Escape Classic Known Issues

Updated 01/11/07

The following problems have been noted with the v4.2 version of Escape. We will update this page as new issues arise or workarounds are determined.

Finance

Account Processing

  • Account balances for revenue accounts are reported differently for reports that use the ACTDTL format than for reports that use the ACTPRD format. In the detail report (ACTDTL), the balance is reported as a negative number, in the summary (ACTPRD), the balance is reported as a positive number. The software was designed to show the negative because it is a variance, meaning the all revenue that has been budgeted has not been received. However, most users struggle with that and prefer to see the number as a positive when budget is bigger than actual revenues received.
  • If an expiration date is entered on the Sort/Select screen, it becomes a default for the rest of the user's session (e.g., you use an expiration date on one list, then try to create another list without exiting Escape, the expiration date will be a part of the sort criteria). If this occurs, manually clear the date from the dialog.
  • You may receive several error messages about not finding fund balance accounts when running the Balance Sheet report. Generally, the problem occurs when expenditures and revenues do not balance, and Escape searched for a fund balance account to post the offset. In reality, year end closing entries will resolve the issue and you will not be required to create a fund balance account.
  • SACS validation errors are not always appropriate. For example, if an account has an object of 2210 (SACS value of 2200), a validation error is generated, reporting that 2210 is invalid. However, the validation should be checking the SACS value: 2200, which is correct. You may ignore these errors.
  • The mass change feature in Chart incorrectly reports an error on each SACS combination. The user can simply press a key and continue. If the account is changed from the account screen, the error does not occur.
  • If you use "undo" after a mass change to accounts, the list of accounts will not refresh: the changed accounts will still display even thought the change was undone. To refresh the account list, exit the list and re-select the accounts.
  • When the trial balance is run with a page break by resource or project year, the fund summary at the end of the report will print incorrect fund totals. The workaround is to run with a page break of Fund.

Accounts Receivable

  • If you call up a cancelled invoice and page down, the dollar amounts are updated. To resolve this, cancel out of the invoice. If you have already saved, open the invoice again and tab through the amount fields: this refreshes the 0 amount in the totals. Also, select the cancel status again, and save your changes.
  • The first character of the description on the Line Item Type column of an invoice will sometimes display twice. Once you leave the field, the description will display correctly.

Journal Entries

  • While in the County module, if you attempt to copy a journal entry, then decide to escape, the total of the copied JE is added to the screen total. If you see this, rerun the original Sort/Selection to refresh the screen total.
  • You cannot mark and remove a journal entry that you have just added to a list. To remove the journal entry, exit the list and pull up a new list with the journal entry. You can then mark and remove the journal entry.
  • You cannot create a list of more than 65,535 journal entries. If you run into this error, simply create a list with a smaller date range.

Requisition Processing

  • When you are in the requisition's notepad printing notes, the PO# stays in the buffer and prints on the next req if there isn’t a PO#.
  • If you want to add line items to a warehouse requisition that has already been encumbered, you must tab through the Dollar Amount field BEFORE you save and close. Otherwise, the new line item will not encumber and will not go through the approval process.
  • You will receive an error if you try to build a list of more than 9,000 requisitions. The workaround is to narrow your search criteria to build a smaller list.
  • The Default Number of Ship Days used the Requisition Date to determine the Ship Date (also called Delivery Date). Note that this default can be overridden in two ways. First, each vendor record may have a default number of ship days. Second, the user may enter the Ship Datein the PO manually.

Stores Inventory

  • Stores item returns are not included in the stores item YTD statistics.

Unlocking Liabilities

  • You cannot unlock a liability if an invoice has been paid against it. To resolve this, increase the req amount in the adjustment field by the amount of the paid invoice and tab through the account breakdown. Then you could unlock, create your new liability and adjust the requisition amount back.
  • Under certain circumstances, when you attempt to unlock a liability, you will receive the error message, "The carryover + payable amt + expensed cannot be more than the Req. Total." If this error message is erroneous, simply increase the req amount in the adjustment field by the amount of the paid invoice and tab through the account breakdown. Then unlock, create your new liability and adjust the requisition amount.

Vendor Bid Report

  • While in the Vendor Bid Report dialog, if you hit F9 to view the letter, then hit ESC to go back to the dialog box, you are sitting in the DEPT field, as you should be. But when you hit ENTER, nothing happens (you should drop down to the Bid Category field). When you hit ENTER again, you get the Bid Category lookup screen. When you choose a category and continue down the fields in the report dialog, everything is fine until you try to land in the 'Enter Bid # to appear on bid report' field. You can't. The cursor is popped back into the DEPT code field, and when you try to enter or arrow out of it the software gives this message: You must specify a bid number to appear on bid report. After that message you can't get out of the field. To clear the message, ESCape back out to the main screen.

Personnel/Payroll

Add-ons

  • Within the addon setup if the BNFT flag is turned off when the addon does not add to base pay, the amount budgeted for health and welfare will be incorrect. Since the addon does not add to base pay, it already has benefits turned off. The only time that you need to clear the Y from the BNFT field is when the addon adds to base pay and you do not want benefits allocated to the addon account.
  • The descriptions for the GROUP and EARNINGS TABLE fields of a deduction only show the description for the most recent code. For example, if you have changed the group, the CODE will show correctly when paging (Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn) through the history, but the description for the group will display the information for the most current group, regardless of the code. In addition, if you add or delete the template number, all pages in the history will reflect the most current state.
  • If you add an add-on to PAYUPD with a begin date before the last paid date, you will receive an error message, "Must not occur on or before last paid date: xx/xx/xx when the add-on is assigned to their normal pay cycle." While an error message should be displayed under these circumstances, this particular error message is misleading. The date it displays is not the last paid date but the pay period begin date, and the problem is not that the "add-on is assigned to their normal pay cycle," but that it is assigned to a pay cycle that is not their normal pay cycle.
  • When an add-on sets the adjusted rate and prorates on FTE, the add-on that uses the adjusted rate is not calculating the correct rate. The FTE is “adjusted” twice, causing the resulting rate to be inflated. Because we expect the use of “use adj rate” to be very rare, please notify your Escape Customer Care rep so we may evaluate the situation to make sure that the “use adj rate” flag is required. If so, manually override the addon.

Benefit Processing

  • The BNFT flag is not checked during the ER HW process in Ledger. If you would like to disallow the checking of position accounts during this process, you can use the HW ACCT add-on to tell the system how to charge H&W. The HW ACCT will override positional accounts.
  • If you end an employee's tracking record prior to the end date of the calendar or enter a Short term flag = Y, the benefits in the arrears period will be erroneously charged to the employee. To resolve this, change the employer's portion of the benefits to 100%.

    This will also cause the position account numbers to not be seen on arrears periods and will cause the following error: Warning all deductions will be coded to: (employee name). To resolve this, clear the Y from the Short Term field of the tracking record.
  • The Benefit Provider Report does not report Summer Employer and Employer Current amounts correctly for providers with the NEVER PRORATE flag turned on. In addition, if the ORGANIZE BY PROVIDER option is selected, the report does not sort correctly.

Deductions

  • The descriptions for the GTN GROUP and VENDOR fields of a deduction only show the description for the most recent code. For example, if you have changed the vendor, the CODE will show correctly when paging (Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn) through the history, but the description for the vendor will display the information for the most current vendor, regardless of the code.
  • If you run the Deduction Detail Report using a filter (e.g., filter on bargaining unit), the report will duplicate the previous line for every person that was excluded. For example, you have three people (person1 has barg unit M, person2 has barg unit P and person3 has barg unit M) and you run the report filtering on barg unit M. Person1 would be displayed twice, filling the spot where person2 would have been on the report (if person2 had passed the filtering criteria).

Labor Distribution

  • In rare circumstances, payroll labor distribution can charge the wrong amounts to accounts. The circumstances are:
    • Negative earnings adjustments to an account with no other earnings AND
    • Fixed amount contributions are being calculated (percentage based do not cause a problem).

    If this occurs, enter a no pay base pay adjustment.

Pay Processing

  • When a tracking record that has supplemental days is cancelled and then another is added to replace it, the first period that is paid on the new tracking record is incorrect. Additionally, a Y must be entered into the Short Term field of the new tracking record after the tracking record has been paid the first time in order for the remaining periods to pay correctly.
  • In some infrequent circumstances, pay docks generated in leave processing may be posted to a locked in pay cycle. Before posting docks, check to see if anyone with a dock has a locked in pay cycle, and clear the dock.
  • When you F8 down the pay cycle list and encounter a pay cycle with Y in Turn Off Positions field, from then on this field keeps displaying the Y on subsequent pay cycles even though they don't have a Y. To stop this, ESCape out of each pay cycle with a Y in Turn Off Positions, and press Enter on the next pay cycle.

Pay Reports

  • If an employee is less than 1.00 FTE, the Earnings on one time adjustment report do not correspond with the Earnings on the EPDUPD screen.
  • If your Pay Report includes a selection on bargaining unit, it will also select people with a blank bargaining unit. There are two workarounds for this situation:
    • Run the Income Detail selecting on BU. When printing this report, you can choose the option to Export Data which puts it in a format that can easily be imported into Excel to sort in dollar order.
    • Run the Pay Report with the bargaining unit selection. After printing this report, open it in Excel and take out the employees that do not have a BU.

Payroll Processing

  • When the software calculates "overtime" earnings for PERS, it reports it in the "other" column of the snapshot. This amount continues to be displayed in that column even if there is no current month's pay for that addon. This is a benign problem. No PERS or earnings are affected by it. If the employee gets current month earnings for the addon, the correct amount will be displayed in the snapshot.
  • Payroll reports do not indicate that a check or ACH has been cancelled.
  • You can change the warrant sequence when printing vendor warrants. This overwrites the existing warrant records! If this occurs, discontinue all work of any kind on all warrants and contact your Customer Care Representative as soon as possible with all available details.
  • Employee fiscal year to date figures will not be updated properly if you attempt to unlock multiple periods over a calendar or fiscal year. For instance, unlocking January and then trying to unlock December; or unlocking July and then trying to unlock an August arrears or a June period. To correct the PayEmpFY, run the Rebuild Fiscal Year to Date menu choice.
  • The payroll transmittal with subject grosses displays the column ER-PERS and EE-PERS. ER-PERS column includes the EE-PERSC amount (doesn’t include the ER-PERS amount). And EE-PERS column is EE-PERS + PERS-BUY.

Payroll Setup

  • When accessing an employee's payroll setup screen from Payroll - if the list contains more records than can be viewed on the screen (over 15 payroll setup records) and you use your arrow keys to navigate down the list of records, the Changed column does not display correctly. Moving back up to the top of the screen will correct the display.

PCU Error Messages

  • Past tracking records with the EDIT TRACKING DAYS flag turned on will generate an erroneous error message in PCU error log. The message can be ignored.

Position Control

  • If an account balance for an account is negative the Available Bal field within the position does not show a negative sign.

Position Control Budgeting

  • If a tracking record ends prior to the calendar end date, when rolling forward tracking records a vacancy will be created even if you have “Auto Vacancy” turned off.
  • If a budget tracking vacancy does not have placement on a salary schedule, no error is reported during the salary projection AND no salary is projected. If there is a step/column defined in the budget vacancy but other information is missing, there is an error that says POS #11 TBD record looks like it may generate a salary, but no pay cycle has been setup.
  • If you run a salary projection and there is a person that does not have an active pay cycle record, you will receive an error message with the position number but not the person's name. Use the position number to research the error.
  • If a user manually creates a vacancy tracking record (PTVACY), they cannot enter a salary schedule. The work around is to create the vacancy tracking record using the tracking roll-forward process.
  • If you delete a record from the Budget Tracking Record list, the record above the deleted record will display twice. To have the list display correctly, exit the list and re-enter the list.

Retirement Processing

  • When a negative amount is reported for contribution code 6/16 and pay code 9 you will receive a message on the error matrix report saying "Pay Rate of XXXX.00 does not equal earnings of -XXXX.00.” This error message can be ignored. The pay rate should be positive when the earnings is negative.
  • If you make a retirement adjustment for a reduced workload STRS person (ASN=36) and it is special comp (cc=06/pc=9), Escape treats negative earnings as if they were positive. The work around is to use a different ASN and fix it on the STRS report, remembering to verify the pay rate as well.
  • You may receive a program halt if you repeatedly sign in and out of PERS list. If this occurs, sign out of pay and sign back in.
  • Even if the "Disallow Pers Reduction" flag has been set within the component records, the pers reduction amount will still be charged if the account is specified in the system add-on. To workaround this, specify the account number on the EPDUPD screen or within the person's payroll add-on setup.
  • In the PERS County report, if a person has no retirement record for the period being reported, they will be displayed as a member on the report.
  • In the PERS County report, the before/after tax buybacks and the tax deferred member contribution totals are not correct. You can verify the totals using Ctrl+N.
  • After you run the STRS Supplemental Period Report, you cannot look at the detail lines. You must exit and get back in to refresh the screen.
  • The STRLST is totaling the period report incorrectly when a manual entry has been made to the list. It is including the manual entry in the EARNINGS & EE contributions amounts, but not in the ER contribution amounts.

Tracking Records

  • When a tracking record is cancelled using the C (cancel) feature in the tracking record, retro pay is not/or will not be backed out. To back out the retro pay, enter a manual adjustment in payroll.
  • If a tracking record or tracking record segment begin and end in the same month, the short term flag should be a Y.

Escape Online Site

  • If you use the option PRD_TRANS_ONLY in an ACTDTL report, the report will still include balances from the beginning of the year.
  • The Escape Online Site report process does not support custom sort fields.
  • You cannot mark an account as a favorite from within the record. You must mark accounts as favorites from an account list.

If you have any additions to this page, please contact your Customer Care Support Representative or send an email to us. We are always here to help.