Top 4 Midyear Tasks in the School Business Office

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Imagine Santa’s workshop buzzing with activity, only it’s July. The upside-down calendar of the financial year means we welcome a fresh ledger in the summertime, but that doesn’t mean the winter is spent in hibernation. Welcome to midyear in the school business office (SBO).
 

Processing W2s

The stakes are high as every employee eagerly awaits this annual documentation to kick off the best weeks of the year: tax season. Jokes aside, printing or sending W2s securely is a huge, detail-oriented priority with a strict deadline. Automation is especially helpful for tasks like these.

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution helps every step of the way. Backtracking from the actual delivery, an ERP handles the myriad verification steps involved in pre-processing. Next, an ERP extracts and packages the information and prepares files to be submitted for verification. That’s three or four steps of combing through and transferring lots of super personal data condensed into a single sentence—and that’s the difference between relying on manual processes instead of a cutting-edge ERP. It saves SBOs time while maintaining flawless records.

After verification, the files are processed into individual files to print or deliver electronically through a secure employee portal. In the winter Olympics of SBOs, processing W2s is on par with the Nordic combined.

 

Processing 1099s

Give the people what they want: more tax documents. Multiple document types fall under the umbrella colloquialism of “1099s.” These are generated for vendors paid $600 or more from the SBO. Different types of payments require different forms. An ERP can help keep it all straight.

Instead of having to puzzle through using human brainpower, an ERP just politely asks for the parameters of payments and generates the proper form. Still an important and detail-oriented task, but the heaviest lifting is done automatically.

 

Benefit offer and coverage reporting

ACA compliance requires a lot of due diligence in reporting benefit changes. To the average employee, this may not seem a like a big deal, since qualifying events are usually milestones to an individual. Multiplying milestones over a district employing thousands and that’s an awful lot of congrats/sympathy cards to buy and ACA codes to juggle.

Luckily, an ERP takes care of the confusing swaps and documents the important offer of insurance coverage. Regardless of whether benefits are self-insured, an ERP can track all these changes and report them at the end of the calendar year.

 

Process check-up

After another annual round of exciting tax files are finally delivered to inboxes and mailboxes, it’s time for the school business officers and staff to sail off to a deserted island for some well-deserved spring break R&R. Just kidding again!

The early spring is prime time to take a close look at these important biannual processes. With the reporting and employee benefit stakes so high, an ERP needs to be in tip-top shape to handle the processes without a hiccup. Enter the process management tools built right into the ERP.

This administrative tool helps manage the software end users rely on to complete important tasks such onboarding, termination, account changes, and the new calendar year tasks mentioned above.

Process manager holds the power to ensure those processes are airtight, ask for the right information, and are accessible by the people in corresponding roles. Each task is listed and access granted for both the person completing the task (say, a human resources director) and the subject of the task (a new hire). 

Data accuracy from day one matters, and woe betide anyone who finds a longstanding error at the 11th hour in December.


Unsung heroes of the SBO, rest easy with a trustworthy enterprise resource planning solution. 
 

Follow-up resource: ERP and record retention

How can a trustworthy ERP help retain records? Let's find out.

 
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