, I would spend time chasing down people, whether by phone or by email, trying to get a hold of whoever is missing to get me their information as soon as possible, which could also mean a day or two delay of getting it to me.”

Some school districts spend a disproportionate amount of time just tracking records down and reentering information from paper into their payroll system. That time is an expensive resource, and with web-based time and attendance software, you can reallocate that resource to other areas that don’t get enough time.

Dana Lang
A+ Charter Schools

“What used to take us about three weeks to do has now gone down to about three days on my campus users’ part, and when it gets to me, it was only about 15 minutes.”

Finally, and most obviously, a web-based time and attendance program makes your paper consumption more efficient. You’ve probably already figured out how. But does the word paperless scare you? Even if you’re just looking to cut down on your paper use, not get rid of it entirely, time and attendance software can go a long way in optimizing your process.

Lori Hobbs
Millsap ISD

“We were using a paper-based system, and to store the reports for our district, which is a small district, it took a whole file box to store a year’s reports and we had to cram it in there for it to even fit. Now with the [web-based] system, I have a very nice report, and it probably fits in three inches for a whole year. So the consumption of paper is much better and we don’t have to have the storage that we did, because in small districts we don’t have storage places either.”

Reason 4: Accuracy

The fourth main problem school districts are facing (and one that directly informs the first three problems) is that of accuracy. You already know that paper timesheets require you to manually enter time into your payroll system, which is expensive in regard to time, but do you know how much it’s costing you in errors?

Nucleus Research, the American Payroll Association and the Aberdeen Group have all done studies showing that organizations overpay their employees by an average of 1.2% due to human error — representing $120,000 in payroll errors for every $10 million in payroll wages. They have also shown that electronic time and attendance systems can eliminate up to 95% of this cost. How much could you save with 95% more accuracy?

Automatic savings, in combination with accountability, compliance and efficiency, make staying with antiquated paper time and attendance methods a costly mistake. Will you join the thousands of school districts that have already embraced the future of web-based time and attendance systems?

Friday Feature – Retirement Across the County

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.

Friday Feature – Dual Retirement

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!

Friday Feature – Retirement Matrix Errors Built In

You know the old adage, “measure twice, cut once.” Well, I think that also applies to uploading files to retirement agencies. I mean why wait until AFTER you have generated a file to find out if there are errors?
There is no need to wait with Escape Online. We have built the STRS and PERS error matrices into the software, giving you a heads up, so you can fix those errors BEFORE you generate the file and upload it to the reporting agency.

Check it out.

When you are in the PERS (or STRS) Editor activity, you can see that there is an error.

And, if you hover over the error, you can see what the error is.

Nice!

This type of error management is also built into Payroll Processing and the PERS and STRS Import activities (for importing retirement files from offline districts). This is a great time saver!

But, wait, there’s more.

Not only does the column on the list make it easy to find and fix the error, you can actually build a list that ONLY has errors.

The Has Errors flag on the search page allows you to focus your list on only those employees that have errors, making your list shorter and easier to manage.

Just think of the time savings, especially considering there were 1,712,404 retirement (PERS and STRS) lines processed in Escape Online in 2013.

Friday Feature – Editing Retirement Lines

When it comes to retirement, you want to make sure that the data you give to the PERS or STRS people is right. Sometimes that means that you have to make changes after payroll has been processed. Thank goodness, Escape Online gives you the ability to edit the retirement lines after payroll has been processed. In fact, not only does Escape Online allow specific users to edit the lines, it graphically displays the editing so that you can recognize it straight away.
Take this LIVE example as a case in point. There are two areas I want to point out on this screen capture. Let’s start with the giant red arrow. It is pointing to the last line, which is crossed out, the universally recognized font for deletion.

So, you guessed it. That last line item was deleted. But why, you ask?

Great question. Let’s focus on the highlighted area. We can see that the first highlighted line has the dates 3/1-3/31, and the second line has 3/24-3/31. The pay was correct so the error was not caught by the payroll technician, but the eagle-eyed retirement specialist caught it.

To change a retirement line is easy. All you have to do is edit it. But, wait, you say, that seems kind of reckless. No, not in Escape Online. If you edit a payroll-generated line, Escape Online automatically “copies” the line with the new information and “crosses out” the line with the old information for historical purposes.

Of course, you noticed that the screen capture was from PERS. Well, STRS works exactly the same way with one fabulous addition. If you move earnings forward (i.e., create a supplemental), Escape Online automatically crosses out the “original” information, alerting you that it has been moved forward.

Happy editing!

Friday Feature – Merging Resources

With LCFF (local control funding formula) a reality, you need an easy way to merge resources and other account components. Escape Online has got you covered. We first started blogging about LCFF back in August of 2013, with Jacque’s LCFF, Changing Accounts, and You article.
Having been on the front lines of the SACS implementation in the late 1990s, we know how important it is to get your accounting right! We learned all we could then (and now) and worked with our customers to create software that provided an easy way to track and change account components.

Check it out.

First, we made it easy to change one component from one fiscal year to the next. All you have to do is link the components with the Next and Prior fields. When you roll accounts forward at year end, Escape Online creates all of the correct accounts and updates requisitions, invoices, positions, etc., with the new accounts.

Under the hood, we have an “account link” that gives you the ability to get detailed historical information. So, if you want to see what happened over the last 10 years to an account with resource 0258, Escape Online can show that to you, automatically linking to the previous accounts with resource 6258.

But, wait, you say. That doesn’t seem so hard. The hard part is that LCFF requires us to merge multiple components (restricted) into one (unrestricted).

Ok. That does “sound” hard, but it isn’t. You simply enter the same number in the Next field for several components.

It is exactly the same as changing one. When you roll accounts forward at year end, Escape Online creates all of the correct accounts and updates requisitions, invoices, positions, etc., with the new accounts.

It’s that easy!

A Call for Divergent Leadership

Originally written for the AppliTrack “Hire Greatness Today” publication

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. (Gray)

English poet Thomas Gray wrote “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” to honor the millions who had died before him, the poor, the hapless, the unrecognized, those who lived and died with little notice from others. In his poem he openly declares a profound respect and appreciation for them, realizing unfortunately that many had natural abilities of greatness that could not reach fruition because they lacked either the finances or the education.

There are many potential teachers and administrators who have that innate ability to lead, to guide, to bring out the best in others, but they are not tapped: they go unrecognized because they may not be the same color or may not be deemed the brightest or may not have right economic background to be discovered. Yet, they are “there,” many already in the classrooms or lower echelons of administrative leadership, but they go under-appreciated and under-valued because they may be slightly different. The innate, raw talent, the ability to motivate, the industry and ethics to serve others, the listener who has the Joban patience to weigh before passing judgment, the administrator/teacher who can listen and explain and accept questioning and challenges but smile — these are the people with the leadership skills that could revitalize an entire administrative staff, change the direction of a school climate or culture, who can recognize and utilize the talents of the members of his or her staff and team, and who can sometimes dust the surface of a former principal’s desk and take charge himself or herself and thrive in the process. The unrecognized, those possessing the natural but untapped resources that go under-utilized, those who for any number of inexcusable excuses remain hidden, beautiful flowers in the desert lost because of displacement — that truly diverse group of men and women who could make a difference in young people’s lives and in their communities, either dwindle into mediocrity or leave a profession that never lends them a voice or listens if they find one to discover potential greatness in some other occupation that values character more than color, gender, religion, etc.

A key word in all levels of education today is diversity, commonly used in current professional academic articles somewhere within the body. Teachers are taught and administratively directed to embrace, interact, and internalize their diverse student populations in every way: culturally, sociologically, socioeconomically, sexually and religiously. That would be in the classroom. What about the rooms of the administration in district offices? Are they practicing the ideas that they mandate their teachers to follow? Do they assist or resist systematic, authentic integration of diversity in the hiring of administrative personnel in K-12? Are they practitioners of what they preach?

When I was small, I remember a little chorus that we used to sing in children’s church: “Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Too young and innocent to understand the complexity of a world composed of multiple nationalities (then it was predominantly black and white to me), I did not appreciate the words to that song. Years later, when I recall that tune, it means so much more: not merely for its implications of religiosity, but because I now understand that the world is fabricated of infinite variations of ethnicities, languages and dialects, religions and rituals, regions, politics, gender roles, and cultural values. I have grown to value the differences in all those areas, the varieties offering the proverbial “spice of life.” Those varieties should be celebrated, understood, and unitive, not divisive; such is the purpose of education. Administrative leadership must abide by those same principles and purpose.

According to The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), “During the 2011-12 school year, there were an estimated 115,540 principals of K-12 schools in the United States; 89,810 were public school principals and 25,730 were private school principals. Among public school principals, 80 percent were non-Hispanic White, 10 percent were non-Hispanic Black or African American, 7 percent were Hispanic, and 3 percent were another race/ethnicity… The percentage of public school principals who were female was 52 percent overall, 64 percent in primary schools, 42 percent in middle schools, 30 percent in high schools, and 40 percent in combined schools.” (Bitterman, Goldring, Gray, & Broughman, 2013)

As the population of the United States changes, with the increasing numbers of minorities (African American and Hispanic), eventually and statistically the white population will become the minority. As that ethnic transformation occurs and as it becomes increasingly evident in teachers’ classrooms, the traditional and still prevailing color of the principal in charge of those students remains predominantly white. The balance between the classroom population and the occupants of the principals’ offices should possibly be of concern. What can be done? What must HR do? Human Resources must strive to increase district initiatives and revise district strategic plans to accommodate possibilities. They must offer incentives in recruitment and build stronger partnerships with local universities and businesses. Designing programs to keep graduating minority students in their area, increasing the number of student internships, and building supportive internal leadership programs, in essence they can “grow their own.” They can scour universities nationwide, identifying and soliciting a broader variety of candidates. They can renew and cement current relationships with politicians, parents, and stakeholders, demonstrating mutual support, collaboration, and community interest and involvement.

I am not suggesting racism here. I am, however, suggesting the particularly myopic vision of school leadership of the past, often not intentional but simply mirrored, should lend itself to a certain color blindness in the future. Potential academic leaders of color, regardless of color, should be solicited and groomed for future positions in the higher echelons of leadership in public schools. The faces of the administrative team in the main office should somewhat reflect the teachers before their classes and the students populating their classrooms. Too, I am not suggesting racial quotas, affirmative action either: the best leaders should lead, but the best leaders must also be cognizant of the homogeneity of color in administrative meetings. The best leaders strive to create a culture of good followers, and among those strong followers must be those capable of good leadership. Those prospective leaders should be encouraged and mentored and invited onto the administrative team. The exceptionality of the great leader proves true not only in his or her ability to lead but also his or her ability to inspire and create new leaders.

The leadership colors of the future are “red and yellow, black and white.” That must be the goal, and what better way can we present leaders ensure and invest in future leadership than to hone the skills of potential leaders through mentorship? Let them follow us now to lead into a more reflective and appropriate “stained glass” future.

Work Cited
Bitterman, A, Goldring, R., Gray, L., & Broughman, S. (2013, August). Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary and Secondary School Principals in the United States: Results From the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey. NCES 2013-313, U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 3. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013313.pdf.

Friday Feature – History Contains

History tells us what we have done. That is why Escape Online includes an audit trail on the History tab. Almost every record — from vendor requisitions to employees to journal entries — has a history record. The record contains some valuable nuggets of information. Here is an example from a fixed asset record:

Great information, huh?

So great, that we are going through each activity with history records and giving you the ability to tap into this vital knowledge. We have already implemented searching for fixed assets and stores items.

The really cool thing about the search is how we are using what I like to call keywords.

The History Contains field supports free typing of multiple keywords. What I mean by that is that you can enter more than one word, separated by a comma to focus your search. Using the example above, I could enter “room,047” (no spaces) to find all assets that have a history record for a room change for 047.

That’s fun! Let’s try another one. I could enter “room,changed,compaq” to find all Compaq computers that changed rooms. See, how I have focused my search not on Compaq computers in a particular room, but computers that have moved. Wow! This is powerful!

That’s why we are rolling it out in reports and activities. In the upcoming release, you will be able to search User records using the System02 report. In releases scheduled for next year, you will be able to search for employee, invoice and journal entry history records.

That’s historic.

Friday Feature – Show Me the Records

Last week, I told you about the Show Tabs task. Escape Online has another feature that I think complements the tab selection very well. It is the Active Setup Records field on the first tab of the Employee record. Let’s continue with our example from last week to show the true power of this field. We had only the Employee, Credential and Education tabs showing.

We can see from the tabs that there are four Credential records and six Education records. But, remember, we have a whole host of tabs hidden. How do we know how many records are on those tabs?

We look at the Active Setup Records field. Tada!

The Active Setup Records field is the last field in the Employee Information category on the right side of the Employee tab. The field names all of the tabs that have active date-based records. (It does not consider the Leave, Authorizations, Flex, Education, Attachments, History, Seniority and Notes tabs because they are not date-based setup records.)

You can go to this field and hover over it to see the list. Or, you can use the lookup (press F4) and see the list of records.

This is a fabulous time saver!

You don’t have to have hidden tabs to see the power of this little field. It can be used any time.

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