If you’re an Applied Client Network member, you may have noticed that we are currently celebrating Applied Epic Week. Through daily educational offerings, content and forum discussions, Applied Epic Week brings together Applied Systems’ Epic users to share information and insights on using their chosen insurance software system.
On Monday, we asked Applied Epic users to share their latest tips or tricks. From easy, everyday tasks to larger “I wish I had known sooner” advice when configuring the system, users shared their best insight for other Epic users:
Ctrl+Alt+Del
1. “I love the ability to spell-check in Epic via the F7 key. In the notes section of an activity, in the description field of an activity, when utilizing the ‘send via email’ function, just hit F7 and spell-checking begins. I absolutely love this feature. It's the little things that make my day!” —Diane Booth, Alkali, LLC
2. “If you want to turn off the notification box that appears at the bottom right-hand corner, go to Home > Configure > User Options > Notifications > Notification Defaults, and check the button ‘Notify if unsuccessful only.’" —Debra S. Kale, HHM Insurors
3. “My tip — it’s probably known by most of us — but I find putting in the FEIN number and other important numbers is a huge help when setting up accounts. Under the ‘business contacts,’ there is the identification number tab, and I just find it is a huge help!” —Ruth Phillips, Smith Insurance Agency
4. “Current tip: Get an email digest of all the Epic forums sent daily. I love being able to review the different topics to see what is applicable to our agency.” —Amy Meyer, The Bensman Group
5. “My Epic tip is sometimes on a package policy in the Navigation panel, you do not see all of the lines of business applications displayed. This can also happen in the Proofs section. Double-click on the Rolodex Card at the bottom-left corner of the screen, which will minimize the card and open up the navigation panel so you can see everything displayed.” —Evelyn Siverson, Insurance Office of America
6. “My tip is that excel is your best friend when reviewing data for errors. Even your Excel-phobic staff and managers will be thrilled when they see how many hours they can save by using the filter options in excel to slice and dice their Production, Book of Business and Expiration reports.” —Pam Baptiste, FBinsure, LLC
7. “The best thing I have picked up from Epic recently is the ability to select and update multiple open activities at one time. By holding ‘ctrl,’ choosing your activities and then right-clicking to update the who/owner or follow-up date, etc.” —Melissa Kinkaid, United Heartland Insurance Agencies
Migration Nation
8. “For those saying they are migrating from TAM to Epic, make heavy use of the F1 key on your keyboard. The Epic Help file is extremely helpful and gives you help for the specific screen you're on.” —Erich Belan, BrokerLink
9. “A good tip when migrating is to clean up your data — especially contacts, employees and companies — prior to the migration. It is easier to clean up prior than to clean up after when you are all getting used to a new system.” —Collin Passman, The Signature B&B Companies
10. “My tip for everyone migrating to Epic — cleaning up your data should be at the top of your to-do list. It will make the transition a lot smoother.” —Pamela Hall, Bellows-Nichols Agency
It’s All in the Message
11. “I LOVE the e-docs/messages feature. Getting documentation from the carrier (think policies, endorsements, audits, DNOC) delivered to Epic, attached to the client, WITHOUT someone having to go to the carrier website.” —Lori Heemstra, BHS Insurance
12. “Tip: Using the contacts to be able to send emails to the correct client from the attachments in EPIC. You can have it set up to send to the primary contact and then be able to add other contacts to the email without having to use your Outlook or mail server.” —Michelle Callahan, Ames & Gough Insurance/Risk Management
13. “TIP: Did you know that once you locate a client, if you click on an employee's name under Quicklinks, an email can be sent to that person and a copy of your email will be automatically saved to the account without any extra effort?” —Laura Whaley, AssuredPartners
14. “Make your first form in Epic a basic letter template. You'll spend the needed time learning new fields for contact, salutation and closing but not be overwhelmed. Leave the body of the letter blank and you can copy it to create all future form letters.” —Laura Bailey, Central Insurance Services
Attention to Detail
15. “Our most recent tip was for our users to all take a look at the field default options and review them to see if there is anything they could incorporate into their workflows to avoid errors and have settings different than the rest of their team members. Helps greatly! Using reports, we then audit the info they should have and follow up with the users who need to update their field defaults.” —Kayla Ambrosy, Cottingham & Butler
16. “Make sure to configure interface activity alert so each CSA or Special Person is assigned to the activity and knows when an e-doc has downloaded into the system. Initial setup shows the activity alert closed automatically.” —Debbie Kale, HHM Insurors
17. “We are just now ramping up the use of policy marketing, and the more people use it and get familiar with it, the more they are loving it. Whether it’s for new business or renewal, you easily track your submissions and responses, resubmit to other brokers if needed, create your proposals — all from the marketing side — which keeps your current policy side clean.” —Kristin Mead, Boyd Insurance
18. “My tip is to always complete the Account Detail screen and Contacts as soon as you add the account, so it will pull that info into other areas of Epic and reports as needed.” —Wilma Bristol, The Falls Insurance Center, Inc.
19. “My tip came from one of our instructors. Add a client in Epic and use it for your “Procedures & Resources,” a place that all users can access. We did this for each of our major companies/programs, and we add to and update all the time. It’s a great reference to put those things you are learning for the first time and need to go back to remember.” —Ann Tobin, Number One Insurance Agency, Inc.
20. “My favorite thing in Epic is being able to schedule IVANS to run multiple times a day! We have Carriers that send downloads throughout the day and being able to pick those up frequently keeps the info in Epic more up to date. Right now, we have IVANS scheduled to run Monday–Friday, from 4:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., every 30 minutes.” —Casey Hearring, Schultheis Insurance Agency, Inc.
21. “We recently cleaned up a lot of inactive users and deactivated their employee files at the same time. What we didn't think about was that when you deactivate the employee account, their commission agreements and signatures are no longer selectable by the end users.” —Michelle Ouellette, NFP Property and Casualty Services
22. “Configure as many defaults for your users as possible. The less clicks for your staff the better! They will appreciate it, and it will take the guess work out of some areas of the system making them more efficient and productive.” —Jen Wingate, Copeland Group USA
23. “One thing our office has fully embraced is the Tasks feature with activities. We use this to automatically add in support staff to complete a task while not losing track of it, as well as setting ourselves tasks that force us to complete before closing the activity. The latest updated to them allows us to have the activity owner and tasked person to see them on different days, which gives time to have the task complete before popping back in my list. There are many ways we uses Tasks, and I encourage everyone to become familiar with them!” —Yvonne Jones, Cornerstone Insurance Services Inc.
Reporting Priorities
24. “My tip is about Month-End Reports for CL Staff. I have the following reports in Epic Quick View Reports for all my service staff to ensure renewals and new business are invoiced by month-end and transactions aren’t invoiced incorrectly (they show up on the users Epic home screen):
- Expiry List: to ensure all renewals are processed in Epic
- Policies with No Transactions report: to ensure all policies renewed or entered new in Epic have been invoiced
- Production Report by person who entered: so they can see if they incorrectly invoiced a market or pr/br commission
Epic Report Quick View is an awesome feature! You can set up reports for your team for anything you need/want your users to do and ensure they do it right.” —Gina Costa, Dalton Timmis Insurance Group
25. “Quick Reports are a great asset. We have set up quick reports as a way to let the users self-audit. Since these reports update automatically, a PDF of most the reports are saved to a drive monthly.” —Julie Hellman, American Insurance Inc.
26. “Setting up reports that automatically run on a scheduled basis (e.g., expiration lists) and having them go to the recipient via email saves a lot of time every month!” —Sheila Blum, Baer Insurance Services, Inc
27. “Tip for COOs or managers: Do screen audits for every user. All Epic screens are highly customizable. Make sure standards are determined and documented for your agency, then verify all users have customized their screens to meet your agency standard. We have requirements for: Billing screen, Open Activities screen, Transactions tab and Attachments. It is important that all users see the same fields and eliminate fields that aren't used by your agency. Also be sure to set up reports in everyone's Report Quick View, so users can run their own reports and be held accountable to working those reports. Be careful, criteria for Report Quick View reports will often be different than reports you run real-time for yourself or management.” —Jean Stroud, Waites & Forshee Insurance
Policy Talk
28. “Set up an Activity Report that fits your agency’s flow for both the account managers and your accounting department if your agency allows the account managers to ‘sweep payments’ for clients’ policies.
We set up a ‘Sweep Payment Activity Work Flow’ for account managers to utilize, which tracks payment entry details for the policy on clients file, while allowing for better time management entries into the General Ledger by our Accounting Department, as the activity feeds into a weekly report that matches up with the bank withdraws. This leaves little room for error or having to search for the policy number it should be applied to for our large clients that have multiple policies.” —Michelle Allington, Insuramerica of Florida, Inc.
29. “A recent helpful tip I got at a chapter meeting: You can set download suspense to push through even if a policy was left in process. Configure > Interface > Agency > Check box: Allow update for In-Process policies. This would have saved us HOURS when we went live and started download. Now we can just run a report to audit and catch the in-process policies.” —Kate Melnick, Border Perlman Salisbury & Kelly
30. “Our agency attaches at the policy level, so when you are working from your dashboard (or anytime you have the activity open or highlighted) and want to open the policy application it pertains to, you left-click ‘Access’(from the Menu bar at the top) and then left-click ‘Drilldown.’ This will open the application. For example, I have a CHGE activity on my dashboard highlighted and want to check the endorsement received against the policy in EPIC. All I do is Access > Drilldown and this not only opens the client, but the actually policy I submitted the change request on.” —Angela Malott, Lancaster McAden Willis Smith