Fulton Street Software

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Fulton Street Software

Asara Makes Audits Great Again

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Audits are a fact of life for agencies. Meaningful data can demonstrate organizational effectiveness, program growth and achievement of goals to funders and regulatory bodies. How do you run Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reports for audits and other purposes? Is it a simple process, or a nightmare involving multiple inputs, pulling data from various sources, and manually tabulating your results?

One of Asara’s newest features is the ability to effortlessly pull a KPI report for any quarter within the current or previous fiscal years. Reports deliver specific high-level performance indicators, such as number of clients served, number of placements, discharges, and other indicators of foster care agency activity.

Reports may also be selected by program and program type (ie, regular or therapeutic).

The report provides users with the flexibility to pull summary or detailed data, which breaks out the numbers behind the trends.

The feature is still in beta testing mode but is available for all existing Asara clients. It can be found in the reporting menu. Click on Management, then select KPI Foster Care Utilization. (If you can’t see it, let us know and we will unlock for you.)

Similarly, Asara makes it simple to compile data for an Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) Resource Audit.

The R29 Report lets the user select a subset of homes and run reports that look at dates in four different ways to answer the multiple ACS questions. For example, a report may combine the re-certification due date, the certification start date, the emergency certification start date, and the status date.

The Res8 provides an even more granular level of detail. It provides a list of homes within a subset and renders a report on what might be missing from each file. For example, Res8 offers a level of detail that is able to show all home members and all of their missing data.

Audits are here to stay. And while it may be an exaggeration to suggest that Asara can make them great, the fact is that with Asara in your toolbox, audits don’t have to be a drain on your staff’s time. Contact us to learn more.

A Calculating Trick! Insert an Excel Spreadsheet into MS Word

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Have you ever inserted a simple table in a Word document, only to enter numeric values and manually manipulate data? Or have you opened a separate spreadsheet only to re-key or copy the results into the table in your document? Do you ever struggle with column alignment or other formatting within Word? And how do you deal with the misaligned results when you paste the values from a spreadsheet into a Word document?

Did you know you can insert a functional Excel spreadsheet directly into your Word document? You can even apply formatting, colors, titles, and enter advanced formulas directly into the Word document!

Here’s how:

  1. Click on the insert menu and table item on the Word Ribbon and select Excel Spreadsheet.
  2. A spreadsheet will appear within your document
  3. Proceed to enter values and formulas as you would in Excel
  4. The Excel Ribbon and menu items appear when you double-click within the spreadsheet. You can format the rows, columns, and values as you would normally in Excel
  5. The non-printed cell borders still appear in the document as you continue to work
  6. When you print the document to a pdf or printer the formatted rows, cells, and columns appear perfectly

Your work just got easier!

 

 

Create Customized Data Collection Forms Like a Pro

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How much easier would your life be if you had an easy-to-use tool that could help you collect outcome data to generate reports for your funders or regulatory agencies, help with internal program development, or create needs assessments to support grant solicitations?

We’ve built that functionality into Asara™, giving users a powerful yet simple tool to create their own data collection forms with no need for coding skills or expert assistance.

Using the Customized Form Data Collection tool, users can create their own custom forms to facilitate the collection of uniform data. Why might you use this tool?

  • Survey foster families
  • Track outcomes for children returned to biological families
  • Track baseline data and outcome data for children through program discharge
  • Collect specific data every time child is placed or transferred
  • Collect relationship data for kinship placements
  • And more

The potential is unlimited. The tool is fully adaptable so that your agency can create data collection tools that are fully customized to your needs.

And the best part? The module is a true DIY tool. Of course, the Fulton Street team is always available to talk you through the process and answer questions. But we’ve created a system that is so intuitive that our clients quickly become do-it-yourselfers.

Want to learn more? Schedule a test drive.

Productivity Hacks: Keyboard Shortcuts to Save You Time

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Data entry, emails, spreadsheets, documents…so much of our work is centered on our computers. As our pre-holiday gift to you, here are our top three keyboard shortcuts that are guaranteed to save you time and increase your productivity.

Get ready to dazzle your co-workers with these little-known shortcuts!

Productivity Hack #1 – Re-open Internet Tabs

“Oh no! I had 10 tabs open and closed the wrong one! Ugh, how do I get back to the site I need?”

This one is easy…simply click Control, Shift and the letter T (ctrl + shift + T).  The tab instantly reopens!

Productivity Hack #2 – Start a New Page

You’re creating or editing a document and want to start a new page. You hit the enter button repeatedly until a page break appears. But there’s an easier way…

Simply click Control and Enter (Ctrl + Enter)

Productivity Hack #3 – Change Indents on a Bulleted List

If you often work with bullet points or numbered lists in Word, this hack is for you. It is a simple way to move an item in a bulleted or numbered list up a level. For example, you type a list that looks like this:

  1. Heading one
    1. Point number one
    2. Point number two
    3. Heading two (oops, I accidentally indented this too far!)

To move “3.” back to become Heading item ‘2’, simply put cursor in front of the word ‘Heading’ after the ‘3.’ and click the ‘shift’ and ‘tab’. This moves the indent back to the left.

How cool is that? Stay tuned to this blog for more shortcuts, hacks, tips and tricks to turn you into an Excel Expert, MS Word Warrior, and all-around office rock star.

Do What You Do Best…and Work Well with Others for the Rest

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Working among child welfare agencies, we’re gratified to see first-hand how much of a tremendous force for good they are: the great work they do, significant positive impact on families and communities, and many lives touched. Rarely are there challenges with doing the work. Rather, it is the ability to report out on all this important work that can pose challenges.

Workers track notes, visits and interactions in notebooks, spreadsheets, and required billing software. No problem here – it gets the job done. But these multiple data points and systems fail to capture the quantity and impact of their efforts.

Another worker must spend hours, if not days, exporting reports from a variety of systems to remove duplicates and tally the numbers. There is a misconception that this system eliminates duplicate data entry. In reality, the result is that many workers are spending valuable time doing duplicate if not multiple data entry.

A far more efficient system would be to have one place to record all clients and services.

That’s why we created AsaraTM. Asara allows users to track clients and the various services provided. Aware of the need to enter the services in appropriate billing software, we configured Asara to require the bare minimum data for tracking while allowing the platform to report out many services for each client. Overlap among clients and cases is managed.

It is not our goal for Asara to be everything for every service and program. Your child and family services agency supports various needs and provides individualized care requiring specific tracking, billing and monitoring – all of which cannot be found in one-size-fits all software. Instead, Asara is a platform that integrates well with others to accomplish the tasks that meet your unique needs.

This kind of integration is at the heart of what you do every day within communities and with people. We do the same – except with software instead of social services. We work seamlessly with others, freeing you up to focus on more meaningful tasks.

Why use medical software to track foster care child and family services? Instead, Asara lets you use specialized software for foster care, foster homes, adoption, youth development, domestic violence and care management all while tracking the multi-services for these clients and others. Clients transition in and out of services, from preventive, foster care, heath homes, B2H and more. Asara enables you to keep all that data in one place. It tracks each client, all services, all workers and start and end dates.

Every day, you provide the care you can and refer out for specialties. Your software should do the same.

Status Reports: Use Asara to Easily Run Your Own

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It is a familiar scenario to many of us…you need to figure out census and service numbers. For example, you may need to pull a report showing:

  • How many clients received services last fiscal year?
  • Or ‘as of’ a specific date?
  • How many clients had at least one active day in care between July 2017 and June 2018?
  • How many clients did you serve for FY19 first quarter? Quarterly reports due?

Pulling this data is easy using Asara tools. You do not need special skills or IT help! Simply follow these steps. If you run into trouble, give us a call.

Run a Child Status Export for ‘As Of’ Reporting:

Navigate to:

  • Client Menu
  • Child Status Update

Use filter to create your “as of” reporting. Keep in mind:

You need to select a status radio button, enter dates AND select status to filter for

  • Click Filter
    • Results appear on grid
  • Click Export
  • You ran your own query! WOO HOO!

You data will appear in a spreadsheet.

Explanation of Status Selections

“In-Status”

  • Produces a list of clients that HELD the specific status you selected for at least one day during the date range
  • If From Date = To Date, list will contain all clients with the specified status as of that date.

*** Other filter criteria are applied after the list of clients is selected based on In-Status.

  • Example 1: if you enter From Date/To Date = 7/1/2017 and status = active,
    • Receive a list of all clients Active on 7/1/2017
  • Example 2: if you enter from date = 7/1/2017 and end date = 6/30/2018 and status = active
    • Receive a list of all clients who had at least one active day between July 2017 and June 2018
      • If child was active prior to 5/1 and stayed active they will appear
      • If child was in and out of absences they will appear (only once)
        • Note there is current status and last status in the export
        • Filter is current status – last status gives you extra data

“Entered Status”

  • Produces a list of clients that ENTERED the specific status you selected during the date range
  • If From Date = To Date, list will contain all clients with a movement on that date resulting in the status.

***Other filter criteria are applied after the list of clients is selected based on Entered Status.

  • Example 1: if you enter from date = 5/1/2015 and end date = 9/30/2015 and status = active
    • List of clients who entered the status of ‘active during that range’
      • Placed client
      • Client came back from an inactive status during that time period
      • This is used for activity queries
    • Example 2: if you enter From date/To date = 5/1/2015 and status = active
      • You will get a list of any child who became active that day
        • Placed that day
        • Came back from inactive status that day