News and Blog
October 2008

Release v08.09
Dateline: Roseville - October 2008

This release is focused on reports and annual processes, such as 1099s, W-2s and inventory. There are over 20 new/improved reports included in this release and seven performance enhancements. We also resolved nine known issues.

This release includes 57 changes that apply to all of our customers and 21 more that are custom (generally, checks and purchase order changes or implementations). Here is a summary of the changes, but for a complete overview, listen to the recording of the Release Review we held on Thursday, September 9th.

Performance Improvements

The area where Escape Online has seen the greatest performance enhancements is in reports. As we make changes to a report, we review the code and apply our new optimized standards. This release includes many reports that run substantially faster:

Financial Statement (Fiscal13)
Account Snapshot (Fiscal99)
Budget Fund/Object Snapshot (Budget99a)
Budget Fund/Resource Snapshot (Budget99b)
Delivery Report (Stores02)
Employment Notification (Employee10)
Leave Usage Batch Snapshot (Leave06)
Payroll Adjustments (Pay13)

Updated Processing and Forms for 1099s and W-2s

It’s that time of year! We have updated our forms and processes so you can start reviewing your list of vendors and employees. We also added more error messages to guide you through the process.

Physical Inventory for Fixed Assets

A new easy way to perform fixed assets inventory!

The new Asset Physical Inventory has a search form and an editable list. Updating multiple fixed assets has never been so easy. Create your list and enter the new location, room number or tag number, right on the list! You can work on all assets simultaneously or by location, campus, department, category or almost a dozen other criteria.

New Reports

Much of school business involves reporting. As it stands right now, Escape Online has over 300 report variations. But that is not enough! So every release, we introduce new reports.

Along with updating 10 Finance reports and 8 HR/Payroll reports, this release includes four brand new reports:

Salary Matrix (Pos10) report - This report lets you see a salary schedule in a matrix. It is customizable. You can select which rows you want to see on the report: employee count, FTE, salary rate, salary schedule cell id, salary total. Select one, two, all of them. You can also include row/column totals, or filter on job category/class and bargaining unit.
Period Statement of Revenues and Expenditures (Fiscal11) report - This new report is very similar to the Fiscal13, except that you can select a starting account period.
Vendor 1099 Check Detail (ReqPay18) report - This report shows you the detail behind the 1099 amount. It includes all payments that were made: checks in the Printed, Cleared, and Reissued status. The report provides three sort options: vendor name by check number, vendor name by fund/object or vendor Id by check number. You can filter the report by tax year, vendor Id or 1099 box number.
Pick List (Stores10) report - This report includes options for issue date range, department, requisition number, stores item number rand, location and route. It is sorted by route/warehouse.

Documentation and Video Tutorials

As with every release, we have created a new tutorial. The Adjust Pay activity now has a video tutorial that takes you through adding units to a system generated addon and inputting a new addon for an employee. Other tutorials already released include Approve Requisition, Budget Entry, Department Requisitions, Vendor Requisitions, Stores Requisition, Stores Issue, Pay Manual Checks, Retro Payroll and Leave Transactions.

In addition, we attempted to address feedback that our documentation is “thick.” In Escape Online, each activity has a “how-to” which is the appropriate chapter of the documentation for that activity. In this release, we streamlined the How-Tos for setup activities: each how-to will now focus on the activity you are in, instead of the activity group.

This means that the HR/Payroll-Setup-Payroll activity group which used to have 82 pages of documentation because it included all activities within that group, now mostly has How-Tos that are less than five pages. Only complex records, like Addons, Contributions and Deductions, have How-Tos with more than a dozen pages.

Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.

Questions and Answers from Release v08.09
Dateline: Roseville - October 2008 - by Sue Vroomman

Thanks to everyone who attended our most recent Release Review. We were excited to include four new reports and a new tutorial in this release.

We appreciate your feedback on the polls and plan to include them in future Webinars. As Terri mentioned, we are working on making future Webinars better and more useful to you. If you have any suggestions or comments, please send them to us.

Here are the questions from this release:

Q: New Asset Physical Inventory Activity. What reports go along with this new activity?
A: Users can run the FA03a Physical Inventory Worksheet and use that to do their data entering. Once the inventory has been posted, they could run the FA04 – Asset History report.

Q: When will the software be ready to start testing the 1099 process at our site?
A: Can start with this release on your Test system.

Q: Is there a listing of all the tutorials available?
A: We provide a growing list in our Release Notes.

Q: Will Escape provide any training for 1099's and W-2's?
A: Yes, we hope to be having a ½ day for 1099’s and a half day for W2’s the first part of December. Please let us know if you would be interested.

Q: Is there a way to watch the Release Reviews at anytime?
A: Yes! We have created an archive of Release Reviews. You can download them from our web site and listen at your leisure. Just point your browser at http://www.escapetech.com/customercare/webinararchive.php.

Can't get through on the phone to Escape? Help is on the way!

Dateline: Roseville - October 8 2008 - Mike Long

While most of our support is done via email, people do still call for support here at Escape. And lately, you might be just getting ringing, no answer or voicemail. Our trusty VOIP system started going south on us a few months ago, and has now degraded to the point where we have chosen to replace it.

The new system is arriving today, and we will have it up and running as soon as possible.

We apologize for any difficulties customers have experienced getting through to us on the phone!

Our new system also has more powerful features that will allow us to better serve those customers that call in.