Original publication date: June, 2007
It has been a busy EDMIS quarter for Softshare. We’ll tell you all about it in the following paragraphs, but first, grab yourself a coffee and get comfortable; it’s going to take a while.
A couple of weeks ago, we discovered a flaw in the way that EDMIS was calculating its long-term client counts. Per SBA's definitions, a client is a long-term client if "counseling includes 5 or more hours of contact time per individual or business during that fiscal year or any prior year." Unfortunately, the EDMIS Web site is only calculating long-term clients as those with more than 5 hours of counseling. In other words, a client who has received exactly 5 hours of counseling is currently not being included on the EDMIS Management reports.
SBA has acknowledged this calculation error and will resolve it before the end of the fiscal year. For the time being, you should be aware that your Softshare 'CATS long-term client calculations will likely differ from those shown on the EDMIS Management Impact report. Thanks to Katrina Roubedeaux from the Merced SBDC program for discovering this discrepancy and thanks to Stan Taylor, the lead programmer on Softshare ‘CATS, for spending several hours researching the issue and ultimately identifying where the error was coming from.
Katrina also raised the issue of business start-up discrepancies. She discovered that the number of business start-ups calculated by Softshare 'CATS is much higher than the number reflected in the EDMIS management reports. This discrepancy is due to a fundamental difference between the way Softshare ‘CATS determines business start-ups and the way EDMIS determines them.
Softshare ‘CATS ties a business start-up to the client, recognizing it as a client “milestone” that occurs once over the client’s relationship with your center. EDMIS, on the other hand, ties business start-up to counseling. Every time counseling session data is uploaded for a client, they want a “yes” or “no” as to whether counseling resulted in a business start-up. The EDMIS system then analyzes a client’s counseling session history and, when it sees a change from “no” to “yes” between two counseling sessions, interprets this value change as a business start-up. Unfortunately, this calculation method does not allow for any error correction (i.e. misreporting field 39 of the SBA 641 for a counseling session, but then correcting it for a subsequent session, could falsely count the client as a start-up or, on the flip side, not remove the client from the start-up count).
Even though we believe that Softshare ‘CATS calculates a much more accurate count of business start-ups, we do realize that this discrepancy needs to be resolved. So, in an effort to better match EDMIS’ calculations, Softshare will be issuing a new build of Softshare WinCATS in the next few weeks. We strongly recommend that lead centers hold off on exporting their EDMIS files until this new build is available.
This new build will not only change the way business start-ups are calculated for future EDMIS exports, it will go back to October 1, 2006 and re-upload all sessions from this fiscal year’s first two quarters with new business start-up data. Unfortunately, this change to the EDMIS upload procedure will not guarantee that your Softshare ‘CATS start-up calculations perfectly match EDMIS’, but you should at least see a much smaller discrepancy.
SBA has alerted us to several changes for the SBA 641 Form that they hope to make effective at the start of fiscal year 2008 (i.e. October 1, 2007). These changes are not yet official as they are still pending OMB approval, but we wanted you to be aware of them early on.
Note: As you read about the proposed updates, you may find it helpful to view the mockup Softshare has posted of the newly proposed 641. The yellow highlights indicate updates from the previous version.
Field 43 of the 641 has changed most dramatically in the sense that SBA no longer wants to track government contracts but instead wants to know about the client's certifications. Since there is no mechanism in place for the EDMIS system to capture this certification data, it is unclear as to whether SBA expects this information to be exported to EDMIS or whether it has merely been added to the 641 for tracking purposes at each individual center. Overall, the proposed changes to field 43 would only require minor changes to 'CATS, namely the ability to track SDB clients separately from 8(a) clients.
In field 45, two new counseling types have been proposed in addition to the “Face to Face,” “Telephone,” and “Online” types that are already present. These are “Prep” and “Update.” If implemented, Softshare ‘CATS would handle both of these behind the scenes. The "Prep" type would be automatically selected by Softshare 'CATS for any counseling sessions you enter with preparation time only.
The "Update" type, on the other hand, would never be assigned to a counseling session record in Softshare ‘CATS because SBA is using it to qualify investment and milestone data. In other words, “Update” would be used during the EDMIS export process to denote a client’s investment/loan information, along with jobs created/retained information. (Softshare will only include this type of data in the export if and when it is absolutely mandated by SBA.)
Last, but definitely not least, is the proposal to individually track the preparation and travel time of multiple counselors per session. This change is not significant from a Softshare ‘CATS programming perspective, but there are discussions as to how this may affect client hours. This issue will be picked up by the ASBDC board and addressed at the national level.
Softshare has a lot on our plate regarding EDMIS, but what exactly do you need to concern yourself with at this point? For now, your only action item (or, rather, inaction item) is to hold off on performing your third quarter exports until we get a new release of Softshare WinCATS to you, which will be in just a couple of weeks. As discussed a few paragraphs earlier, this new build addresses the discrepancy between Softshare ‘CATS’ and EDMIS’ business start-up calculations.
Other than that, all we ask is that you keep an eye out for future EDMIS updates. With all of these pending changes for fiscal year 2008, we’ll have a lot of information to share with you between now and October. Thank you for reading!