Release v08.01

Dateline: Roseville - February 2008

A New Month and a New Release!

Yes, every month Escape is delivering features and functions using our new release process, and the feedback has been fantastic: implementations are getting what they need, when they need it; LIVE customers know when enhancement requests will be delivered; and everyone can rely on 60-70 improvements every month.

As you can imagine, this new process keeps us hopping! With each release, we are looking for ways to be more efficient and provide better service. This release, we are introducing a new delivery mechanism for release notes.

Got Questions?

With each release, we will post a blog entry, just like this one, that gives you quick links and a nice summary of the major enhancements. If you have any questions about the release, like a clarification on how to use a new activity or a workflow change, post a comment and we will respond with an answer.

Our hope is to create a community atmosphere that will be helpful to all Escape users.

Quick Links

Here are some quick links for the release that went out earlier this week:

The release notes are now listed by activity. We think this will make it much easier for users to read about new functionality. In addition, we have added a "status" to the release notes to indicate if a change request has been fully tested and documented. Our goal, of course, is to have all changes fully tested and documented but with 60-70 change requests a month, there will be a handful that may require more time to fully test.

The Known Issues have also been reorganized by activity and placed in a separate document. Both the release notes and the known issues are delivered as a PDF.

Summary of Major Enhancements

This release includes some impressive Finance and report enhancements:

Creating One-time and Employee Payments - Creating payments for one-time vendors and employees has always been a hassle. It seems ripe for automation but how do you do it. We have figured it out and implemented a bold new strategy to make these types of payments SIMPLE. We took the easy-to-use Enter Payments activity, copied and modified it into two new activities: Enter Direct Payments and Enter Employee Payments.

The Enter Direct Payments activity allows you to select a vendor from the database or type in a payee directly. The Enter Employee Payments activity allows you to use lookup windows to select an employee, defaulting all of their address information.
Budgeting, Budgeting, Budgeting - Everyone knows how important and complex budget creation is, especially position control budgeting. Once again, we have taken a formidable task and automated it.

For time card assignments, we developed a complex calculation to provide the most accurate figures. For mid-year changes, we changed the calculation to compute used and authorized FTE for each day to pick up the correct budget figures. Finally, we modified the way position control is displayed in the system so that budget users can see what figures are "actual" and what are "projected."
Account Comparison Report - For our advanced fiscal users, get ready to create your own six-column account comparison report! This report is truly incredible. The new Comparative Account Summary by Object (Fiscal04) report allows you to create a custom six-column report, where you choose the account source and define the formula. You can define sorts, page breaks and use account masks to get the exact report you need.
Earnings History - This is sure to be a crowd pleaser. The new Earnings History (Pay24) report shows earnings history for each employee, including check history by employee, in chronological order. Columns include gross earnings, retirement, 125 Plans, other reductions, advanced EIC, Fed tax withheld, state tax withheld, OASDI (social security) withheld, Medicare withheld, SDI withheld, misc. deductions, summer pay deduction and net pay.

And much, much more. Please feel free to post comments and questions about this release. We are always interested in your feedback!