Simply Answers now contains a really useful feature that actually allows you to schedule your queries to be automatically emailed to one or more people at a given time.
For example:

• - You can email all new starters every month to management
• - Do a weekly absence report that is emailed to the department managers
• - Report on all holiday booked for the next month

Take a Free Trial today.      View the Quick Tour

Simply Answers incorporates the Simply Personnel security. Simply Personnel will check:

• 1. That the user you have logged in as can see employees in other departments and locations
• 2. The user you have logged in as has a higher security level than the employee you are viewing
• 2. The profile of the user you are logged in as allows the salary value to be viewed.

Simply Answers will ignore all employees who cannot be seen and show a "0" value for the salary if the salary value cannot be viewed.

Simply Answers checks the current job record to determine the department and location the employee is in. If a current job record (i.e. a job record without an end date) cannot be found then Simply Answers will ignore the employee record.

On the work tab of each employee enter the existing payroll number in Sage that this employee belongs to and select the payroll company, for those organisations running just one payroll this will be Main.

Take a Free Trial today.      View the Quick Tour

Simply Answers is divided into three sections. The first is a tree of fields that can be queried, the second is the results grid and the third is a display containing the Structured Query Language to be used for the query. To start your query click on the "+" sign to open the tree and then double click on the field you require. In this example click on the "+" next to Employee and then double click on the Surname field. You will see the Surname field added into the section labelled "SQL to be used for this query:" Now press the "Run Query" button on the toolbar. You will see the results of your query. You could now choose to add more fields by double clicking on another field. In this case double click on the Firstname field and then run the query again. To start a new fresh query click on the "New Query" button. This will clear the results and SQL sections ready for you to select new fields. At this stage you can also choose to print the results or export them to Excel.

Take a Free Trial today.       View the Quick Tour.

You can group and sort queries easily within Simply Answers.
Let's try a simple example:

• 1. Click on New Query to start a new query
• 2. Select Surname, Firstname and Gender and then press "Run Query" on the toolbar
• 2. In the results section drag the Gender column header to the group by section labelled "Drag a column header here to group by that column".

You will now see that the results change to group employees by gender. A handy count of male and female employees is provided. To un-group simply drag the Gender button off the group by section, this will return your query back to normal view. To sort any column, click on the column header this will change the sort order. You can sort multiple columns by holding the shift key while you select columns.

Take a Free Trial today.      View the Quick Tour

Any column within Simply Answers can have a basic total applied.
Let's try a simple example:

• 1. Click on New Query to start a new query
• 2. Double click to select Surname, Firstname and Gender.
• 3. Now open up the Pay Details field by pressing the "+" next to Pay Details.
• 4. . Select Pay.
• 5. Run the query.

You will see the results returned. At this stage you may see Pay values shown more than once for the same employee, don't be concerned because the query is returning current and historic salary values. Click on the Formula symbol on the pay column, it looks an "E" and select the option to see the Average, Maximum, Minimum and Sum. When you press OK you may need to scroll to the bottom of the query and increase the size of the Pay column to see the values returned. In the results section drag the Gender column to the group by section labelled "Drag a column header here to group by that column". You will now see the same values shown within the Gender Group. To un-group simply drag the Gender button off the group by section, this will return your query back to normal view.

Take a Free Trial today.      View the Quick Tour

You can quickly filter any of the results by selecting the filter option on any of the columns.
Let's try a simple example:

• 1. Click on New Query to start a new query
• 2. Double click to select Surname, Firstname and Gender.
• 3. Now open up the Pay Details field by pressing the "+" next to Pay Details.
• 4. . Select Pay.
• 5. Run the query.

You will see the results returned. At this stage you may see Pay values shown more than once for the same employee, don't be concerned because the query is returning current and historic salary values. Click on the Formula symbol on the pay column, it looks an "E" and select the option to see the Average, Maximum, Minimum and Sum. When you press OK you may need to scroll to the bottom of the query and increase the size of the Pay column to see the values returned. In the results section drag the Gender column to the group by section labelled "Drag a column header here to group by that column". You will now see the same values shown within the Gender Group. To un-group simply drag the Gender button off the group by section, this will return your query back to normal view.

Take a Free Trial today.      View the Quick Tour