News and Blog
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Every activity in Escape Online has a How-To that explains the activity. Many activities also include a video tutorial. These How-To documents and tutorials are available using a Tools drop-down on the far right of your workspace. They can be very helpful when you are trying to figure out what you want to enter into a form field or search parameter. My good friend Terri pointed out to me that you can toggle back and forth between the How-To and the activity. All you have to do is use the Tools menu. |
For example, you are creating a vendor requisition but you want to copy certain line items from another vendor requisition. This is what you can do: you can go to the How To, search for “copying line items,” read the instructions and then toggle back to the form to follow the instructions.
Forget what you were doing half way through? (I do this.) No problem, use the Tools menu to toggle back to the How-To which is still scrolled to the same place in the documetation as when you toggled away. You can do this with the tutorial too, pausing the tutorial when you want to go back to the activity and playing when you are ready for the next set of instructions.
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Last week, I attended the Escape Addon Basics webinar (just one of the ten webinars scheduled this year) and I was struck by how excited Carole was about longevity addons. So I asked our payroll staff why they are so great, and it really comes down to automation. In a nutshell, you simply identify the addon you want to auto-generate in the salary schedule. Escape Online will automatically generate this addon in Adjust Pay for any employee that has an active assignment or addon using this salary schedule based on the new Longevity Date in the employee's record. |
This functionality was introduced in April of last year and many customers took the leap, implementing for the coming fiscal year. And, they love it now that longevity pay is totally automated.
Previously, when an employee had two positions, one with longevity and one without, extra effort was required. Because this new setup associates longevity with the salary schedule, everything happens automatically. In this example, one assignment uses Salary Schedule A (longevity addon specified) and the other assignment uses Salary Schedule B (no longevity addon specified). Now, when it comes time to pay longevity, only the assignment using Salary Schedule A receives it!
Well, it is that time of year again, when you can take advantage of this automation for the coming fiscal year. Here is a quick overview of the changes you need to consider for implementation.
Salary Schedules – Review your salary schedules to see if all employees with that schedule should receive longevity. If so, then all you have to do is specify the addon in the salary schedule. If the salary schedule is used by some employees that get longevity and some that do not, you will need to determine a course of action for “splitting” the salary schedule. |
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Addons – Review your addons to make sure any previous longevity addons are ended. For the new addons, set the Rate 2 Option to R (ranges). And, if you want to define percentages (instead of flat rates), set the Rate 2 % field to %. Then, define your flat rates or percentages in the Rate 2 Amount Ranges area. |
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Employees – Review your employees' longevity date and their payroll setup. Notice how you can define a different date for longevity in cases where there was an extended leave of absence but you want to keep the original hire date for historical purposes. |
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With this setup completed, your longevity calculations are set for the long run! Of course, feel free to contact Escape Customer Care for advice on how to make this process go smoothly. They are always there to help.
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Earlier this week, Robin Fiske, Julie Leaman and I went to Sacramento City Unified School District for an Escape coordination meeting. Generally, we conduct these meetings over the phone but this particular meeting was held at the Sac City offices.
We were all pleasantly surprised when Julie and Robin were presented with a certificate of achievement and some delicious candy for their recent work on a special "Sub Pay" project and budget reporting. Julie received Reeses from Joyce Compton, Personnel Specialist, and Robin received M&Ms from Gloria Chung, Budget Analyst.
With 54,000 ADA and 8,000 employees, Sac City is one of the largest districts in the State and our largest single district customer. They have been live on Escape systems since 1992, and went live on Escape Online in March 2009. To facilitate the transition to Escape Online, both teams have been meeting on Tuesdays ever since.
Obviously, this was a fabulous meeting. Kudos to Julie and Robin for going above and beyond the call of duty to meet their customer's needs, and kudos to the Sac City staff for their work helping us develop Escape Online 5. (And with all that candy, kudos to Escape Technology for providing dental insurance to their employees!)
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
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There are certain circumstances where you do not want to require budgeted dollars for particular requisitions. For example, some districts do not want to hold up fuel and repair/maint requisitions; others feel the same about stores and Office Depot requisitions. Customers feel that these requisitions need to be submitted immediately and should not be held up while a site does a budget transfer. In those cases, you can setup a document type (vendor, stores, department requisition) within a finance department to bypass the Budget Check Option selection. All you have to do is set the Requires $ field in the Department record to No for a document type, and those documents for that department will not be held to budget checking when the user submits the requisition. |
For example, you are Escape Elementary and you have set your Budget Check Option to “account”. You know this will ensure that all accounts will have to have available funds at the time the documents are submitted.
You have two “departments” one called Purchasing for all of your “regular” requisitions and one called Supplies for your Stores and Office Depot (vendor) requisitions. In the Supplies department, you set the Requires $ flag to NO.
Under this setup, when a user submits a regular requisition, the account totals are checked for sufficient funds. When a user submits a stores or Office Depot requisition, the requisition account totals are not checked.
Now that is a great answer for an important budget question!
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
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In September of 2009, I introduced you to the new Online Resources module in Escape Online 5, where you could find links to Escape Guides, Tutorials, previous Friday Features and Newsletters, and Release Information. The module was very well received, and some counties – Sonoma and Placer – even added links of their own! Well, in the latest release (10.05), we added a Webinar Follow-up activity to the Online Resources module. This is just grand because of course you want to be in the software when you are accessing material from a webinar. Or, if you are just beginning or learning a new activity or feature, you can check to see if there is an upcoming webinar that fits your needs without having to go to our web site. |
If you want info (any info) about a webinar, all you have to do is go to the Webinar Follow-up activity and you will find registration links for upcoming webinars and the handouts and PowerPoint presentations of previously held webinars. (Links to video recordings are still only provided via email to those who registered.)
The Webinar Follow-up is just one handy resource in a module full of Online Resources!
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Check out this picture of Mt. Shasta, simply beautiful! Here at Escape we have our own mountains..mountains of payroll data that is!
Check out the numbers below indicating what was processed in Escape Online 5 payroll and retirement during the 2010 calendar year. Tom Henzie, our Data Technician, compiled this information in late January.
| Employees Paid (W2s) | 75,883 |
| Paychecks/ACHs | 629,972 |
| STRS/PERS Retirement “Lines” | 1,012,068 |
| PERS Earnings Reported | $844,039,303 |
| STRS Earnings Reported | $2,469,476,286 |
With the additional customers like Alpine COE and Shasta COE converting to Escape Online 5 right now, next year’s mountain will be even larger!
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