AARP Foundation Tax-aide 2016 District Coordinators Meeting

Good News No changes to basic processes in the Portal All major changes were done in the off-season During the season reporting may be enhanced, but nothing else Tell them that I won’t be around during much of the meeting but always available by email

Policies and Procedures New manual available on Help Center Most changes will be covered later in this presentation Additional changes C2647 Scope Poster must be posted Taxpayer Information and Responsibility document must be available at site Tax Envelope includes Intake Sheet

Prospective Volunteers Can now enter through any part of AARP See Section 4 of the Portal Guide for more information Some PV records may need further adjustments – See Section 5 Overview

Prospective Volunteer Processing Be sure to change the PV status as needed The list of statuses and when to change is in the portal guide under Section 5 – Onboarding – Prospective Volunteer Assignment and Program Volunteer Status Allows National to track the effectiveness of recruitment and retention By the beginning of the tax season all PV should have become volunteers or have a status of On Hold or No Match following the instructions in End a Prospective Volunteer Assignment Record

Prospective Volunteers Changing a prospect’s status to approved will signal that they are ready for training Prospect will gain access to the Help Center for training materials Invitations to the Portal will be sent periodically or the DC can issue an invitation directly This is the list that the instructors will use when scheduling training This is the list that will populate the certification spreadsheet. Always follow the instructions in the portal guide Always ask if you’re not sure – don’t guess and hope!!

Sites Ad Hoc Site Processing and Cleanup Identify ad hoc sites Identify the ones that need to be shown in locator services Identify the ones that should be removed from the portal Already sent email about this – just for review

Sites Local Coordinator can now manage site information LC can and should enter site operations information (dates and times) LC can also enter site metrics See Section 8 – Update Program Location Information and Section 9 – Update Program Metrics Information The goal is to give the Local Coordinator control of their site

Volunteers Emergency Contact Information All volunteers should be encouraged to enter emergency contact information on their record A new report has been created that allows a supervisor to print the emergency contact information for our state They should also be encouraged to check their personal information to be sure that it’s current See Section 7 – Update Volunteer Contact Information

Volunteers Non-leaders (Counselors, Client Facilitators, EROS, Shift Supervisors) should now have one assignment for each site that they volunteer at Required by the IRS grant Needed to identify the amount of effort to run the program Leaders were entered last year but should be reviewed for accuracy

Certification No changes from last year DC receives Excel spreadsheet – this will be sent once PV records are set to Approved DC enters certification information DC enters adjustments to existing site information for returning volunteers DC enters site information for new volunteers DC returns Excel spreadsheet periodically to ADS ADS combines all spreadsheets and sends to the IRS and National ADS updates all portal records to show new volunteers are certified, remove non-returning volunteers, and manages assignment changes (unless the DC wants to do this)

Reimbursements No Excel spreadsheets or other paper processing will be accepted after 12/31/16 All reimbursements must be done in the portal Local Coordinators can now approve reimbursement requests for their volunteers Volunteers for more than one site must enter I expenses (mileage) for each site separately More on this later in the season

Portal Guide Portal Guide Available in Help Center Use “Follow” to get notified of additions/updates and add to Guide Use the pdf version in emails when assisting volunteers LC version is yours to customize, copy, and distribute Submit a Request for new Tip Sheets

Portal and Help Center Portal is a database of AARP Foundation information Not specific to Tax-Aide Discrete pieces of information Does not maintain documents, training, policy, etc. Help Center Contains Tax-Aide specific information Is the repository for training, instructions, and general information

Portal Display Should always show red banner at top with AARP Foundation Tax-Aide For leaders, Dashboard should always show TA-R02-NY3- XX XX = Supervisor if volunteer holds one or more positions that directly supervise others XX = Leader if volunteer holds a non-supervisory position such as Instructor or Administration Coordinator Counselors, Client Facilitators and other non-leadership positions do not see the Dashboard tab See Section 3 Overview for more detailed information Intro to Portal Screens COU, CF, SF, ERO, SCO Intro to Portal Screens – Volunteer Leaders

Portal Display Search Sidebar Used to find a person, site, location, etc. Not the same as searching the Help Center Sidebar On Home tab Has the link to OneSupport Help Center DEMO STARTS HERE

DEMO

Portal Tabs Home and Dashboard Home is a subset of the current dashboard and only shows the top 3 reports Dashboard shows all reports for a group (i.e. NY3 supervisors) Neither are automatically updated when the portal is loaded – be sure to use the Refresh button At the moment they can’t be filtered by district

Portal Tabs Reports Be sure that you are looking at report folders labeled Tax-Aide. States is NOT what you’re looking for New reports are being worked on during the tax season

Portal Tabs Training – not used Reimbursement Can be used but it’s much simpler to check your dashboard Click on Pending Approvals Sort by program Manage the ones in your district/site, using the program identifiers – TA-R02-NY3-Dxx-Sxx (district and site)

Portal Tabs Orders Contacts, Programs, Positions, Locations Be sure that the entire process has completed and you have received confirmation of your order Check the order status Contacts, Programs, Positions, Locations Need to be shown as tabs so that the corresponding information is available but not useful for us Time Entry – not required at the national level but available for use

Help Center Accessed through the Portal using the link in the sidebar The repository of Tax-Aide information Finding information using Search Be careful of using too many words Pay attention to the date associated with the article. Cleanup of old articles is in progress but some are still out there SIGN IN USING TAXAIDEENDUSER

Help Center Submit a Request Send a question or request to volunteers or staff Choose a category Enter all other information and click Submit Watch for messages at the top of the page, either confirmation or error An email is sent to you confirming the receipt of the request

Help Center My Activities Shows all requests that you have sent and their status Also shows all requests that you were cc’d on Clicking on a request will show the details Following will show a list of all sections you are currently following with a link to unfollow

Help Center Access TaxAideEndUser will no longer be available as a way to access the Help Center Prospective Volunteers can now access it directly via the Portal once they are in Approved status

Questions??