New Developments and Enhancements 


Child Profiles and Registration Forms

  • On the child profile, under parent details, you can now add a collection/security password for each parent/carer/emergency contact. This has been added to the child profile forms and PDF download as well as registration forms. As part of this change, the existing collection password on the general details page has been removed and copied to the parent details page for each parent/carer/emergency contact.


  • On the child profile, under general details, you can now add social worker details for a child and more than one additional language and nationality can be selected. Some minor grammatical changes have been made to the list of vulnerabilities. All changes have been added to the child profile form and PDF download as well as registration forms.

  • Some minor enhancements have been made to the communications tab to improve the user experience.


Invoices and Funding

  • Equally Spread Invoices - major enhancements have been made to equally spread (annualised) invoices for ease of use. The changes use a sample week to calculate the weekly session total, funded hours and discount values multiplied by an annual calculation factor (No. of weeks/No. of months) to calculate the monthly invoice value for a child. If you make use of this equally spread (annualised) invoice mechanism, please contact the support team to discuss whether these changes would be suitable and help you simplify your invoice process.
  • When viewing your session types and terms/funding lists, you will now see the colour assigned to the session/term in the list view:

  • On System Settings, we've made some minor changes to Session Types and Invoices/Payments screens to improve your user experience. In addition, when creating or editing a funding term, the multi select feature for funding months has been updated.
  • Invoices Menu - you now have the option to Unallocate Payments from invoices in bulk, subject to this being permitted by your access level. Select the relevant invoice(s) and click on the Unallocate Payments option in the bulk actions list then confirm. This does NOT delete payments, it only removes the payment from the invoice. To delete payments in bulk, you will need to use the Payments Menu.

Payments

  • GoCardless - We've put in some additional checks and balances to prevent duplicate payment requests for the same invoice amount being sent to GoCardless during the bulk payments collection process.
  • Payment Modes - Opening Balance has been added as a system payment mode and automatically selected as the payment mode when creating an opening balance.
  • Bulk Payments Upload - You can find this in the top tight hand corner of the main payments screen. When uploading payments in bulk, using the bulk payments template, enhanced matching is now in place. Initial matching is performed against the Child URN and Child Name fields, however if no match is found then further checks are made using the payment reference field. This can contain the Tax Free Childcare Code or Direct Debit Reference or Voucher Code from the child general details page, or the Invoice Number, to match the payment to the correct account. 

  • Payment Terms - We've added the option on Global Settings>Other Settings for you to create your own payment terms. These payment terms can be attributed against a child's account on their General Details page. You can use payment terms to exclude accounts from automatic payments (System Settings>Invoices/Payments) and automatic Debtors' Letters. The monthly debtors' report also shows a breakdown of account balances grouped by payment terms.

  • See Reports for the NEW Payment Allocation Report.

Reports

  • Custom Reports - the child details section has collection passwords, social worker details, dual nationality and second language added.
  • The Staff Holiday Used/Balance report now includes an inactive/active staff filter so that you can view all staff, active staff only or inactive staff only.
  • A new report, the Payment Allocation Report, has been added. This can be found in the financial reports section and shows all payments allocated against invoices. It can be filtered for one or multiple branches for a selected month. Since payments can be split across multiple invoices, or one invoice may have multiple payments allocated against it, the report has two formats - it can be grouped by invoice or by payment. If you select Invoice format, you can filter the report by the invoice type. If you select Payment format, you can filter by the payment mode. This report can be viewed on screen and downloaded as a PDF or CSV file.

Payments view:


Invoice view:

Staff

  • In Global Settings>Other Settings the Staff Absence Email Templates have been updated to include the following mail merge fields: Title, Last Name, Gender, Date of Birth, Start Date, Leave Date, Company Name, Company Telephone, Company Website and Company Email. In addition, any of the mail merge fields can now be used in the subject line of the email.
  • An issue where the pro rata holiday entitlement calculation did not update correctly in a staff member's starting or leaving year for holiday entitlement years other than January to December has been corrected.
  • It is now possible for staff members to upload documents with their Staff Profile form (provided the Show on Profile option has been enabled in Global Settings or System Settings>Documents).
  • See Reports for changes to Staff Holiday Used/Balance Report.


User Interface

  • Switching between eyMan and eyLog is now easier, just use the "Switch to eyLog" link at the top of the screen (provided you have both systems).
  • We've updated the staff and child import processes to include collections passwords, social worker details, dual nationality and additional languages for children and removed eyMan specific fields for staff.
  • On the System Settings>Branch Settings, we've decoded the API password.
  • On the Enquiry Form, session selection is now a multi-select field.


Bug Fixes

  • In addition to all the new features and improvements, a small number of miscellaneous bugs have been fixed. Any users who reported bugs have been informed individually by the support team.