Social Services & Case Management FAQ
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Month End Procedures

  1. Finish processing all payments (client and vendor) for the period
  2. If there are payments to be reversed, then they should be reversed prior to printing of reports
  3. Print the Following Reports:
    • Month To date Totals (From the Select Reports menu, select To Date Totals)
    • Payment History (select the Client History Reports from the Select Reports menu)
    • Print the Vendor Payment History report from the reports menu
    • These would be the minimum reports to print. Your Social Services Module offers over 80 different report types, such as clients lists and graphs. We suggest printing all of the reports on a regular basis and decide which ones you would like to incude as part of your Month End Process.
  4. BACKUP YOUR DATA - We can't stress how important this is. Backing up your data on a regular basis will save you both time and money in the long run.
  5. Have the Administrator or Power user sign in and run the clear Month To Date totals function from the Periodic processing menu. Select the Run button to run the function. When you exit the screen, you must select Yes to save your changes.

Client Payment Processing in Social Services

  1. Select Client Payment Processing from the Explorer menu on the left.
  2. If this is not your first run, you may need to select the re-initialize B&D button. Selecting this button will bring all of your clients that have a check mark in the Re-initialize B&D field on their B&D screen. This step is optional and depends on your situation.
  3. The processing Type (batch type), is set by the administrator, and should not be changed unless consulting with them first.
  4. Select the appropriate payment frequency
  5. The first and last client number fields will be filled in with the first and last clients in the database. You can change these to select a narrower range of clients to include.
  6. If you have created selection lists, you can pick it in the Selection List filed.
  7. The pre cheque register can be sorted by name or ID
  8. The report type can de detail or summary
  9. The transaction date will default to today’s date, but you can select another date. It becomes the posing date in the payment batch, if you are integrating with Sage Accpac ERP.
  10. The cheque date will also default to today’s date, but it can be changed to reflect the date that you want on all of the cheques.
  11. The Caseworker field can be used to filter the pre-cheque register by a specific caseworker. None, means that all this filter is not being used.
  12. If you place a check mark in the box, clients with errors are ignored, then if the client records contains any errors that would prevent a cheque from being issued, they will be ignored on the report and subsequent batch creation.
    • The Description area is used to enter a brief description about this cheque run.
  13. The process button is used to generate the pre-cheque register report on your screen.
  14. Once the report is generated on your screen, you can select the printer icon to direct the report to a printer. Select the close button to close the report from the screen and continue.
  15. If the report is empty, or contains errors, or you are missing clients, you may have to go back and look through all of the selections made before the pre-cheque register was generated and select different options. You may also have to go look through the client’s file and payment details to see why they are not included.
  16. If you have selected different pre-cheque register options or made changes to client records and payment details, the pre-cheque register must be re-generated
  17. BACKUP YOUR DATA
  18. Double check if you BACKED UP YOUR DATA?
  19. The next step would be to create the batch, by selecting the create batch button towards the top of the screen. Once you select that button, you must then confirm that you want to create the payment batch. The next message that will pop-up will indicate how many batch files were created.
  20. Your next step is to select the Print cheques button. You will see a list of batches in the window on the right that are available for processing.
  21. If your batch type is SA, then it will be necessary to load up your printer with cheques after selecting the batch and confirming the starting cheque number
  22. If your batch type is Sage Accpac, this step will assign control numbers to the payments. Cheque numbers will be assigned in Accpac.
  23. Make sure each batch of cheques is printed, the status of the batch will indicate printed.
  24. After all cheques are printed and accepted, select the After cheque production button, and print out the General Ledger summaries & cheque registers.
  25. After the cheques registers have been printed, you can select the button to delete the batch. When you highlight your batch and you see a Print icon as well as a delete icon, then the cheque register report has not been printed, if only the delete batch button is available, then all of your steps are complete, you will notice the batch status says complete.
  26. Make sure you do print the cheque register and accept it before deleting the batch, otherwise the cheques processed will not be recorded in history reports.

Once the program has been installed, what are the next steps?

  1. To log into the program for the first time, you will have to sign in as the Administrator. Use the User ID and password provided by Abenaki.
  2. Once logged in go to help then register and key in the serial number provided to you by Abenaki.
  3. From the Explore menu (left panel), select the Organization menu option and then select the New button under the work organizations in the window on the right. Complete the general information screen and save. Complete the batch production screen and save as well as the EFT production screen if required press save and close.
  4. Next setup each type of user. To access the user maintenance screen for the first time you must be signed in as the administrator user. Create at least one Power user and one Standard user to perform functions in the program.
  5. Exit the program. Log in as the Power type user you just created in step 4.
  6. Customize / Modify the dictionary items; these dictionaries can be modified by the Administrator or power user. These dictionary items will be available in different sections of the Social Assistance module for the standard type user. Many of these dictionary lists have values already assigned, but can be added to at any time. These dictionaries are a way for you to customize the module to meet your requirements.
  7. Once the dictionaries are setup, exit the program and long in as the standard type user to begin entering clients.

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When setting up an organization for the first time, why can I not choose a province yet?

If you have not customized the dictionary items for provinces, there will be nothing to choose from in the drop down list. While logged in as the power type user, to add a province, select provinces form the Housekeeping menu option. Select your organization (in place of default), and select the new button. Type the name and abbreviation for the province or state; the description field can be left blank.

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What is the difference between the Admin user and the Power user?

The Administrator can create & delete users, change dictionary items for any organization and create organizations. The Power user can create & delete users & clients as well as change dictionary items within their organizations.

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How do I edit an existing user?

To modify or edit an existing user, select the users menu option form the Housekeeping menu on the left. A list of users will be displayed in the window on the right. Select the user to edit by selecting the pencil type icon next to the name. Make necessary changes and select the save and close button.

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The pre-cheque register is missing some clients, what can cause this?

Try to narrow down the client(s) you are missing. Please note if a client does not appear on the pre-cheque register report then no cheque will be issued for them. If a client is not on this report but should be, please check the following:

  • verify B & D is set to true for this client
  • verify payment details exist for this client
  • Verify that the client’s status is active or active guardian and there is a cheque mark in the process this client field.
  • Verify that the client has payment details for the payment frequency that you have selected.

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What are the payment processing steps?

  1. Log into the program as the standard type user, once you entered all the clients including B&D and payment details you can begin payment processing.
  2. Go to client cheque processing under the payment processing menu option in the explorer window.

  3. For your first cheque run, your first step is to select the pre-cheque register in the Select item for working section of the screen. Click on the pre-cheque register under the client payment processing window on the right make sure you choose the payment frequency; the processing type was defined earlier by the administrator when the organization was setup
    • Select a range of clients you wish to process
    • Chose a selection list (optional)
    • Select a sorting option form the list
    • Select if you would like detail or summary format
    • Select the transaction date (this is the date that will be used for fiscal year and period posting in Sage; and also the effective date for the cheques on reports in SA)
    • Select the cheque date
    • Select the Case worker to sort by (optional)
    • Type in a description for the payment run
  4. Select the Process Button. This will generate a Pre-Cheque register report on your screen. You can print the report and review before proceeding. Please note if this is not your first cheque run, your first step may be to reinitialize the B&D’s. This will start a new B&D form for each client you have selected to use recurring B&D forms for.
  5. Print B& D forms.
  6. Click the create batch file icon; which will only be available if the pre-cheque register report contains no errors. The icon is located next to the process button.
  7. After creating the batches, the second step is to select the print cheques button and then the print button above. You will be asked to input a starting cheque number. This number should match your pre-printed and pre-numbered cheques.
  8. Once you enter your starting cheque number, the cheques will be printed on your screen. Select the printer button to direct your output to the printer. You will have to repeat these steps for each of the batches created.

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Social Assistance & Case Management (Ontario Works) FAQ

I am trying to produce a vendor cheque and I keep getting a message "No vendor is assigned". How do I add a vendor?

Go into housekeeping, then into add and change vendors. The vendor number is the first three letters of the name. Enter the appropriate information about the vendors.

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I have all my clients entered but when I try to produce a pre-cheque register nothing shows up.

New B&Ds were not started for each client so all the clients had "False" in Ready to Process. Once a new B&D is started “True” it will be ready to process.

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When I try to enter a B&D number for each client I get an error message.

Starting fields for creating a B&D number have to be initialized (on the housekeeping screen). You could tell this as there was no value beside "Next B&D Number" on this screen.

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I cannot print any cheques.

In order to print cheques you have to delete the previous cheque batch.

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How do I produce a payment to Hydro under Community Startup?

  1. Look up Rate for Community Start up
  2. Go to Client and add 2nd payee
  3. Add a Detail Rate for Community Start up for the client with On Demand frequency
  4. Produce a SA cheque (on blank paper) for that one cheque (On Demand)

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I want to add a new rate but the rate maintenance button doesn’t show.

In order to add a new rate you have to sign in as ADMIN.

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I need to reverse cheques. What steps do I follow?

The overall steps to reverse cheques:

  1. Reverse all the cheques with the incorrect dates
  2. Reissue the cheques with the new date and the SAME information.

The detailed steps are:

  1. Get a list of cheques to be reversed
  2. Make a backup
  3. Click the following buttons
    -Cheque and B&D Processing
    -Process Client Cheques
    -Process SA Cheque Batches
    -Process Cheque Journal
  4. On the Process Cheque Journal screen, enter the cheque number in the box on the lower left hand part of the screen below the button that says "Reverse Cheque Number"
  5. Click the button Reverse Cheque Number
  6. It will say, "You asked to REVERSE cheque number 999, is this correct?" Click Yes or No
  7. Keep repeating steps 4 through 6, until all cheque that were issued in error are reversed.
  8. Reprocess the cheques with the proper date if applicable.

The Reverse Cheque Function does not remove the information about the cheque from the history; it adds figures which are identical to but the opposite sign for all the details of the cheque. It also reverses the values in the To-date accumulators.

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How do I add a rate code?

Sign in as Admin, go to Housekeeping, Rate Maintenance and then click a button at the top for Add New Rates. Each rate code you add must be unique.

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How do I change my client ID?

You cannot change your client ID. The only way to do this at the moment is to add a new client with the correct ID and enter all the client information and delete the old client record.

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I want to print a pre-cheque register for her bi-weekly run to make sure all is OK. What steps do I take?

You would go to Cheque & BD Processing, Process Client Cheques, Pre-cheque Register, Bi-weekly. (It is very important to carefully look over the Pre-cheque Register as it is easy to fix mistakes at that point but very difficult after the batch has been produced).

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How do I look at the clients in alphabetical order?

To print a list of clients in either alphabetical order or in ID order, go to the Client Reports form and choose the appropriate Sort Order for Listings.

Another place where order of printing can be controlled, but in a completely different way, is while printing SA cheques. The cheques WILL be produced in alphabetical order by Payee name. However to make that work properly, the Payee name must have the Last Name first when specifying the Payee name on the Payee tab of the B&D tab for a Client.

Another place the order can be controlled is in the Client Data form while working with Existing Clients. You can specify the order in which the clients are presented by putting the cursor in the field that you want to control the sort order and clicking on the appropriate icon in the toolbar near the top of the screen. The two icon choices being the one with an A over a Z with a down facing arrow, or the one with the Z over the A with the down facing arrow, the former being the one to sort with the A first (alphabetically) and the latter sorting in Reverse alphabetical order. This also works for fields with numbers. For example, to have the clients presented in alphabetical order by last name, put the cursor in the Last Name field on the form, it doesn't matter which client is currently being displayed, and click on the A over Z icon.

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How do I delete a dependant?

Go to client maintenance page 1 of the application and the dependants tab. Go to the dependant you want to delete and select control -.

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