Online Reporting Tool

Guidance for school users in the creation and downloading of ePayroll management reports

Essex Payroll

Version 2.0

February 2019

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ONLINE REPORTS ............................................................................................................. 3

Introduction .............................................................................................................3

Online data security ................................................................................................3

Local data security measures ................................................................................. 3

Concurrent user restrictions .................................................................................... 4

What reports do I have access to ........................................................................... 4

HOW TO RUN AND DOWNLOAD YOUR REPORTS ............................................................ 6

Introduction .............................................................................................................6

Getting started ........................................................................................................ 6

Essential reading and hints & tips ........................................................................... 7

Selecting and creating a report ............................................................................... 7

Reviewing the report contents online ...................................................................... 8

Exporting your report to MS Excel .......................................................................... 9

OPENING & PRINTING YOUR REPORT IN EXCEL ............................................................. 11

Introduction ........................................................................................................... 11

Allowing the macro to run ..................................................................................... 11

Permanently updating macro security settings ..................................................... 12

MS Excel 2003 .................................................................................................. 12

MS Excel 2007 .................................................................................................. 12

Printing your report from MS Excel ....................................................................... 13

MS Excel 2003 .................................................................................................. 13

MS Excel 2007 .................................................................................................. 13

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Online Reports Introduction

This facility provides school administrators and approvers with access to a number of pre-defined reports that can be created on demand from within ePayroll and then downloaded to your PC or schools network.

The main aim of the facility is to provide summary reports to assist you in the management of transactions made through ePayroll, in particular to ensure that you have not overlooked any items submitted for approval which have not yet been authorised. Other reports, like the Employee List, are included that you could use to create an up to date staff list containing essential payroll data for each of your employees.

While the forms used in this facility are different in style and format to that used in the rest of ePayroll, reports can be selected, run and exported using nothing more than simple mouse clicks.

We are committed to making sure that the reports available to you remain useful, relevant and appropriate. In conjunction with advice from colleagues on our Schools’ Customer Working Group we will continually review the Online Reports facility, making appropriate updates, amendments and additions. We also welcome suggestions for improvements from all our users based on your practical working experience of using ePayroll.

Online data security

Access to employee records via this reporting facility is controlled by the same security restrictions that are applied when making enquiries or updates via ePayroll; the data displayed will be limited to those in respect of staff currently employed by your school only. Unlike ePayroll, users at Central Payment schools will not however be able to view or download data relating to the central pool of Supply Teachers.

In the unlikely event of any security breaches being discovered, details should be immediately reported to the Schools Service Centre. Telephone: 033301 35888 / Email: schools.servicecentre@essex.gov.uk

Local data security measures

Most of the reports currently available via this facility only contain data carrying an insignificant or low level security risk. However, in keeping with other security measures that you already have in place, reports downloaded to your PC or your school’s network should still be adequately protected to prevent unauthorised access.

Particular care should obviously be afforded to the Employee List report along with any other report added to this facility in the future containing sensitive salary data. Clearly, the mislaying of a report containing the details of all of your employees in a single file can have far reaching consequences.

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Concurrent user restrictions

To ensure that the performance and response times of the core ePayroll system is not unduly impacted, limits may be imposed on how many users can access the reporting facility at any one time.

You may therefore occasionally find that access to the reporting facility is not always available. Such occurrences will only be temporary and you will normally be able to access it a few minutes later.

What reports do I have access to

Reports currently available are shown below:

Report Contents/Usage

Employee List* Current employee data including start date, review date, pension scheme membership, grade, salary point, hours, weeks per year and cost code

Open Absences* Details any absences that are currently ongoing. Use to ensure that absences are not left unclosed where the employee has actually returned to work

Approved Absences A summary of all absences approved via ePayroll during the last 30 days, providing a means to manage, report and analyse sickness absence information

Unapproved Absences Identifies any absence transactions which have been sent for approval but not yet approved

Approved Transactions A high level summary of all transactions approved via ePayroll during the last 30 days, providing a means to manage, report and analyse changes made

Unapproved Transactions Identifies any transactions which have been sent for approval but not yet approved

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For cheque book schools and Academies these reports are in addition to those issued as part of each month’s standard payroll run outputs.

* Until further notice we will continue to automatically email an Open Absences report (where you have any appropriate cases) along with the old version of the Employee List but these are also included in the Online Reports facility for you to run and produce as and when you want them.

*The Employee List currently contains 33 columns (fields) of data, elements of which won’t be as useful to some users as others. If you want a hard copy then after downloading your report you can of course delete any columns you’re not interested in before printing them off.

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How to run and download your reports

Introduction This section of the guide will provide step by step instructions covering:

• how to access the reports menu

• essential reading: hints & tips

• how to select and run a report

• how to view the report contents online

• how to download the report to your local PC or school’s network

The instructions in this guide describe the process for running and downloading the Unapproved Absences report but the methods shown equally apply to all the other reports.

Getting started The reports are all contained within the main ePayroll system. After logging onto ePayroll the main menu will include the following folder item:

For a user with joint administrator and approver responsibilities the main menu will look like this:

If you are an Approver only you will first need to open the

folder where the Reports option will be found.

Select from the main menu. There may be a short delay before the screen refreshes to:

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Essential reading and hints & tips

▪ Other than when the system is executing the selected query you can return

back to ePayroll’s main menu page at any time by clicking

▪ The link is not suitable for end users at schools and should not be used.

▪ You are advised to avoid selecting the link at the top left hand corner of the screen. Should you accidentally select it you will be directed to

the following form from where you should select the link.

Selecting and creating a report

1. Click on the symbol on the menu

item. Note that you need to be quite precise with where you click on the

menu in order to activate it.

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2. Select the report you wish to run by clicking the item. (The example that

follows is based on item 4 Unapproved Absences).

The system will then interrogate the Oracle database to extract the appropriate records. While this query is being performed the following screen will be displayed:

The screen will automatically refresh every few seconds until the query has been completed. On completion, the screen will display the first 25 rows (records) and the first 15 columns (data fields).

Reviewing the report contents online In the Absences Awaiting Approval example shown above you will most likely simply make a manual note of the identified records rather than downloading a copy to your PC.

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For small to medium sized reports you may similarly prefer to review the contents online either before, or instead of, downloading a copy. Where the report contains more than 25 rows and/or more than 15 columns you can scroll down or across the

report using the and links as required. The example shown below is taken from the Employee List report.

For larger reports like Employee List however we would recommend that you always download the report rather than interrogating it online.

Exporting your report to MS Excel

With your query completed and the partial contents being displayed, you can now download a copy to your PC or your school’s network.

1. From the menu select

2. From the list-box now shown, select the

Microsoft Excel Workbook (*.xls) option. (This option is also

suitable for users of Excel 2007 or 2010 supporting the *.xlsx file

format).

3. Select

4. Select (Selecting at this stage

will return you to the online report view).

Note: The PDF option shown in the list box above is not presently suitable. We currently recommend that you only select the Excel option for downloading.

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5. From the dialog box now shown select

6. Use standard techniques to select the drive and folder where you want

to save the file to and optionally provide an alternative file name.

Note: the format of the dialog boxes shown above at stages 5 and 6 will vary according the version of MS Windows that you have installed.

7. Click

8. Select another report to run from the

worksheets menu or click to return to

ePayroll

TIP: At stage 5 you can of course elect to Open the file in MS Excel straight away and then save it later if you wish to, but you should please note the guidance regarding macros in the following section of this guide.

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Opening & Printing your report in Excel

Introduction All of the reports contain a simple macro that suitably formats the headings row (row 3) of the spreadsheet and automatically sets each column width as found necessary.

Subject to the macro security settings set up on your PC you may receive a warning that a macro has been disabled or be shown a dialog box asking you to confirm whether you would like to enable the macro on this occasion.

The spreadsheet report can be viewed without the benefit of the macro but our recommendation is that you should allow the macro to run. Subject to general privileges you have for your PC you should normally be allowed to enable a macro each time you are prompted to do so but you may need to seek assistance from your network administrator to permanently amend macro security settings.

Allowing the macro to run If your macro security settings in Excel is set to Medium (Excel 2003) or Disable with notification (Excel 2007) you will be prompted with a dialog box similar to that shown below:

(Excel 2003) (Excel 2007)

In Excel 2003, simply click the button.

In Excel 2007, click the button which will launch the Security Alert dialog box. Select the Enable

this content option and then click

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Permanently updating macro security settings Subject to general privileges you have for your PC you may need to seek assistance from your network administrator to permanently amend macro security settings.

MS Excel 2003 After launching MS Excel use the Tools>>Macro>>Security menu path as shown

In the Security dialog box then shown, select the

Medium option and then click

MS Excel 2007

Click the icon at the top left of the screen followed by

Select from the Excel Options menu followed by .

Select the Disable all macros with notification option then click

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Printing your report from MS Excel

Please note that the spreadsheets are not pre-formatted with any page set-up settings. If you wish to print a copy you will normally need to amend the page set- up as required.

With the exception of the Employee List report which contains 33 columns of data, the other reports should normally fit to one page width in landscape orientation. You can then adjust the number of pages “tall” to suit. You can also of course delete any columns you’re not interested in before printing them off.

MS Excel 2003

In Excel 2003 the Page Setup dialog box is obtained by the File>>Page Setup… menu path.

The number of pages “tall” should be adjusted to provide the best fit and readability.

MS Excel 2007

In Excel 2007 all the features you may wish to alter are contained within the Page Layout tab in its Page Setup and Scale to Fit sections.

TIP: We recommend that you make use of Excel’s Print Preview or Page Break Preview features before printing your spreadsheet report to make sure that your report is correctly formatted and doesn’t run to an unexpectedly high number of pages.