Releases Since Our Last Meeting (1-15-2020)

USAS-R v7.33.0 Release Notes

1. A correction to the transaction service to filter out future budgeting transactions.  If users had budgeting transactions posted in future posting periods they were being included in totals even if they did not fall in the date range specified on reports, such as the Appropriation Summary.  This problem only applied to budgeting transactions and has been corrected.

2. A variance column has been added to the Appropriation and Receivables by Cash Account report.  The variance calculation is Initial Cash + FYTD Receivable - Carryover Encumbrance - FYTD Appropriated.

USAS-R v7.34.0 Release Notes

1. Implemented rules for Distributions, Invoices and Transfers and Advances to look at the account start and stop dates when determining if the account is active and able to be used.  These rules are now implemented for all transactions as others were previously implemented.

2. Improved the performance of saving the Cash Reconciliation.

3. Corrected a problem with missing control header and footer labels on reports.

4. Corrected a problem that prevented users from renaming customized reports.

5. Updated canned reports to allow them to be included in report bundles.

6. Researched and corrected an encumbrance problem reported by a district.  The district reported a problem balancing their encumbrances due to POs that were no longer invoiceable but had a remaining balance not equal to $0.  This fix is specific to the reporting district, however we will be releasing a discovery patch to determine if any other districts were impacted.

   1. Explanation of the problem: this was partially caused by the posting of full invoices before partials (before the rules were implemented to prevent) and partially due to a patch that was included on the 7.30.1 hotfix release published on 12/17/19.  The purpose of the patch was related to a performance improvement we made to improve the posting of Payables.  Only those POs that had cancel invoices dated Dec. 1, 2019 and after should have been updated, but due to an error in the patch date it ran for a longer period of time than intended, which resulted in the reported encumbrance problem.

USAS-R v7.34.1 Hotfix Release

1. The account change process has to reopen and then close the posting periods in the current fiscal year in order to make the requested account changes.  The newly added monthly report bundle is triggered by the closing of posting periods.  We updated the code to ignore the closing of the posting period if it is due to the account change process.

2. A correction to the calendar year report bundle to ensure the starting date is January 1 of the calendar year being closed.  The reports included the correct date range but the event that triggers the report bundle to run inadvertently overrode the start date to the first day of the posting period (12/1) instead of using the first day of the calendar year.  

3. A correction to a method that retrieves the default 1099 location.  Previously this method would throw an exception if the vendor did not have a default PO or 1099 location because the 1099 extract requires it.  However we moved the code that requires the locations to a new method so the Vendor Listing report in the monthly report bundle would not fail if vendors did not have locations.  This problem revealed itself with "Template Vendors", which are vendors imported from Classic because there were transactions posted against them, but the vendor was no longer on file.

4. A discovery patch is included in this hotfix to determine if any districts have problems with encumbrances related to a patch that went out in December.  We had a district report problems due to the patch that updated more POs than it should have.  This edge case may have impacted other districts, so this discovery patch will run for all districts and send back information to SSDT if there are problems detected.  If so, SSDT will be in contact with the ITC so corrections can be implemented for the district.

USAS-R v7.35.0 Release Notes

1. Transfer/Advance improvements

   1. The time frame for repaying Advances that restricted users to the same or next fiscal year has been removed.  Per AOS, it is the district's responsibility to know when and how the advance is to be repaid.  

   2. Restrictions per AOS on the accounts to be used when processing Advances (In and Out).  The AOS USAS manual specifies the accounts to be used and the software now enforces that.  Districts will no longer be able to "back out" an Advance in order to repay it.  Please see the AOS USAS Manual for Advance Account dimensions for details.  We are still waiting to hear from AOS on the use of the 910 and 920 object codes, so until we hear otherwise those object codes can be used.

   3. The ability to link the Advances to their Repays that were posted in Classic prior to migrating to the Redesign.  Please see the Link Legacy Repay Transactions to Advances page of the Useful Procedures section in the USAS-R Documentation for details.   Users will view an Advance and via a table on the transaction be able to link existing Repays to that Advance by clicking on the  button. 

   4. We've also created a template report to assist districts in linking their Classic advances and repays in the Redesign.  Remember, Repays are no longer visible from the Transfer/Advance grid, Please see the SSDT Transfer Advance Activity report for a list of your Transfer, Advance and Repay transactions.  This report is organized by Cash Account.

2. AP Invoice (Legacy) has been removed from the application.

3. Recent FY20 Subject Code changes have been implemented in Redesign.

4. Corrected a problem when attempting to filter by properties on the InvoiceItem.  This corrects problems reported when running the SSDT Inventory Pending Extract and filtering Invoice reports by created user.

5. Improvements to canned reports:

   1. The ability to include an options summary page has been added to canned reports.  When "Show Report Options" is checked the report generation will include an options summary page showing the parameters selected.  This option is checked by default on the canned reports.

   2. The ability to choose the report format style has been added to the canned reports available from the Report menu.  This was available on other canned reports previously.  Please be advised, due to the way these canned reports were written, we were unable to make the following formats available at this time: Excel-DATA, Excel-FIELDNAMES, Comma Separated Values (CSV) and Tabbed Separated Values (Tab Delimited). 

6. Corrected a problem with rules that were causing the Account Change process to fail.  These rules have been updated to not run during Account Change as they have no impact on this process.

Upcoming Releases

USAS-R v7.36.0

• Continued work on the Budgeting Process.

• Bug fix to POs: allowing users to amend purchase orders and cancel items as long as the cancel date is in an open posting period.

• Bug fix for third party vendor to prevent invoicing canceled PO items.

USAS-R v7.37.0

• Correction to the revised budget field on the GAAP extract.

• Working on a patch to correct encumbrances; followup to the discovery patch we put out.

• Refactoring to speed up the account sync process with USPS.

• Finishing up work on the Budgeting Process.