New Income Tax Rate for Proposition 30

With the passing of Proposition 30, there are some changes you will need to make in Escape Online to comply with the new law.

As you may know, the personal income tax rate for employees making more than $250,000 per year has changed retroactively to apply to earnings made this year and for the next seven years.

As you may also know, there are very few school business employees with gross pay equal to or exceeding 250K.

AND, as you may also know, there may be more personal income tax changes coming from the Federal government in 2013.

Since so few employees are effected by the changes required by Proposition 30 (most customers we have queried have no effected employees), we are suggesting that payroll technicians simply add an extra amount for SIT to employees with gross annual earnings over 250K.

This is a temporary work-around to reduce the load of creating, installing and testing new tax tables at an already busy time of year. Once the Federal government determines the new tax rates for calendar year 2013, Escape Technology will send out updated tables for all customers.

Here is a handy link to the press release concerning the Proposition 30 personal income tax changes on the California Franchise Tax Board web site.

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New Sales Tax Rate for Proposition 30

With the passing of Proposition 30, there are some changes you will need to make to your Escape Online setup.

As of January 1, 2013, the sales tax in California will rise by ¼%.  This means that you will need to change your sales tax setup to ensure that your payments and requisitions include the correct sales tax.

Remember in Escape Online 5, the tax rate applied to payments and requisitions is the sum of the state sales tax rate, the county tax rate and the local tax rate. It is defined in either the Finance-Setup-General-Fiscal activity (shown here) or the Location tab of the System-Setup-Organization activity.

Here is a handy link to check your rates on the California State Board of Equalization web site.

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Solving Incidents on a Daily Basis

The phones were ringing off the hook and my email was hopping like a frog on a hot Texas road. It was going to be one of those mornings where my shoes would be glued to the floor below my desk and my fingers would be typing so fast the cop down the street was going to pull me over for speeding. In other words, just another day in the office.

I was busy fielding calls when the blonde walked up to my desk. We’ve had some good times outside of the office, but this morning she was all business.  She was the boss and she told me she needed those reports toot sweet.  I knew what she meant. Customers rely on those stats and I didn’t want to disappoint.

This last month was packed with incidents like claustrophobic sardines in a can. In July alone, we handled 553 incidents, knocking out (resolving) or sending over the wall to development 465 of them.* That was a record even a punch-drunk prize fighter could be proud of.  But the boss liked the visuals for the higher ups.  Jen E (that’s Jen with an E) wanted a graph.  Who was I to argue?

Yeah, the place felt like it was jumping all through the heat of the summer and the pressure of year-end, and now I knew it was: the proof was in the vanilla-bean-latte pudding.

* Incidents are counted on the last day of every month. More than one customer can be attached to a single incident.  Incidents are closed when the customer has their question answered or the CR associated with the incident passes testing and is documented.

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Setup for Furlough Days for STRS Employees

Welcome to Roseville CSI, where a member of Escape Customer Care presents the solution to a particularly difficult customer service incident. This blog post will be the first in this occasional series.

One of my customers devised a creative way to deal with furlough days for STRS employees in the coming fiscal year, and  I thought you would like to hear about it!

They were looking for ideas on how to setup an addon (pay not associated with a position) for STRS employees that would dock furlough days, but keep the retirement pay rate in proportion so the correct credit service ratio is maintained.

Additionally, they wanted the addon to work for employees with partial FTE and/or who worked multiple assignments. The below setup accommodated the request so I thought I’d pass it along in case anyone else is looking for a similar setup.

Here is the customer’s request:

Currently the only way that we are aware of for districts to handle furlough days to meet STRS reporting requirements (maintain service credit and reduce pay rate) is to cancel an assignment and start a new assignment with fewer (or more in case of reversing furlough days) days(?) with a modified calendar and salary schedule. Lots of work for districts especially large districts. We have at least one, possibly more, districts planning to give back some of their furlough days – this take-them-away-then-give-them-back kind of machination is likely to go on for at least another year.

STRS will also accept another approach. If the furlough days are introduced, as is the case for one of our districts right now, they will have four furlough days between now and the end of the school year. STRS will accept reducing the pay in the remaining months as long as the pay rate reported to STRS maintains the correct service credit ratio. So for a person who is working 1 FTE (100%), if the furlough dock reduces their pay from, say $4,000/month to $3800/month, the pay rate on the retirement line would have to be reported at $3800 so the person would receive a full month of service credit.

Here is how Escape Customer Care suggested they address the situation.

Set up the dock addon with the Set Rate equal to Y, the Rate 1 Opt set to ‘H’ or ‘D’ (allowing the employee’s hourly or daily rate to default in), and the Rate 2 Amount locked at -1 (to cause the rate to be negative so it will reduce the retirement pay rate).

When the dock occurs in specific months but not all months, setting the Override Periods in the employee setup of the addon will affect the pay rate for only the months in which the dock for the furlough day is taken.

Check it out!

The month of May has the dock and shows the reduced pay rate.

The month of June does not have the dock and shows the full or regular pay rate.

The customer was very happy with the setup.  However, there are a couple of caveats. This setup is for STRS employees with regular assignments. This setup should not be used for PERS employees or employees with TIMECARD assignments.

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