Outer North Western User Group Meeting. St Dominic's Primary School Melton. 18 November am pm. Attendees.

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1 Subject Details Attendees Chris Huxtable Sue Smart Maree DiQuattra Marthese Pace Sharon Watson Helene Goldy Lisa Nolan Geraldine Clarke Marg Bourke St Dominic's Primary School Melton Holy Eucharist Primary School - St. Albans South Mary MacKillop Primary School - Keilor Downs St Anthony's Primary School - Melton South St Bernard's Primary School - Bacchus March St Brigid's Primary School Gisborne St Catherine's Primary School - Melton West St Mary's Primary School Lancefield St Patrick's Primary School - Kilmore Our introduction centred on how to best use our time at the User Group Meetings to gain the maximum benefit to help explore SAS2000 and offer suggestions for improvements. We agreed that the format and content of the User Group Meeting, ie one major topic and a series of smaller topics provided a simple and easy learning approach. Introduction It was also suggested that the User Group be given an opportunity to provide input as to the topics to be discussed. The UGM secretary was suggested as the best person to collate all suggestions and to forward onto Pat at Human Edge. Pat would then draw up an agenda and it to the User Group members together with a reminder of the place and time. The new Human Edge User Group Meeting web page was explained and explored. We looked at The structure of the User Group Meeting groups being loosely based on the Catholic diocese or zones. If you find that the zone you have been allocated to is inconvenient (eg. geographically too far from your school) you are quite welcome to attend another zone s meeting. The calendar providing a snapshot of the next series of User Group Meetings. The importance of entering your anticipated attendance at the User Group Meeting to allow for catering and office logistics. The minutes from the last User Group Meeting being stored on the web site and being available to display and print at any time. Page 1 of 5

2 Mail merge is the process of taking information from two documents and combining it into a single document. For example exporting data from SAS and combining this data with a template letter or using this data to prepare labels, or letters in MSWord. You can export information from SAS2000 to create your data source for mail merges. There are a number of ways of getting information out of SAS2000 for use with mail merge. During this session we concentrated on using the Enhanced Export. The Enhanced Export allows specific data to be saved as a file that can be imported by Microsoft Word to create mail merged letters and labels, or imported into Microsoft Excel for statistical analysis and reports. The data being exported can be filtered and sorted prior to being saved to file. Enhanced Export We created a letter of demand for payment in MSWord then used the Enhanced Export in SAS2000 to extract the Mail Name, Mail Address and the Amount Owing for those Debtors that had an amount outstanding over $ This information was then merged into the MSWord document to make a seamless letter addressed to only those people that were being targeted. We then looked at the Student table and how a letter may be drafted to advise parents of their child s class for next year. The data extracted included the Student Name, Class, Parents Name and Residential Address. Attention was drawn to the Mail Merge Training courses held periodically at Human Edge. Please refer to the Human Edge Training Web page for further details. WinZip is a computer program used to compress and decompress computer files. Compression makes files smaller for storage or for sending via or over the Internet. WinZip A compression program such as WinZip analyses the blocks of information in the file and searches for patterns. When a pattern is identified, eg a series of blanks in the data, WinZip is often able to decrease the amount of actual information in the file by expressing the patterns via an algorithm or electronic shorthand. The net result of the compression is that the actual file size is reduced. To use the compressed file, the same WinZip program has to be processed to uncompress the file back to its original size. To purchase a copy of WinZip, type WinZip in the Google Internet search engine, and choose one of the many sites offering WinZip. Simply download and complete the purchase agreement. Page 2 of 5

3 We briefly looked at the new release of SAS2000 (Version 869). We discussed how to download the update from the Human Edge web site, and investigated the new look Release Notes. Generally it was felt that the first page summary of the notes and the designation of a change as being new was a good start towards making the documentation more relevant and readable. As a side issue it was felt that the UGM minutes should be used as a reminder rather than a reference and be brief and to the point SAS2000 v869 Our attention was drawn to a number of new initiates from Human Edge, particularly those issues that have been identified as a high priority via the Support Top 10, eg: EFT Receipt Schedules can now be saved and recreated. Problems with floppy disks or lost bank files will now not force you to delete the receipts and start again. Bulk credits for items such as EMA may now be processed. This will help reduce the time taken to individually credit each student. Other new initiatives were discussed, such as: Purchase Orders has been added to SAS Creditors allowing better management and tracking of supply & service requisitions and purchases. The Student Information Transfer <tab> allows a full history of the Students movement from your school, as well as providing the option to print a complete Student Transfer Note. All processes from the Report Server have been transferred to SAS providing a more immediate and a simpler access to over 20 different reports and exports. As an example of the new benefits, eight new Student Reports have been added to SAS covering a range of varied information, including medical information, contract details, next year s classes and your user defined fields. Page 3 of 5

4 Although the Family Statements have been discussed in prior meetings it was felt to be important to emphasise a number of common questions that have arisen: 1. How do we reduce the amount of pages on the statement? Firstly there is no need to print all transactions for the year to get an Opening Balance figure. You can choose to print only transactions for the term, by selecting the beginning term date in the Include Transactions from prompt. The program will then calculate the Opening Balance for the term by adding all transactions up until the chosen date. Secondly you can change the Statement presentation and the amount of pages printed by experimenting with the Running Total Format. 2. The Statement Print will not sort according to Surname (Last Name). Family Statements The Account To name recorded against the Contact will print on the Statement as the name of the Debtor receiving the bill. However the Statement will sort (if you have chosen Last Name) according to the Contact Surname not the Account To name. This issue appears to be of particular concern with separated families. Where the father as the original Fee Payer has left the family and is living elsewhere, and the mother is now receiving the statement with her maiden name in the Account To field but still on the father s account record. I believe the underlying problem is not so much the sorting parameters as the need for Human Edge to provide a simpler means of transferring transactions and balances from one Fee Payer to another. This is currently being addressed. 3. The Statement Print will print zero balances even though the Include Zero Balances box is not ticked. If a receipt is entered but not posted the balance on the Contact will not change. The receipt must be posted to register a transaction and balance value. However the Statement Print will accept the un-posted receipt and display the transaction and subsequent balance on the Statement. If a statement with a zero balance prints out, it is more than likely that a receipt has been entered to match the total outstanding for the Debtor (bringing the theoretical balance to zero), but the receipt has not yet been posted when the Statement is run. While un-posted both the receipt and the bill it paid are still open items until the receipt is posted. The opposite is also possible where the theoretical balance is zero because an invoice has been entered and not posted, or because the receipt and invoice are not allocated against each other. Statements include un-posted receipts so that a Fee Payer is not asked to pay something that they have already paid for. End of Year courses are scheduled at the Human Edge Training Centre. For more information on Course dates and content, please refer to the web site: End of Year For those people unable to attend the training the Student and Financial End of Year documentation will be available on the Human Edge web site. An will be sent to all schools when this is ready. Page 4 of 5

5 No date was set for the next meeting. Next Meeting If anyone has a particular Agenda topic or any comments please contact Sue Smart, Holy Eucharist, St Albans on suesmart@hestalbs.melb.catholic.edu.au or alternatively Pat Nickholds at Human Edge patrick@humanedge.biz Page 5 of 5