ELSA User Guide Data Entry Overview 1 I. Log into ELSA Website: http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/dse/datasub/ELSA/index.html Select ‘Enter Early Learning Scholarship Administration (ELSA) Enter your username and password (if you have not created an account, select ‘create account’.) Tip: if you time out or have trouble logging in, close your browser window and re log-in. II. Home Page/Award List The Award list contains all of your active scholarships, children that have an award status of: blank – an award has not been entered incomplete – the award page was opened and saved with insufficient information investigating – a child was created with duplicate information of an existing child. No award can be attached to this child awarded – an award has been saved in the child’s record. Above the award list is a column legend that defines the information found in each column. Hover over the column name to see a description of the contents. Sorting and Filtering Your Award List The default sort order of your Award List is alphabetical by child’s last name. You can click on any column heading [except ‘Action’] to re-sort the order of the list. You can filter your award list by:
Select ‘Enter Early Learning Scholarship Administration (ELSA)
Enter your username and password (if you have not created an account, select ‘create account’.)
Tip: if you time out or have trouble logging in, close your browser window and re log-in.
II. Home Page/Award List
The Award list contains all of your active scholarships, children that have an award status of:
blank – an award has not been entered
incomplete – the award page was opened and saved with insufficient information
investigating – a child was created with duplicate information of an existing child. No award can be
attached to this child
awarded – an award has been saved in the child’s record.
Above the award list is a column legend that defines the information found in each column. Hover over the column name to see a description of the contents. Sorting and Filtering Your Award List The default sort order of your Award List is alphabetical by child’s last name. You can click on any column heading [except ‘Action’] to re-sort the order of the list. You can filter your award list by:
- Last or First name of either the parent or child. This filter only looks for children in your award list, not children entered by other programs across the state. To search for children statewide use the ‘Child Search’ button on the left navigation screen.
- Award Status: Only the active awards default on your home page. If you want to see children that have aged out or have cancelled award, use the award status filter and select ‘aged out’ or ‘cancelled’.. Children that are five years old will be removed from the active award list on the September 1st after they turn five. That is the time they become in-eligible to receive scholarship funds.
- Parent/Guardian is Under 21: This filter will narrow your list down to those parents that were under 21 at the time the scholarship was awarded as entered when the award was created.
- Award Renewals: You can filter your award list to awards that will renew within 30,60,or 90 days so you can begin the paperwork. You can filter for all awards that have renewed in the last 30 days to ensure the paperwork is in and complete, otherwise the award needs to be cancelled.
- Assigned Group: This is an optional data entry field on the child record. Users may utilize this field as
needed to allow filtering of awards. Some RA’s may choose to use this as a case management tool so they can pull all of the records assigned to a specific employee.
Child Search The filter functionality works on the children on the award list page only. To search for children statewide, use the ‘Child Search’ link on the left navigation panel.
FY2016 Funds This section provides a fiscal overview of the allocation (award) your program has received from MDE.
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The Allocation is the grant award your program/region received from MDE. If you have multiple programs funded, this amount will be the grand total of all your programs [RA’s the allocation total will be the amount of your Pathway I grant, and the Pathway II grants to child care programs]. Obligated is how much money you have awarded out to children. As you enter new awards, the obligated number will change. Therefore the Unobligated funds is how much funds is remaining to award to children. The ‘View Allocation’ link will show the amount of funding by program. It also includes expended amounts which will tell you how much you have invoiced within ELSA. The FY2017 Reserve is just an estimate of how much money you will need hold the following year for 3 year olds that could renew in your program. The estimate is based on the current award amount for 3 year olds in your program. This number is meant to be helpful for planning purposes only.
III. Begin a New Award
In the left navigation menu, click “Begin a new Award”.
Search ELSA to see if the child is already in the system. You must enter at least one letter in the Last Name and First Name field. It is best practice to type in only one or two letters in each field to search for children that may have been spelled slightly different but may be the same child.
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Two children were found that meet my search criteria
Swanson, Kristy, L, Jr has a Cancelled Award Status from Southwestern Opportunity Council. The Summary button will allow you to see information on the cancelled award. The Select button will allow you to pick up the child and award them a scholarship from your program. See page 10 for additional information
Swanson, Kay, K has an Awarded Award Status from Bird Island ISD. Because this child has an active award, all you can do is view the summary information on the child.
If you do not see the child you want to award a scholarship to, you may click ‘create award’.
The letters you entered into the search fields will prepopulate in the new screen.
Enter the legal name, birthdate, and gender of the child. This Information can be found on the top of page 1 in the paper Scholarship Award form.
If no child matches the search criteria, you will get a message indicating no child was found and to select ‘create award’ to add the child to ELSA.
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Child information from found on the top of page 1 on the paper Scholarship Award form.
Address The address is from page 1 on the paper Scholarship Award form. The ELSA address field uses the Google Maps functionality to narrow down the valid addresses as you start typing. If you need to override the address you may. The address may be updated at any time.
The Resident School District will be auto selected based on the home address entered. If needed, an alternative district may be selected, by selecting from the drop down list.
If you need assistance identifying the Resident School District, use the District or Poll Finder links.
Homeless and Foster Care Indicator If the child is Homeless or in Foster Care at the time you award them a scholarship, check the indicator box. If it is learned that the child becomes Homeless or in Foster Care at any point they are participating in the scholarship program, check the indicator box [you do not have to actively request updated status on children].
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Once a box is checked, it should never be unchecked. MDE will use the information to report all children that were homeless or in foster care at any point they were receiving scholarships. Income Qualification Select how the family income qualified to receive a scholarship and click save. This information is form page 3 of the Scholarship Award form. The family either provided documentation they are participating in an existing MN or Federal support program, or they provided proof of income documentation.
Save Once you click save the child record is created and the Scholarship Award page opens. This page has several sections to complete. You may click return at any time to save just the child record.
IV. Scholarship Award page
The child information already entered is populated
The next section is the demographic data. Enter any demographic date completed on the paper award form. This information is invaluable in completing program evaluation and impact statewide.
The next section is the Parent/Guardian information. This section is required, but may be updated at any time. Click ‘update guardian’ and the Parent/Guardian page will open.
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The parent information can be found on page 2 of the Scholarship Award Form.
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The information for the “Other Demographics” questions in ELSA is found on page 2 of the paper Scholarship Award form.
. Click “Save”. The next section is the scholarship summary section where you award the scholarship to the child and select the program the child is attending. Before you can complete this section, you must the consent and attestation section below. Skip to 3.16.
.
Consent to Release and Attestations
Before you can award a scholarship you must enter whether the family consented to release information for evaluation, page 5 on the Scholarship Award form. You must also attest that you have verified the child is age eligible and income eligible to participate in the program. Select Yes or No to consent to release information. This is a required field. Enter your initials. The Assigned Group is an option field and can be used to filter the list of children. E.G. If you want to pull all of the children you entered, put your name or a code here.
Click save. You may delete the child record up until you add the scholarship award. This is the only way to change child info unless the SSID Maintainer returns the record to you and unlocks the child name, gender and birthdate fields.
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Click on ‘add scholarship’ if you want to enter the award.
Scholarship Type is either Pathway 1 or Pathway 2. RA’s may have the ability to enter either award type. Pathway 2 programs can only enter Pathway 2 scholarships into ELSA. If you are a Pathway 2 program that is serving a Pathway I child, the RA is responsible for entering that child into ELSA. Award Start Date is the first day of the child’s 12 month scholarship. The award start date should be the date the family is notified they have received an award. Many school districts collect award forms in the spring and start the child in a fall program. The award start date in this case should be the start of the program. Award Amount is how much you are awarding to the child. The maximum award is $7,500 per child per 12 month scholarship, however the award can be lower if the cost of the program is less than $7,500.
Award End Date - See Cancel/End a scholarship section Award End Reason - See Cancel/End a scholarship section
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Program Start Date is the date the child starts attending their selected program. Pathway 1 children have 10 months to select a program. Pathway 2 children must have a program selected when entered into ELSA. Typically Pathway 2 awards have the same Award Start Date and Program Start Date. Program/Site is the program the child has selected to attend. Pathway 2 programs can only select programs and sites that were funded by MDE. To select a program, you must click ‘Select Program’ after picking the program. The list of eligible sites under the program will appear. If there is only one eligible site you are done, otherwise select a site and click the ‘select site’ button. Click “Save” and the scholarship package setup is complete
Editing Date Enter in ELSA
Child Data: The child’s first name, last name, middle name, gender, and income verification fields are editable until the SSID has been assigned to the record. The birthdate field is locked upon saving the child and cannot be updated. There are three ways to make changes:
- If an SSID has not been assigned yet, the resident school district MARSS Coordinator can ‘return’ the child to you which will unlock the birthdate field for you to edit and resave.
- If you haven’t awarded scholarship funds to the child yet, you may delete the record and start over.
- Contact [email protected] and we may be able to delete the award attached to the child, which will allow you to delete the child and all of their information and re-enter into ELSA. This is not possible if the child has a previous award in ELSA.
The address, demographic, and parent/guardian information may be updated at any time.
Parent Data: Parent data can be changed at any time. The parent can be deleted all together and another parent added if needed.
Scholarship Data: The Pathway Type and Award Start Date are locked upon saving the award. The Award Amount may be updated at any time. Always update the award amount to the amount the child used before you cancel the award. The program or site the child is attending may be updated at any time as well. Once the ELSA Payment system is live, the award should be cancelled prior to assigning a new program to an award. See the ELSA Manual for examples of when to cancel or change a program.
Award Amount: Award amounts may be updated at any time. The award amount may not exceed the maximum scholarship amount set for the year. Active awards must be greater than zero. An award can be cancelled at $0.00. After an award is cancelled, the award amount may be decreased only.
A scholarship award should be cancelled if a child informs you that they are leaving your program, would no longer like to receive a scholarship, or have stopped showing up and you cannot get ahold of the family. See the Policy Manual on when to cancel a scholarship. To cancel the scholarship in ELSA enter: Award End Date is the date you want to end the child’s scholarship. Award End Reason is where you select the reason the child’s scholarship is being cancelled. These fields are greyed out until an award was entered and saved. You cannot create and cancel an award in the same entry.
VI. Renewing Awards
Scholarship awards are for 12 months. Children are eligible to renew for another scholarship up until 9/1 of the year they turn 5 years old. It is possible the renewal year will be less than 12 months because the child ages. The renewal will occur the morning of their renewal date (on year after the award start date). Every morning at 2:00 AM the renewal process runs and renews all of the children renewing that day. The renewal process:
- Changes the award start date to one year later - Changes the allocation year to the next fiscal year - Keeps the same award amount value - Keeps the same program/site attending
There are two reasons the renewals will error out.
1. If you do not have enough money in the new allocation year to cover all of the renewing children. If that is the case, you will see the following error.
Click on the link and the error page will open. It will tell you how much you have left unobligated and how much you are trying to renew.
Update the renewal award amounts Update the other awards within the allocation year
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2. If the program or site the child is attending loses its Parent Award rating, a. PWI awards will renew with no program selected b. PWII awards will error out. The error link takes you to the children to update the program they
are attending.
Once you clean up the errors you will need to wait for the 2:00 AM process to run again for the renewals to
process. Renewals process in a batch and if one award errors out it will hold up other renewals of the same
pathway type. For example, it is possible that 2 Pathway I children did not renew because the program/site
was no longer valid, all of the other Pathway I children renewing that day will not renew until the errors are
cleared up. The Pathway II renewals that processed that day will renew successfully. After the renewal occurs,
the award will now be funded out of a new fiscal year and you can open up the award and change the award
amount.
E.g. Child two below has an award out of FY2015. On 10/20/2014 the award will renew
- New award start date will be 10/20/2015 - New allocation year will be 2016 [2016 obligated funds will increase] - The child’s new award may only go through 9/1/2016 if they age out [not another full 12 months]
VII. Reports
Reports are now available within ELSA. Click on Available Reports on the left navigation panel.
A new page will open. Currently there are 5 reports in ELSA.
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Demographics report contains summary demographic information on the parents and children entered with your security clearance. Includes only children awarded a scholarship.
Programs with Scholarships lists all of the programs and sites the children entered with your security clearance that have selected a program. If you run the report in HTML formal, you can click on the number of children attending the program to see the names and award information of the children.
Invoice Report lists the children and award information entered by your security clearance (as long as the child has been awarded funds). Use this report to send to your Regional Administrator for payment requests for FY2016.
Fiscal Allocation shows the grant amount to each Regional Administrator and Pathway II program, how much has been obligated to children, and soon how much has been invoiced for in ELSA.
Program Payment History shows each detailed invoice submitted for each program.
Because all reports are limited to the children entered by your program, you will likely just use the Start and End date parameters. This is tied to the Award start date and end date.
You may run the report in 3 different formats:
HTML – this version may have some hyperlinks available to drill down to more detail
Excel – This version will create a column for each value so you can sort and filter
PDF – This version will create a PDF to save or print
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Invoice Report:
Because Head Starts and School Districts are no longer sending Scholarship Award/Application forms to their
Regional Administrators (RA), they need to verify to the RA the children they are requesting reimbursement for
are participating in the Scholarship program and are eligible for reimbursement. The way to show the RA they
child is participating in the Scholarship program is to generate a report out of ELSA. School Districts and Head
Starts will not need to send a separate verification form to the Regional Administrator. That form is only
needed by Pathway II child care programs to report to RA’s the amount of scholarship per child.
The report parameter page will open. If you are invoicing for FY2016 children only, you may leave the Start
Date as 2015/07/01. If you are invoicing for FY2015 children too, change the start date to 2014/07/01. Select
the output you would like. If you are saving or the report, you should select PDF.
The report will generate a list of the children with a scholarship awarded (the children with no award or no
program selected will not pull into the report).
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VIII. Entering a Payment Request
See the ELSA System Manual for scholarship payment policy related to ELSA. The payment functionality in
ELSA requires two different user roles to enter and submit a payment request to MDE. The Regional
Administrator/Scholarship Administrator role that enters the children and awards scholarships in ELSA will be
the user role to enter the payment request. A new role called ‘Payment Approver’ is required to submit the
payment request, as suggested by financial management best practices.
There are two payment options on the left navigation panel. Request payment to start a new payment request
and payment status to see payment requests that have been started and submitted requests.
To start a new payment request select ‘Request Payment’. That will open the request payment page. Here
you select the pay period you would like to request reimbursement for. A service/pay period will be available
the day after the period ends. E.g. July 1st – 15th will be available starting July 16th.
See the payment section of the ELSA System Manual on how to request payments and how to calculate your
reimbursement request amount.
Note: SA’s will not have the admin fee payment option on their request payment page.
After entering all the charges against the scholarship award, the subtractions section is identifying other
payment sources being made for the child. Common payments include Child Care Assistant payments (CCAP)
or family co-payments. After you enter an amount in the field and move your cursor off the field, the Amount
Requested will update based on Tuition and Fees - Subtractions = Amount Requested.
Once you click save, the child’s request is complete and you are back on the Payments page where you can
select another child for entry.
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Invoice Totals
The collapsible Site Totals link will track all of the individual children added to the invoice. Click to expand the
total to see how much has been requested.
IX. Children Renewing During Service Period/Month
As you select children to include in your invoice, you will notice some children with an i icon after their name.
Hover over the icon to see the message ‘child renews this month’. This icon is alerting you to the fact that the
child was either awarded that month or renewed that month. If the child renewed during the month the child will
be listed twice during the service period they renewed. This is intentional to allow you to charge the correct
award for services provided. You may need to select the other invoice period within the month to invoice each
award appropriately.
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Example: Gene renewed on April 22 2016 and is listed twice in the April 16th – April 31st invoice. He is listed next to his 2015 award and 2016 award. Divide the invoice total appropriately based on days served between each fiscal year.
X. Reviewing Existing Invoices
Once you have finished adding children to the invoice, review the invoice total you may exit the invoice by
selecting any link off the left navigation page. You may create a new invoice or review existing invoices by
selecting ‘Payment Status’
.
All open, in progress, and held invoices will be listed on the Payments page. Follow instructions on top of
page to see completed invoices.
Open: The payment request has been created. It may be edited or submitted for payment by the Payment
Approver
In Progress: The Payment Approver has submitted/finalized the open payment and the invoice is at MDE
to be paid.
Complete: Once an invoice that is ‘In Progress’ is paid by MDE, the status changes to complete.
Held: An open payment request that was not submitted by the payment approver within the allowable
timeline. These files are no longer able to be submitted to MDE for payment.
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When viewing an existing invoice, the Amount column opens up the detail invoice data, the red x deletes
the child from the invoice, and the Site Total shows the financial summary of the invoice.
XI. Finalizing/Submitting a Payment
The only screen available to a Payment Approver is the Payment Status screen. See above section to see
the various status definitions. They are able to view and finalize/submit invoices.
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To submit and invoice select ‘View’ next to the invoice. It opens the invoice page with the invoice total. If
the invoice looks correct use the back button to return to the home page and click ‘Finalize’.
XII. Reporting
The Program Payment History report lists all of the invoices submitted for a program/site. The detail of each
invoice can be viewed.
A Child Payment History report is being developed that will list all of the invoices submitted for a child.
The Fiscal Allocation report will be updated to include expended information.
XIII. Frequently Asked Questions
Q. I selected a service period and the program/site I am requesting payment for is not listed, why?
Only programs/sites that have a child attending during the service period selected will be listed. Review the
children you expect to see to make sure the program/site was assigned during the dates selected.
Q. I selected a service period and a program/site and the child I am requesting payment for is not
listed, why?
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Only children attending the program/site will be listed. Review the children you expect to see to make sure the
program/site was assigned during the dates selected.
Q. I selected a service period and a program/stie and the child I am requesting payment for is listed but
grayed out.
When you hover over the child’s name a text pop-up will explain why the name is grayed out. Currently the
only reason is the child has not yet been assigned an SSID. The SSID number needs to be assigned before
reimbursement can be requested.
Q. I selected a service period and a program/stie and the child I am requesting payment for is listed
with an Icon after the child’s name.
When you hover over the icon a text pop-up will explain that the child renewed during the month you are
invoicing for. Children that have renewed will be listed twice during the service period they renewed. Split your
invoice request between the original award year and the new award year as applicable. It is possible the child
was just awarded during the month you are invoicing for, for those children the message can be ignored.
Q. How can I see past payments made against a child’s award?
Once you select a program/site you will have a list of children eligilbe to invoice during the service period
selected. Click on the expended amount by the child’s name to see past payments made against the award.
Alternatively, select the child’s name to open the invoice form. The top of the invoice form will have a link to
see past payments. We are building a child-level report to run payment history per child.
Q. How can I see past payments made against a PWII program’s grant?
Run the Program Payment History report to see all invoices submitted for the program. You can drill into each
invoice to see the detail included within the invoice.
Q. Why am I entering attendance information?
The Early Learning Scholarship program is intended to provide at-risk children with stable access to high-
quality early learning services. As a result, the scholarship program needs attendance data to assess impact.
Q. When does the expended number next to the child’s name update?
The expended number next to a child’s invoice and on their award form is updated upon saving an invoice
