Lauren Roberts

Management and Opportunities Reports in Applied Epic

In our latest article of our Applied Epic Reports series, we will cover Management and Opportunities Reports. Management Reports in Applied Epic are a great resource for auditing. These reports primarily give you a more in-depth look at a user’s security or activity but there are a few hidden gems, which will also be reviewed. In addition to the Management reports offered in Epic, there are a few Opportunities Reports available to you as an owner or manager to monitor your agency’s sales leads.

Applied Epic Management Reports

Permission Detail, Security Group, User Detail and User Login Reports

The first group of reports we will review is a set of reports built around Logins and Security. These 4 reports are: Permission Detail, Security Group, User Detail, User Login Report.

  1. User Permissions Detail Report – you can decide which area or sub area of Epic you want to look at and report who either has been granted access or who is denied access.
  2. Security Group Report – enables you to report on all users within a group and the permissions that group gives each user.
  3. User Detail Report – is often used to document a user’s rights at the time of hire or termination from the company. It is a detailed look at that users group memberships, structure access, program access, and bank account access.
  4. User Login Report – has been used more since the onset of COVID. This report enables management to see who logged into the system and when. Layouts and Criteria for all these reports are rather straight forward.

Unrouted Attachments- Analysis Report

The next report is one from Applied’s latest report pack, the Unrouted Attachments Analysis Report. This report can be run at any time to analyze what items are still in a user’s unrouted attachments folder. This report will highlight bottlenecks in the Front-End Scanning process and which staff members have items unattached. This is a great report to review when you are concerned with items not being processed or processed in a timely fashion. The default criteria looks at all items and all employees an can be adjusted as desired.

Policy Checking Report

Another report that can be utilized to identify bottlenecks is the Policy Checking Report. The Policy Checking report lists the Policy Checking requests that have been sent for processing, with a description of each item, its owner, and its processing stage. This report can help you track the volume of Policy Checking usage in your system and monitor the time that Policy Checks take to complete. Running this report on a weekly basis is recommended, to identify any Policy Checks marked Ready that still need attention and to ensure timely completion of the process and efficient service to your clients.

Verify Policy Renewal Commission Agreements

The Verify Policy Renewal Commission Agreements Report displays each policy’s commission agreements before and after it was renewed using the “Renew” action. If the system has made any changes to the commission agreements, the report also gives the reason for these changes. Use this report to confirm that the correct commission agreement has defaulted on each policy. Unfortunately, if there were commission agreement changes on policies renewed by Download, those will not be included on this report. You can adjust the criteria to focus on a specific structure or even by producer.

In addition to these reports covered above if your agency utilizes Confidential Client Access, myEpic Workflows, or SMS features in Epic, there are additional reports that may be valuable to you here in the Management Reports section.

Applied Epic Opportunities Reports

Before you get started, make sure your sales team is entering and managing Opportunities in Epic. It is an area of Epic that is not widely used but provides valuable information about your pipeline.

From the prospect or client account, click Opportunities. Click the Add button to add a new opportunity. Enter all pertinent information. As the opportunity is worked, have your sales team progress it manually through your agency’s preconfigured sales stages by right clicking Change Stage. This can be done right from the Home Screen. Opportunities can also be entered and managed from the Applied Mobile app!

As Opportunities are won and lost, right click and Close Opportunity with Won/Lost, revenue, etc. Be sure to enter Sales Targets into your producers’ Employee Account (Lookup Employee, go to Account Detail, Sales tab) so they can see their progress on their home screen’s Dashboard.

Sales Report

The default criteria of the Sales Report searches for closed Opportunities that have been Won. The first time it is run, you will need to update the Actual Closed Date to an appropriate range (no longer than 1 fiscal year). For example, if you are looking at sales for 2022, enter an Actual Closed Date of Fixed date range 01/01/2022 – 12/31/2022.

Out of the box, the first part of the report is a detailed listing of won Opportunities, grouped first by the Opportunity owner, then by the month closed, with premium and revenue totals after each month and each producer. Calculated fields will compare the totals with Sales Targets entered in the Employee record. A summary section follows the detail, recapping each member of your sales team for each month of the year.

Pipeline Report

The default criteria for the Pipeline Report searches for Opportunities with a status of Open. The first section is a detailed listing of Opportunities still in your agency’s pipeline, grouped by Owner, then Stage, with Stage Duration, and Estimated Premium and Revenue columns. A summary follows grouping these open Opportunities by Owner, and an Average Duration and totals.

Hit Ratio Report

The default criteria for the Hit Ratio Report is all Opportunities in your database. If you would like only to see the current year’s Opportunities, modify the criteria as needed. This report will return a detailed list of all Opportunities by Owner, followed by a # Won and % Won, # Lost and % Lost, and Total Closed. A summary section follows.

Forecast Report

The default criteria for the Forecast Report searches for Opportunities with a status of Open. It is like the Pipeline Report, but rather than returning all open Opportunities, it is designed to be run for a specific time period. Select the criteria for the Target Close Date within your time range (month, quarter, etc.).

Conclusion

Agency Owners and Operations can use Management Reports to get insight on what rights their employees have, where bottlenecks in process may be occurring and to verify Policy Renewal Commission Agreements and Opportunities Reports to get a glimpse into sales, summarize won and lost leads, and see what is coming in the pipeline.

We also recommend reviewing our previous articles in our Reports Series listed below. If you have questions regarding the use of any of these reports or would like to learn more about how our Agency Consulting Services, can help your agency better-utilize Applied Epic, be sure to contact us today. We would love the opportunity to learn more about your agency and how we can help!

Laura Whaley

Laura Whaley

Agency Consultant
Kite Technology Group

Jenny Honican

Jenny Honican

Agency Consultant
Kite Technology Group

Interface Reports in Applied Epic

In our latest installment of our Applied Epic Reports series, we will review the Interface Reports. Interface Reports can be used in conjunction with your Communications Log or independently. Reports are available for Automated Download Invoices (ADI), Claims, Direct Bill Commission Download (DBCB), eDocs and Policies. The Communications Log is a consolidation of all these reports and will include all lines and products that download. For large agencies or agencies that download with many carriers the Communication Log can become quite lengthy and hard to work with.

Before we look at the reports in each category, know that within each download product type there is an error report. The error reports will tell you when a download was sent by a carrier in which a data field is not accepted by Epic. It is our suggestion to contact Applied anytime you find these in your reports. They will work with IVANS and Carrier partners if necessary to identify what the error was, correct it, and get the item resent. Now, let’s look how some of these other reports available.

Claims

The Claims received report enables the download administrator or processor to choose criteria relevant to the claims they would like to see. Criteria could be claims received on a certain account, assigned to a particular team member, or all claims received within a specific timeframe. Perhaps there is a natural disaster, and the agency is attempting to reach out to clients who have suffered a loss. The agency could use this report to find all clients who reported a claim within the event date(s) for a follow-up.

DBCD Reports

In additional the error report there are two other reports available to DBCD. The first is the Information Received report. This report will show DBCD received for suspended statements. Criteria can include date rate, specific transactions, carrier, and client among many others. The second report is the DBCD Received report. This report shows you which commissions were received within the specific session date(s).

eDocs

Criteria available for the eDocs received report Policy type, eDoc & Message type, and Policy type. Let’s say for example, your agency utilizes account service assistants for processing. The agency would like to have ‘Employee A’ pull a policy checklist for all policies received on commercial accounts beginning with A-L, ‘Employee B’ will be responsible for commercial accounts beginning with M-Z and ‘Employee C’ will handle all Personal Lines clients. You could set up a report that either generates daily or sent to each employee QuickView Reports, which reports which policies were downloaded within their alpha split.

Policies

There are 3 reports available for policies besides the error report. The first is Policies Exception report. This report specifically shows how many downloads were received within the criteria chosen that exceeds the agencies predetermined threshold for premium increase. This report could be useful in circumstances when the agency is seen an uptick in lost business. You suspect that a particular carrier is passing on large rate increases with little notice. Running this report will enable you to pinpoint a particular carrier or even a specific line of business. The second is Policies Information. This report is going to tell you if an issuing/billing company or commission agreement has been updated due to download. The third is the Policies Received report. This report is the most widely used report. Criteria for this report could include structure, servicing, policy type and transaction type among many others.

Conclusion

The reports found under the Interface tab would be helpful for anyone who manages download including your servicing staff. These reports enable your agency to set up reports for processors, so they only see their responsibility as well as research special circumstances within a date or carrier concern. We also recommend reviewing our previous articles about Account Reports, Activity Reports and General Ledger Reports. If you have questions regarding use of any of these reports or are interested in any of our other Agency Consulting Services, contact us today!

Laura Whaley

Laura Whaley

Agency Consultant
Kite Technology Group

Activity Reports in Applied Epic

In this second article of our series on Applied Epic reports, we will review those found in the Activity report group. The default reports in the Activity group provide summaries, but selecting a single activity code in the criteria section allows you to perform a deep dive into its use. For example, if you use a “CALL” activity, but want to know if it’s used properly, you can filter just to that activity to review how it is being used. You may also want to include Activity Notes and/or Tasks to determine whether they are used correctly. Like the Account reports, most data fields can be selected within the Modify Criteria selection of the report detail.

Activity reports can be helpful in determining employee productivity and can also help management discern if more workflow training is needed. Since every interaction is recorded in activities, these reports allow a glimpse into the client base.

With one of the recent updates to Epic, you can also generate Marketing Options such as letters, emails, sticky notes, or SMS based on activities in a report. This could be used to target clients that you want to reach back out to for quoting or re-marketing. Maybe you want to have a quick touch point for new claims activities entered. The possibilities are endless!

Remember to always copy from the main report group to My Reports by clicking Actions > Copy Report To or right clicking the mouse.

Activity Reports in Applied Epic

Below we review some of the more beneficial Activity reports that you can use in Epic. Please note that reports with an asterisk (*) behind the name are part of Epic’s new report pack. If your agency does not have these reports, be sure to contact Applied and have them load the report pack into your databases.

Activity Report

This is the standard “out of the box” report that will provide you a list of activities. Grouped by Lookup Code, the columns provided on the report are the Activity Code and Description, the Who/Owner Code, Follow up Date, Association, Status, Entered On, and Entered By. It’s a good report to use if you just need to know if an activity code is being used, review notes entered, provide a flat number of open activities to evaluate agency workload, or provide a list of past due activities.

Activity Analysis by Who/Owner*

Applied has taken the Activity Report to the next level with the Activity Analysis by Who/Owner. Where the Activity Report is arranged by Lookup Code and returns the total number of activities, this report is arranged by Who/Owner and contains a summary line of number of activities and a breakdown of the number open and closed. Two layouts have been added to the end of the detailed report, including a Summary by Who/Owner of each activity code and a Summary of the total number of activities by Who/Owner.

PRO TIP: On the Layouts screen, copy the Detail by Who/Owner layout (highlight and click Actions > Copy Layout To) to the end of this report’s Layouts to have the Summaries print first.

Carrier Submission Hit Ratio – by Not Written Reason*

In order to utilized the functionality of this report, you must utilize the Marketing Module in Epic along with the Unsuccessful reasons. This report is based on the activity generated by Actions >

Submit to Carriers. The default activity code is SCAS. You can also include manually entered activity codes that are entered for quoting outside the Marketing Module. With that workflow in placey, you can use this report to determine the Hit Ratio and identify patterns with unsuccessful quotes by carrier. Start by entering the quoting activity codes and the carrier/broker in the Criteria section of the report. It will provide a detailed list of each quote and a summary at the end of the section.

Open Activities Analysis by Who/Owner*

Similar to the Activity Analysis by Who/Owner, this report gives a list of all open activities. An extra column on the far left provides Days Overdue. This provides insight into how long it takes employees to complete certain activities as well as finding out if activities are being closed in a timely manner. In addition to using this for follow up, it’s a good report to pull for staff supporting employees who are out of the office for an extended period.

Conclusion

These are only a sample of the various Applied Epic Activity reports that can be immensely helpful to your agency. If you missed last month’s article on Account Reports, be sure to check it out! If you have any questions regarding the use of any of these reports or are interested in any of our other Agency Consulting Services, be sure to contact us today!

Jenny Honican

Jenny Honican

Agency Consultant
Kite Technology Group

Tips and Tricks for Accounting in Applied Epic

There are many different methods and best practices to implement when it comes to Accounting in Applied Epic. In the first of our accounting series, we discussed Agency Bill and Premium Payables; in the second how to reconcile Direct Bill if your agency was on a Cash basis. In the last of this Accounting series, we will review various tips and tricks that may prove useful to furthering efficiency, ensuring accurate reporting, and getting full utilization out your investment into your Epic system.

Change your Default Month/Month End Processes

It’s important to close the month at the end of each accounting month, however, did you know that you don’t have to close on the last day of the month? If you move the default month to the new month, it will stop users from entering any further data in your closing accounting month. Procedures > Accounting > Month End then Actions > Change Default Month. Now you can continue to finish out the closing month without users entering new data. For extra security, you can also lock the month, however, you will have to unlock each time you need to enter something in the prior month. We recommend having a goal of completing your month end processes by the first few business days of the month. Don’t forget to Actions > Close Month, not Finalize!

Communicate within Epic

Many accounting departments rely on paper or email correspondence with servicing staff for things like agency bill invoices, check requests, policy information errors, etc. You can maintain better data and keep documents secured by utilizing activities in Epic to relay that information. There are a few options for utilizing activities for accounting. You can generate an activity from the Generate Invoices event and use that activity to attach invoices from the carrier or broker. Default that activity who/owner to the accounting staff so that they are not only notified that an invoice needs to be paid, but they can quickly access the invoice needed to send with the premium. You can even add multiple choices for different types of invoices. For example, $ABI – Agency Bill Invoice, $RET – Return Premium Invoice, $FIN – Financed Invoice. Another option would be to generate these activities manually. The servicing staff would enter the activity and attach all necessary documents for the accounting staff to access and process. Accounting can use these activities to follow up on payments from the client, carrier or finance company as well.

Go Paperless in Accounting

Another way to maintain accurate data and create efficiency in accounting is to attach ALL documents in Epic upon receipt. Attach items such as commission statements to the carrier/broker. You can even generate an activity when you attach those items so that you know there is a statement that needs to be entered or reconciled in General Ledger. Attach other documents such as vendor invoices, commission agreements, and any other items pertaining to accounting to the company or broker in Epic.

Be sure to label your documents with standard naming conventions. This will create efficiency when you are searching or researching documents. Using naming conventions throughout your accounting processes will increase that searchability and also provide some organization. For example, if you receive a direct bill commission via direct deposit, label the receipt “EFT Travelers May 2022 DB Comm”. Then when attaching the statement label it Travelers May 2022 DB Comm Stmt $1500.00. Lastly, in the Direct Bill Reconciliation, label the reconciliation Travelers May 2022 DB Comm. Notice how each description is very similar but has additional details based on where it is entered. Remember that some information is already generated in Epic, so you won’t need to type it in. An example would be the effective date of a deposit.

Get Better Data with Configure, Required/Desired Fields, and Utilities

There are many tools within Epic that can increase the accuracy and completion of data that can effect your accounting processes. Here are a few that can help:

– Require Pr/Br Commission

Configure > Policy > System Settings > Commissionable Producer/Broker Requirement. This function will ensure a Pr/Br is entered before a policy can be closed.

– Pr/Br Commission Agreements

Configure > Policy > System Settings > Pr/Br Commission Agreements. Here you have 2 options. If the producer/broker has multiple valid agreements you can choose to “Use the prior term’s commission agreement (if valid) upon renewal. This will stop Epic from choosing an agreement at renewal and is specifically beneficial when there is a split agreement between producers.

– Commission/Premium Calculations

Configure > Policy > Commission/Premium Calculations. Turn this function on to calculate any premium/commission at the line level and add it up to the policy level. This minimizes data entry if you have users enter estimated premium and commission only at the first line level of a policy. If you enter the agency commission percent and the estimated premium at the line level, this function will also calculate the estimated commission for you.

– Required/Desired Fields

If you’re having issues getting data entered into certain fields in Epic, right click on the field and select Desired or Required. Desired will highlight the field in yellow drawing the user’s attention to it. Required fields are highlighted in red and the user cannot exit that window before entering data into that field. Be careful when requiring, because the user may not always have the data available when completing certain processes.

– Pr/Br Reassignment Utility

If you have recently created or updated Pr/Br Commission agreements, you can use this utility to assign agreements that are new or updated as long as there is an existing Pr/Br listed on the policy. It is similar to a workload reassignment but with a few different options. This can also be used to cleanup old agreements or reassign books to a new producer or house producer code.

We hope that our Applied Epic accounting series has been helpful to you as you expand on using the accounting functionality in Epic. The KiteTech Agency Consulting Team is here to help if you have any questions about Applied Epic accounting or any of our other consulting services. We have a variety of engagements that are customized to meet your insurance agency’s unique needs. To learn more, please contact us to schedule a conversation. 

Lauren Roberts

Lauren Roberts

Director of Agency Consulting
Kite Technology Group

Developing Standardized Agency Workflows

If you are among the many agencies utilizing the Applied Epic platform, do you know there are a myriad of configurations and uses that you can set to make it work uniquely to your agency’s needs? Even if you are implementing the workflows set by Applied Epic or have developed your own, there will come a time when you need to step back and make sure that those workflows are still working and proving beneficial to your agency. Updating and standardizing your workflows is an important part of running your agency efficiently while also ensuring that information is entered into your database accurately. If you are trying to determine if your workflows are already standardized, or if it is time to update them, it is helpful to evaluate your agency using questions such as:

  1. Are your employees efficient?
  2. Are you getting accurate reports from Epic?
  3. Can you or anyone else follow behind them and understand their work?

If you answered no to any of these questions, then it is time to seriously consider standardizing your agency workflows and doing so will come with many benefits: First of all, standardized workflows can create efficiency when you streamline functions in Configure. An excellent example of this would be having only one activity open per workflow. Second, standardization allows each person in your agency to follow behind someone and understand where they are at in a workflow. Finally, you can prevent harmful E&O exposures by ensuring the workflow requires steps to be followed, such as attaching documents or updating the application properly. Many agencies find that inaccurate reporting is often directly related to the agency workflows. For example, if you are reporting on Estimated Premium and Commission, that needs to be instructed in the workflow. Otherwise, employees may be skipping that field if it is not required in Epic.

When you are ready to develop your workflows, it is important to choose the right team to get the job done. Your team needs to be efficient and open-minded, and you may want a representative from each department for times where you may need more than one activity code per event. Include member(s) of management who will determine what reports are required, and someone who has hands-on working knowledge of Applied Epic, such as an account manager.

Once you have your team in place, you can apply some best practices to the development of your workflows. Remember, adapting what you “used to do” will not allow you to take full advantage of Epic efficiencies.

A great starting point would be in Configure. To automate a workflow, you need to understand Epic Configuration of Events, Activities, and Tasks. You will also need to re-evaluate the Configure setup periodically, especially when there are major Epic updates. Start with Events and identify which ones are associated to activities and how those activities are being generated and used. Determine whether you need an activity to generate for documentation, follow up, or reporting purposes only. Keep in mind that you can set activities to generate in the background or even be kept hidden when you need them only for reporting purposes. Configure your activities with field defaults, follow updates, tasks, and further actions for additional automation.

Next, determine how you will structure your workflow manual. It is best that you categorize your workflows by department and/or process. For example, you may have separate workflows for Personal Lines Renewals – Downloaded and Personal Lines Renewals – Not Downloaded. It is possible that some workflows can be used by multiple departments as well, so be sure to involve representatives from each department, so you do not make changes that negatively impact the other departments.

Finally, remember it is essential to audit your data and employees once you have trained and implemented the standardized workflows. Without auditing, you will be unable to determine whether the workflows that you worked so hard to create are even being followed or understood. Be sure to check out Kite Technology’s webinars for more information on Auditing and Reporting for System Integrity.

Standardizing workflows is a beneficial tool to ensure your agency is getting the best use out of Applied Epic and that information is inputting accurately. It creates efficiency with configured streamlined functions, prevents potential E&O exposures, and allows for employees to easily pick up and work on an account, no matter if it is theirs or another colleagues. If you would like more information about developing your agency’s workflows, email us at consult@kitetechgroup.com or visit us online at https://www.kitetechgroup.com/insurance-consulting.

adam atwell

Adam Atwell

Cloud solutions architect

Adam is passionate about consulting with organizations across the country to help them develop and execute a cloud adoption strategy that meets their business needs and future objectives. Adam oversees and manages our company strategy for Microsoft 365 adoption and is responsible for future growth and development inside Microsoft 365 and other cloud technologies.