End of the Year Archives

End of the Year Reminders

Posted on December 20, 2014

end-2014 As the end of the year comes to an end, there are certain steps that should be taken to close out the year with your WRMD account. It is much easier not to worry about your previous years data in the new year, as you can imagine. It is a good idea start in fall… that way you are not rushing to do all the work the last week of December.

1. Reconcile your records.

Search for all the animals still pending and make sure that they are closed out completely as long as they are no longer in care.

The federal report requires that the Disposition and/or Transfer type, Disposition date and Criminal activity fields are completed. If it was a transfer, the Disposition Location and State are required as well.

You can also reconcile rescuers. This feature allows you to identify and combine repeat customers. This is more for your own personal data, not so much for reporting.

For your own records it is good to export a report of all the intake numbers with their City found. Many times cities are spelt incorrectly and this will disturb your data.

2. Try to finish up all your records for 2014 in 2014.

In order for the 2014 Federal and State reports to be correct, you need to get all the patients in the system. Use the Quick Admit extension if necessary. You can still add patients into 2014 in 2015, but unless it is done before the reports are sent, the reports will be flawed.

3. This is a good time of year to look at your data and analyze it.

How did the system work for you. Are there trends that you notice, like not identifying the Sex of some of the animals. Is there a certain group that you would like to search, but can’t figure out how to search them all. Try using keywords as a tool. These observations can help you in 2015. You can change a few behaviors to make sure that the data that you want to get out of WRMD is recorded in the first place.

4. We always make a few updates in the new year.

This year we are going to be changing the names of a few fields and merging others in the new records and the intake screens. No previous data will be lost, but it might be in a different section. We will post these changes before the new year to give you time to adjust to them.

As always if you have any questions or concerns just let us know and we will try to help any way we can. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Important Reminder to All Accounts.

Posted on December 3, 2013

Make sure that all your records for 2013 are admitted before the end of the year. Once 2014 starts you can no longer add cases to 2013. Use the Quick Admit extension if necessary to help speed up the process if you are far behind.

Also, once your records are admitted, remember to reconcile all of your open records before submitting your federal and state annual reports.

Do a search for all the patients still pending and make sure that they are closed out completely (correct disposition, disposition location and disposition date).
The US federal annual report requires the Disposition and/or Transfer type, Disposition date and Criminal activity fields are completed. If it was a transfer the Disposition Location and State are required as well.
On the US federal annual report the column “Nature of Injury” can be filled out by filling in the Master Problem field in WRMD. (This field is going to change names to Nature of Injury in 2014).

For your own information, it is also a good idea to clean up your data. For example, city names may be spelt incorrectly or patients may still be listed as holding at your clinic when they are in-fact already dispositioned. You should try and make sure that all your released and transferred patients have a disposition location and date as well.

Congratulations on (almost) finishing the year! We hope that things went well for you, whether this was your first year using Wildlife Rehabilitation MD or not. For us it was a fantastic year getting to meet and learn from so many great rehabilitators. Because of all of you, we once again have made some great changes to the database and can look forward to an even better new year.

Wildlife Rehabilitation MD vs. the End of the Year

Posted on November 1, 2013

As the end of the year comes to a close there are certain steps that must be taken to be able to close out the year with WRMD. It is best to start in fall, that way you are not stuck doing everything the last week of December.

1. Reconcile all of your open records

Do a search of all the animals still pending and make sure that they are closed out completely.
The federal report requires that the Disposition and/or Transfer type, Disposition date and Criminal activity fields are completed. If the aniamal was transferred then the Disposition location, state are required as well.
For your own records double check Holding at for all non-pending animals, this should be blank.

2. Make sure that all your records for 2013 are entered. Once the new year starts you can not longer add cases to that year. Use the Quick Admit extension if necessary. The previous blog explains how to use Quick Admit.

3. For your own records it is good to export a report of all the intake numbers with their city found. Many times city names are spelt incorrectly and this will disturb your data.

4. There is a newer extension call Wildlife Rehabilitation MD Backup. This allows you to backup all the information for the year yourself. This can be on your computer, server, cd or flash drive. Will also keep all the data stored, it will not disappear, but it never hurts to have triple backups.