Your Turn – Desiree Widick on Pre-recorded Webinars

In this installment of Your Turn, Desiree Widick of Ventura COE discusses how pre-recorded webinars help Ventura support staff and their users learn more about Escape Online and each other’s processes.

End users in COE implementations depend on COE support technicians, like Desiree, for their front line support. That’s why we want to give them as many tools as possible to support their users.

Take a listen!

Desiree Widick of Ventura COE

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Desiree joined the Ventura COE team at last year’s Escape sponsored County Wide Support Training, where this video was recorded.

Stay tuned! We will post more customer videos on a regular basis.

Friday Feature – Favorites 1-2-3

Ok. Ok. I know I have already written four Friday Features about favorites: Search Favorites, Default Favorites, Employee Favorites, and Updating Favorites.

But, just like my children, I find new ways to love them each and every day. And, today’s new way to love favorites is to reorder them.

So, as you know, you get 20 favorites for each search and each report. If you are like me, you take advantage of this and have numerous favorites for every activity and report.

With so many favorites, there are bound to be some that get used more often than others. And, there are some that are bound to get used more often at different times. Like right now is year end. I bet you have search and report favorites for year end. I know I do, several of them.

So I move them up the list so that they are at the top of my menu, as my 1-2-3 favorites.

We are all familiar with this screen, but let’s have a quick review. Each favorite is associated with a number that defines where it is on the menu.

What you may not be familiar with is the arrows (circled in red) that allow me to reorder my list.

Now I always want My Purchase Orders to be #1 on my menu, but I am constantly moving different favorites to the #2 spot. Really, whatever is my fancy at that time of year.

All I have to do is highlight my favorite and click the arrows to move it up and down the list. Like so.
I really like this a lot. It keeps what is important to me at the top of the menu.

Others may memorize all the numbers and never want to change because they use quick starts. (You number-people know who you are!)

For those of us that are not as number-oriented and prefer to use menus, the ability to move search favorites up/down is definitely a feature to love.

Escape Tech Update Center gets a new address

For our IT friends out there that have the responsibility of keeping their Escape Online 5 systems upgraded, we have moved our Update Center to the following address:

https://downloads.escapetech.com/

Please make sure you update your bookmarks so you can stay up-to-date on all the new software features we have to offer.

Image courtesy of phanlop88/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Friday Feature – Only Uncompleted Flag

I am a big fan of “working lists.” At the end of every work day, I make a list of tasks I have completed and list of tasks for the next day. My whiteboard has a list of tasks for the month.

This deep-rooted need for working lists is why I love the “Only Uncompleted” flag in the Vendor Requisition search.

The Only Uncompleted flag allows you to focus your list on only those vendor requisitions that have not been cancelled or completed.

In other words, requisitions in the Open, Submitted, Approved, Denied, Printed, Ready for Payment, and Check Pending statuses.

As you can see, it is as simple as setting a flag to YES. What a fabulous feature for Year End or any time.

For Year End, this flag allows you to work your requisition list BEFORE using the Year End Closing activity, letting you get ahead of the game.

For any time, you can use this flag in conjunction with the Requisitioner field (requisitions created by you that are not yet done) or the Buyer field (requisitions assigned to you that you are still working) or any of the other three dozen-plus fields on the Vendor Requisition search.

Now that’s a list worth making, and a list worth working!

V13.02 Release Review Highlights

I love it when we have GREAT new activities and revamped reports to show during our software release reviews.

A few of my personal favorites in this release were Stale Dating Checks, Employee Archiving records, Vacation Payoff and all the Fixed Asset and Position Control report changes. Escape Online 5 keeps getting better and better with each release.

New functionality and enhancements to existing functionality! That’s how we roll!

Attending today’s Release Review were Alameda COE, Sonoma COE, Shasta COE, Tehama CDE, Placer COE,  Plumas COE, Trinity COE, Ventura COE, Monterey COE, Santa Rosa Jr College, Cupertino School District  and a bunch of other users from districts within the county offices I mentioned making up the 50 connections.

Missed the live broadcast? Don’t worry! You can log into Escape Online 5, click on the Online Resources module and open the Release Information activity. The recording and Q & A will be posted on Tuesday, June 11^th.

As always, thanks for giving me the opportunity to show you new and exciting features of v13.02 software!

I love Escape Online 5!

2013 Year End Webinar Highlights

Wow!

That’s all I can say about the 2013 Year End webinar.

Our customers set a new record for attendees! There were almost 100 connections. That is amazing!

Jacque Santana did an awesome job keeping the chat box going and asking viewer questions during the live webinar. She made it look so easy when I know it’s not.

We went step-by-step, showing users how to prepare and close their 2013 Fiscal Year. We looked at all the new features for closing books this year and users got to see a sneak peek at the new 13.02 feature, “Payoff Vacation Balance”.

If you missed it, don’t worry. The recording can be viewed and all the training materials downloaded by signing into the software and going to Online Resources – Webinar. You’ll find everything you need to get the books CLOSED!

You’ll want to be sure to sign up today for the v13.02 Release Review on June 6^th.  Click here to register.

Happy Closing

Stale Dating is Surprisingly Prevalent

I worked in the banking industry for several years before I came to Escape, so I am very familiar with the term, “Stale Date”.  However, a recently implemented new feature at the request of some of our customers makes me think that their customers, recipients of checks from those districts, do not understand that what they have in their hands has a very short life.

Definition of a stale dated check:  A check presented to the paying bank/location six months or more after the original issue date or after an expiration date specified on the check.  Banks are not required by the Uniform Commerical Code to honor stale-dated checks.

In plain English, it means that the check has passed its cashing prime.  It has expired.  You cannot go to a bank and trade it for money.  You cannot pass Go and collect $200.  Basically, it is just a piece of scrap paper you can use in your next papier-mâché project.

I understand that there’s the occasional person out there who may put the check somewhere and then lose it or forget about it for six months or more.  But our new activity will allow counties and districts to stale date a large batch of checks at once – up to 200 at a time!  It boggles my mind that there are so many folks out there not cashing their checks that an entire activity needed to be created to handle the stale dating of them!

The activity is available under Finance-AP for SYSMGR roles or by user permission.  The software automatically searches for checks in the Printed status, which you can further define by various criteria, like check number or Vendor ID.  When your list is presented, the default action is Stale Date.  You can defer any of the items on the list.  When your list is perfect, simply choose the task to change the status to stale and the checks will be updated accordingly.

Of course, for those customers whose check recipients are like me and deposit their checks so fast their bank accounts catch fire, the ability to stale date in the AP Checks activity is still in place for stale dating checks one-by-one.

For a live demo of this new Stale Date Checks activity, tune in to Terri’s 13.2 Release Review on Thursday, June 6th.