Agencies UNC Activity Status by Group (v5.0)

Modified on Wed, 20 Sep, 2023 at 9:12 AM

Agencies UNC Activity Status by Group

Purpose of this document

This document discusses the Ceres process to quickly change the UNC Activity Status of a group of agencies. Each Agency record in Ceres has an assigned UNC Activity Status that controls whether the Agency can Order product from the food bank, either in Ceres or Agency Express 3. In earlier releases, the Activity Status would need to be set Agency by Agency. This new functionality allows the food bank to update groups of Agencies at once. In addition, this document discusses the automated compliance reporting system available in Ceres. This process which must be setup to run automatically by the job queue will update agencies’ UNC Activity Status by the defined rules and report any changes made by the process.

Ceres Object release 5.00.00 is required for the functionality described in this document.

Table of Contents

Overview
Automated Agency Compliance Reporting
UNC Activity Status by Group Reporting

Overview

Ceres added two distinct new functions regarding the setting of the UNC Activity status for Agencies. The first involves filtering a group of Agencies based on a set of status on demand (FBC Agency Code, Agency Posting Group, UNC Activity Status). As an example, the food bank may want to turn all school based agencies to Inactive at the beginning of summer and then reactivate them at the beginning of the school year.

The second feature involves the ability to automatically change Agencies status based on their compliance with the requirements as established in the Agency Compliance functionality. The current statuses are:

Active
InactiveAG
InactiveFB
PastDue
Suspended

In previous version of Ceres, the capability existed to turn Agencies on/off based on reporting compliance (when utilizing the Agency Survey capability). This capability is now expanded to encompass past due accounts. Because Agencies may be assigned as Inactive for various reasons, any changes made to the agency status by this automatic compliance update process may optionally be logged with the date and a comment on the Agency Comments tables. See Agency Compliance Document for related information.

Automated Agency Compliance Reporting

Agency Receivables and Setup

The Agency Receivables and Setup Page can be accessed from Departments à Agencies & Receivables à Administration à Setup à Agencies & Receivables.

Click on Agencies & Receivables and the Agencies & Receivables Setup Page opens as shown below.

The Agency Compliance FastTab has seven fields which are validated in the UNC Activity Status table allowing each food bank to specify the correct UNC Activity Statuses they wish to use for each category of agency compliance. They are:

In Compliance Status: this will be the value the agency’s UNC Activity Status will be set to if they are in full compliance with all reporting requirements and are not considered past due.

Past Due Status: this will be the value the agency’s UNC Activity Status will be set to if they are in a past due condition but have met all reporting requirements.

Reporting Violation: this will be the value the agency’s UNC Activity Status will be set to if they are not considered past due but have one or more reporting requirements that have not been met.

Survey Violations: this will be the value the agency’s UNC Activity Status will be set to if they have not completed required surveys.

Training Violations: this will be the value the agency’s UNC Activity Status will be set to if they have not completed required trainings or their required trainings have expired.

Certification Violations: this will be the value the agency’s UNC Activity Status will be set to if they have not completed required certifications or their required certifications have expired.

Multiple Violations: this will be the value the agency’s UNC Activity Status will be set to if they are both past due and have one or more reporting requirements that have not been met.

The other fields on the compliance tab are as follows:

Compliance Comments: Check this box if you want Ceres to automatically add a comment to the agency’s record when a status change is made through the automated compliance reporting function.

Compliance Comment Code: If comments are generated, the comment will be tagged with this comment code as well. This will allow users to find all Status changes for an agency more easily.

Notify Email Address: Enter the address for the status change report to be emailed to.

Notify From Email Address: Enter the address the status change report will be emailed from.

Automation File Directory: When using automation, this directory specifies where the status change Excel Report will be stored for user review.

Payment Terms

Ceres expanded the Payment Terms table allowing the food bank to build in grace periods for each payment term code. To access the “Grace Period” field go to Departments à Financial Management à Receivables à Setup.

Click on Payment Terms and the Payment Terms page opens as shown below

The “Grace Period” column is used to calculate the additional time Agencies will be given beyond their normal invoice terms when considering them past due for the purpose of this status utility.

For example, the Agency may have terms of Net 30 Days and the invoice due date calculation field will contain “30D”. However, the food bank may enter another value such as “15D” in the grace period field to allow the agency an additional 15 days before they will be considered past due and turned inactive by this process.

Exclude from Compliance

Ceres added a Boolean field “Exclude from Compliance” to the Agency Card allowing users to specify agencies exempt from the process – useful for internal food bank Agencies and to exclude other FA food banks. This field may be found on the “Information” FastTab as shown below.

UNC Activity Status by Group Reporting

This process is used to filter Agencies meeting the specified criteria and automatically update the status of those Agencies to another status. As an example, this process may be used to update all “School” agencies to inactive at the end of the school year and then subsequently reactivate them at the beginning of the next school year.

To run the “Update Agency UNC Act. Status” report, go to Departments à Financial Management à Receivables à Tasks Update Agency UNC Act. Status

Click on “Update Agency UNC Act. Status” and the Update Agency UNC Act. Status Page opens as shown below

The process will open the “Update Agency UNC Act. Status” request Page. On this Page you will need to specify the status you wish the Agencies to be changed to and the filter criteria desired to select the Agencies to be changed.

In the example above, we have selected all Agencies where the current UNC Activity Status is “ACTIVE” and the FBC Agency Category Code is “SEASONAL”. All agencies matching this filter criteria will be selected and have their UNC Activity Status changed to “INACTIVEFB”.

Note: You must check the “Update Statuses” box to actually change the status. Failure to check this box will produce a report showing agencies that would be affected by this process but will not actually update the agencies statuses.

The process requires the following fields to have a value:
1. Options FastTab
  1. New UNC Activity Status
  2. Update Statuses. This field, when unchecked, allows the user to preview the report before updating the Agencies.
2. Agency FastTab
  1. UNC Activity Status
  2. FBC Agency Category Code

When you print/preview the report, Ceres will validate the parameters and update (change) the record(s) with the New UNC Activity Status. As an example, the food bank wanted to turn all school based Agencies to INACTIVEFB at the beginning of summer and then reactivate them at the beginning of the school year.