Posted December 19, 2017 in Updates

Version 17.12.19.01

Note: For those districts that have the Web Link module, you will also need to be at Web Link version 17.12.19.01 (or higher, if applicable) since this update contains changes that affect both products simultaneously. Web Link updates must be downloaded through the File Transfer Center and installed on the web server.

Recommendation: The end of calendar year is just around the corner and soon you’ll be working on generating your 2017 W2 file. It is our recommendation that all districts complete the steps for balancing the calendar year totals and W2 totals prior to processing your last December payroll so adjustments can be made and included in the last payroll if necessary. To balance prior to December’s payroll, complete Steps 1 through 5 on the Payroll End of Calendar Year Checklist (then after the last payroll is updated for 2017, repeat Steps 1-5 when completing the end of calendar year process).

Important Tax Information

Federal Income Tax Tables copied from 2017 to 2018: The 2018 Federal Income Tax information has not yet been posted by the Internal Revenue Service due to potential enactment of the Tax Cuts and Job Act by the US Congress (https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-statement-withholding-for-2018). Based on information obtained from the American Payroll Association’s website (http://www.americanpayroll.org/), it is their recommendation to continue using the 2017 Federal Income Tax tables until the IRS releases the 2018 tables.

Tax Tables with changes for 2018: Social Security (limit change only), Minnesota State Income Tax, and Idaho State Income Tax

Tax Tables with NO changes for 2018: Federal Unemployment, Illinois State Income Tax, Iowa State Income Tax, Kansas State Income Tax, Maryland State Income Tax, Medicare, Montana State Income Tax, Ohio State Income Tax, St. Louis Local Income Tax, Kansas City Local Income Tax, and Wisconsin State Income Tax

Tax Tables that have not yet been released: Missouri State Income Tax and North Dakota State Income Tax. The Department of Revenue in each state has not yet released the state withholding tables for 2018. Once the tax tables are released, we will plan to prepare an additional release which will include the new tables.

States with unemployment Taxable Wage Base changes for 2018: Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, and Wyoming

States with NO unemployment Taxable Wage Base changes for 2018: Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota

Once you install the 17.12.19.01 update, you will have the released 2018 information for the federal, state and local income taxes and unemployment taxable wage base limits for applicable states. To view and verify this information, please print the appropriate documents using the links below. The tables in these documents MUST be compared to your tax information in the Taxes option under the Maintenance menu in Payroll prior to calculating your first payroll in January 2018.

If you are currently using the Negotiations module with the School Accounting System, the 2018 tax and unemployment information will update automatically upon installing the update.

Federal Taxes: https://docs.su-inc.com/taxes/Federal2018.pdf

Local Taxes:
Kansas City https://docs.su-inc.com/taxes/KansasCityLocal2018.pdf
St. Louis https://docs.su-inc.com/taxes/StLouisLocal2018.pdf

All System
- A new File Type, Other for Other Delimited File, has been added to all the import screens along with a field to designate the delimiter character.
- When using the To Screen button on the Report Printing Options screen, the report will automatically display using the Continuous View feature. This will allow for easy use of the mouse scroll wheel to move from page to page.
- When using the Combine IDs feature available in several of the maintenance options, the system was returning an error. This has been corrected.
- There were several maintenance files in the system that were allowing identical IDs and should not have been. Once this update is installed all IDs will be made unique. If there were duplicates in your database, the system will automatically add a numeric value starting with 1 at the end of the ID. The affected maintenance files are as follows:
  - Main: Users
  - Accounts Payable: Approval Trees, Vendor Groups
  - Payroll: Employee Groups, Leave Approval Paths, Leaves, Pay Codes, Taxes, Workers Compensation Classes
  - Human Resources: Benefits, Benefit Types, Certificate Types, Checklists, Course Types, Endorsements, Endorsement Types, Evaluation Rating Types, Evaluation Types, Grade Levels, Position Types, Schools, School Types, Sites, Trainings, Training Types
  - Negotiations: Packages

Main>Maintenance
- On the Web Link tab in Email Manager, ENDDATE has been added as a reserved word for use in the leave request message fields. When added to a message, the system will insert the end date for the submitted leave request. Also fields have been added to send emails to users who have access to edit substitute entries: Send Email to Users who Edit Substitutes and Edit Substitutes Message. If these two new fields are set up, the system will automatically send emails to the users once a leave request has received final approval.
Main>User Controls
- User Permissions have been added to Payroll and Web Link, if applicable, for Edit Leave Request Substitutes and View Leave Request Calendar. Refer to the User Security topic in the Help File to edit a user.
General Ledger>Maintenance
- In the Chart of Accounts on the Inquiry tab, prior year outstanding purchase orders will now display in the current year to give a more accurate balance for the account number.
- A new option has been added to the Options menu in the Chart of Accounts: Inactivate Chart of Account Numbers. This feature will allow a user to easily inactivate a group of account numbers. Refer to the Inactivate Chart of Account Numbers topic in the Help File.
General Ledger>Government Reporting
- Nebraska: The Educational Service Unit Annual Financial Report for 2016-2017 has been included in this update.
- Missouri: After completing the ESSA Account Number Changes option, the system was returning an error when printing the Revenue Summary Report. This has been corrected.
General Ledger>Reports
- Chart of Account Numbers with Active Entries: This new report will list the batch type and batch name or requisition number of chart of account numbers with active entries.
Accounts Payable>Data Entry
- If the Automatically Create Purchase Order in Invoice Entry field is selected in the Accounts Payable System File, and an invoice was entered in a batch and deleted before the batch was posted, the system was not removing the purchase order too. This has been corrected. In addition, during the update installation process, all prior purchase orders matching this criteria will be deleted.
Accounts Payable>Check Cycle
- In some instances if a vendor had multiple check sequences assigned and there were too many invoices to print on one check, a zero balance check was being generated and should not have been. This has been corrected.
- When using the search feature on the Starting Check Number field, the Last Check Number was not always reflecting the correct information. This has been corrected.
Accounts Payable>Options
- When using the Email Purchase Orders option, the system creates a PDF document for each purchase order being emailed. The name of the document always includes the purchase order number and if the number included slash characters (i.e. / or ) it was causing issues with email servers. This has been corrected in that the system will remove most special characters in the name of the PDF document.
Accounts Payable>Reports
- Purchase Order Distribution Report – Detail: This report has been modified to remove the optional field for Unencumbered Balance.
- Purchase Order Distribution Report – Detail with Unencumbered Balance: This new report includes a variable report parameter for Processing Month. The value entered in this field will determine the processing month for the unencumbered balance for the chart of account number.
Payroll>Data Entry
- In Employee Absences, if a leave entry is made for an employee and then in the next entry that same employee is being paid, the system will no longer default in the Subbed For Employee ID, which was reflecting the same employee ID being paid.
- In Pay Period Entries and Employee Absences, the Leave Request Comments will now display in the informational section in the middle of the left-hand side of the screen.
- The custom referenced fields for the main employee have been added to the Select Leave Requests/Substitutes for Processing screen found under the Leave Requests menu in Pay Period Entries and Employee Absences.
- The system was always sorting the Display All (No Totals) tab in the Batch Entries grid in Pay Period Entries or Employee Absences by the Employee ID regardless of the column order. A change has been made to sort the grid by the first four columns.
Payroll>Check Cycle
- If there was an amount due in a deduction payable and the payroll had multiple date sequences, only the amounts for one of the date sequences were being applied to the amount due. This has been corrected.
- If an override checking account was used while calculating the payroll and there were payable amounts in the deductions, the system was returning a cash out of balance error. This has been corrected.
- After expensing hourly wages for the end of fiscal year, if additional entries were made to the same pay code for the same fund, in some instances the system was expensing the wages to the fund from the employee file pay code instead. This has been corrected.
- If the Payroll System File has Post Detail to General Ledger selected, zero balance entries were being posted to general ledger when updating a payroll check cycle and should not have been. This has been corrected.
Payroll>Maintenance
- If employee leave balance information is set to display on employee checks, the values were printing with only two decimal places. A change has been made to allow the fields to display up to four decimal places. To change your existing employee check or direct deposit stubs, the formats will need to be resaved in the Check Setup – Employees option by entering the name of check setup to edit, type over an existing field by entering in the exact same value (i.e. Top Margin), and click the Save button.
- The system was allowing information on one tab in the employee file to be edited prior to it fully completing the save of the previous edit. This has been corrected.
- When using the Adjust ACA Employee Offer of Coverage in the employee file, if an employee didn’t have any information in Box 14 but did have information in Box 16, they were being excluded when using the Copy Previous Year feature. Also, if an employee had a previously submitted ACA form, they were being excluded from the adjust option and should not have been. These errors have been corrected.
Payroll>Options
- A new option has been added to make it easier for substitutes to be assigned to employee leave requests: Edit Leave Request Substitutes. This feature allows designated users to enter substitutes for leave requests that have been submitted, are pending or fully approved, and have not yet been brought into a batch of Employee Absences or Pay Period Entries. Users need to either already be an approver in the approval path or designated in the new Edit Substitutes section on the Leave Approval Paths tab in the Leave Request Options. Refer to the Edit Leave Request Substitutes topic in the Help File.
- The Leave Approval Paths and FMLA (if applicable) tabs in the Leave Request Options have been modified to include a section for Edit Substitutes. Users designated in this section who are given access to the Edit Leave Requests Substitutes screen will be able to assign substitutes to employee leaves that have been submitted and are pending or fully approved. Refer to the Leave Request Options topic in the Help File.
- View Leave Request Calendar is a new option showing the summary information for all submitted leave requests (and FMLA leave requests, if applicable) pending approval or are fully approved. Refer to the View Leave Request Calendar topic in the Help File.
Payroll>Government Reporting
- At this time, the IRS is not yet accepting Affordable Care Act (ACA) electronic submissions for tax year 2017. The information we have received indicates they hope to begin receiving submissions in mid-January.
- The Generate/View System Estimated Details option in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) C Forms option was restricted to only those users with supervisor rights. Also in some instances the Employer 1094-C tab was taking a long time for the information to display. These errors have been corrected.
- While there is a federal law in place allowing for the truncation of the social security number on employee W2 forms, the General Instructions for Forms W-2 and W-3 specifically state the number cannot be truncated; therefore the Print Last Four Digits of Federal ID field has been removed from the Print W2s tab in the Employee W2s option. The IRS plans to release future guidelines on social security number truncation for W2s.
Payroll>Reports
- Daily Leave Request Absence Report: This new report will sort by day, listing each employee absent and their assigned substitute.
- Daily Substitute Assignment Report: This new report will sort by day, listing each substitute and the designated employee they are subbing for.
- Employee Leave Balance Report, Employee Listing – Leave Information, Employee Absence Report with Balances, Employee Leaves Over Maximum, Employee Detail Listing for Payroll, Employee Detail Listing with Signature Line, and Employee Detail Listing for Human Resources: End Date was added as an additional sort and a report parameter on all of these reports.
- Employee Listing – Taxes Information: This new report will reflect information from the Taxes tab in employee file and includes several report parameters including one to select only those with Exempt indicated for a tax.
- Payroll Register – Detail with Chart of Account Numbers: In some instances the description for the pay code was missing on the report. This has been corrected.
- Deduction Totals Report: This report has been modified to include report selections for Unposted, Posted and Posted Summary. It has also been added to the Check Cycle Pre-Check Reports.
- Distribution Report by Expense Account with Detailed Earnings, Distribution Report by Expense Account with Summary Earnings and Distribution Report by Expense Account Summary: These reports have been updated to separate employees with matching names but different employee IDs.
- Full Time Employee Listing for 1095-C Forms: In some instances this report was taking a long time to generate. This has been corrected.
Human Resources>Options
- If a Sick Bank had a lower limit of zero, when doing a Sick Bank Withdrawal the system was allowing you to exceed this lower limit. This has been corrected.
Negotiations>Maintenance
- If the Salary Totals table was calculated with a 0 in the Decimal Places field, the pay rates for these contracts were being generated with 0 decimals as well rather than the total contract divided by total payments. This has been corrected.