Validation

Validation applies the rules of the Impact Evaluation Standard to data as it is entered, flagging issues such as:

• A claim made before a role has existed for the required minimum period (for example, 13 weeks for certain employment metrics).
• An FTE claim that exceeds the allowable amount based on the dates provided.
• Missing required or recommended information, such as a postcode needed to determine local or non-local status.
• the opportunity cannot be claimed yet, as only 4 of the required 13 weeks have passed since the employment start date;
• the FTE claimed (0.0833) is more than the FTE allowable to date for this employee (0.0797);
• the Employee Postcode Prefix is recommended but has been left blank.

Validation in Practice

When a project uses Full Data Entry with validation switched on, each record is checked as its fields are completed.

Figure 1 Validation messages on a record in Full Data Entry

A badge beside the record name shows how many issues have been found (for example, 4 Advisories), and an amber message appears under each field that needs attention. In the example above, the messages explain that:

Correct the fields to clear each message. Once submitted, the number of issues on each record is also shown in the Validation column of the Records tab (see the ‘Reviewing and Approving Records’ article).

Validation Modes

Under Advisory mode, records with warnings do not count towards validated totals until all issues are resolved. Validation is only available with Full Data Entry, and the mode is chosen for each project during set-up (see ‘Project Set-Up Step 5: Data Entry and Validation’ in the ‘Converting Bids and Project Set-Up’ article).