News and Blog
November 2008

Release v08.10
Dateline: Roseville - November 2008

This release had something for everybody. We implemented performance enhancements (seven!), addressed setup issues, introduced county budget approvals, added copying of requisition accounts and provided some help with W2 testing. On the report side, there were 23 new/improved reports included in this release. We also resolved 18 known issues.

This release included 74 changes that apply to all of our customers and 25 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 Friday, November 14th.

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:

  • Trial Balance (Fiscal09)
  • Journal Entry Detail by JE (Ledger01)
  • Board Report (ReqPay11)
  • Payroll Summary (Pay01)
  • Monthly Tax Summary (Pay05)
  • Pay Audit (Pay14)
  • Position Staffing by Account (Pos02)

County Budget Approvals

Getting in front of the issues you face is important to us. So, we have begun working through budget tasks to improve the process. This release has some important enhancements. (Note that next release is our “designated” budget release where you will find major enhancements and fixes.)

Our biggest enhancement this release is county budget approvals. This new feature allows counties to control an organization’s budget development process. It can be implemented for all organizations or organization-by-organization.

If a county chooses to “turn on” budget approvals, a new workflow is instituted where the district submits the budget model to the county for approval. Once submitted, the budget model is locked from any changes. The county can tentatively approve the budget so that districts can submit requisitions against “tentative” fund balances. This gives the county time to review the budget in detail, the district time to seek board approval and users the ability to process multi-year requisitions. When BOTH the county and district provide final approval, the budget model is adopted.


Click on the workflow above to view a full size PDF.

We also started work on the reports that support budgeting. Fiscal reports, including the Trial Balance, Account Summary and Financial Statement, were improved and optimized if appropriate. We also added search criteria and grand totals to the Journal Entry Detail by JE report.

More W2 Enhancements

The best way to submit your W2 file is error free! To this end, we included two very nice enhancements with this release. We added an error report, so you can quickly find any problems and fix them. And, we added the ability to create a test file for uploading to AccuWage, ensuring that your data is correct before you create the final file.

Copying Requisition Accounts

Now when you copy a requisition, the accounts will be copied too! And, we didn't just copy accounts; we put some thought into it:

  • If the account doesn't exist for the new fiscal year, it is not copied.
  • If the account is expired in the new fiscal year (the date expired is today or earlier), it is not copied.
  • If the fiscal year of the account doesn't match the fiscal year of the requisition being copied, the account is not copied. For example, if a 2007 requisition was carried forward to 2008 (the requisition has both 2007 and 2008 accounts in it), if you copy this requisition only the most recent accounts will be copied.
  • If the liability account was added during year-end processing, it is not copied.

Copied accounts will keep their original amount/percentage. In cases where not all accounts are copied, the percentage will not add up to 100%. You will need to use the Apply Undistributed Amount task or manually redistribute.

Speaking of Accounts

Many of our county customers wanted to control the ability to create/edit/delete account components, but they didn’t want to take away the ability of the organizations to review the account setup. And, of course, we didn’t want to affect the way other customers were already accessing their accounts.


The answer is a rewrite to the Account Components activity that we think everybody is going to love. The new activity is presented as a Search/List/Form. This allows counties to set read-only flags component-by-component (through flags in the organization record) and grants users with the appropriate permissions the ability to search components by fiscal year, description, code, value, create date and edit date.

Calculating Pay

From March 2007 to July 2008, Escape Online 5 has successfully processed over 100,000 paychecks/ACH for 41 districts, spanning 5 different counties. That is a lot of checks!

As long as there are employees, positions, addons, contributions, deductions, taxes and bargaining units, pay is going to be a complex process. We are pleased with how well the payroll process is working at this stage, but we know there is room for improvement. This release has numerous updates for those less-than-normal situations, like time card assignments that have been cancelled and are part of a retro, multiple alternate retirement adjustments in a single pay period, or manual checks for an employee with no earnings.

New Reports

With every release we try to introduce new reports, new sort options and new filtering methods. Along with updating 12 Finance reports and 7 HR/Payroll reports, this release includes four brand new reports:

  • Capital Asset Annual Value Summary (FA09) report - The new Capital Asset Annual Value Summary (FA09) report provides the annual value of capital and depreciable assets by group, showing the beginning balance, additions, retirements, and depreciation figures. Wrapping up the report is a net asset value. You can filter the report by fiscal year, group, asset category, location, department and many other fields.
  • Employee Evaluation (Employee14) report - The new Evaluation (Employee14) report provides a comprehensive selection of report criteria, including evaluation type, rating, schedule date, location, job category/class, hire date, person type and many others. In addition, custom sorts (location, job category, job class, schedule date, evaluator or person type) can be defined. The report prints a listing of employee evaluations for the specified criteria. For each evaluation due, the report shows the employee’s assignment and hiring information, plus their evaluation information, including comments.
  • W2 Error (Pay31) report - The new W2 Error (Pay31) report displays all the errors found during W2 Processing. These include address problems in addition to other kinds of setup and mismatch problems.
  • Position Assignments – Fiscal Year (Pos04) report - Introducing the new Position Assignments - Fiscal Year (Pos04) report. Now you can get a list of assignments that begin/end within a specified date range or fiscal year. For example, if you enter a date range, you will get a report of all assignments that begin or end within that date range. This report is similar to the Position Assignments (Pos03) report.

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

Questions and Answers from Release v08.10
Dateline: Roseville - November 2008 - by Sue Vroomman

This release includes 99 change requests with 18 resolved known issues.  It also includes is CR6931 which aids the counties in controlling the budget development process.  An internal flag must be set by your Escape Customer Care representative if you want to take advantage of this option.

Terri announced that the upcoming W-2 and 1099 webinars will both be held December 3rd.  The W-2 training will begin at 9:00 a.m. with a Q & A session following the hour presentation.  The 1099 training will follow the same format beginning at 2:00 through 4:30.

Here are the questions from this release:

Q:  When you copy a requisition, what happens if the accounts have been expired?  Or, what if someone has deleted them in the current fiscal year?
A:   If the account doesn't exist for the new fiscal year, it is not copied.  If the account is expired in the new fiscal year (DateExpired <= today's date), it is not copied.  If the fiscal year of the account doesn't match the fiscal year of the requisition being copied, the account is not copied. 
For example, if a 2007 requisition was carried forward to 2008 (the requisition has both 2007 and 2008 accounts in it), if you copy this requisition only the most recent accounts will be copied. 
If the liability account was added during year-end processing, it is not copied.  Copied accounts will keep their original amount/percentage.

Q:  Can the W2 error (Pay 31) report be run anytime during the year?
A:  Yes.  The report collects data from pay detail for pay cycles having a pay date in the reporting year requested.

Q:  I noticed that a couple of times in the release review Escape Online got really slow, especially when you were running a report.  Does this release have performance problems?
A:  As our customers know, Escape does have some performance issues, and we have been diligently working to improve performance.  However, what you saw today was not related to the performance of Escape Online.  It was due to the software we use to record the Release Review.   We have resolved the issue and will make sure that it doesn’t happen again in future webinars.  We are sorry for the inconvenience.