Welcome to the E-rate Manager Training Guide.  This resource has been provided to give you an introduction to E-rate Manager and how to use the key features of this new tool. You can download a copy of these instructons below.

E-rate Manager Sections

Below is a list of the main sections of E-rate Manager along with a brief description of each:

Dashboard
This is the landing page displayed when you first log into E-rate Manager.  On this page you’ll see several charts that provide information about your organization’ Category 2 Budgets (applicants only), Funding History and Funding Utilization as well as recent Form 471 Applications associated with your organization.

Forms 470
These pages show information about Form 470 applications that are available for access based on your organization’s data access plan. More information

Forms 471
These pages show information about Form 471 applications that are available for access based on your organization’s data access plan. More information

Funding Requests
These pages show information about Funding Request records that are available for access based on your organization’s data access plan. More information

Applicants and Service Provides (Advanced and Enterprise Plans)
These pages show Applicant or Service Providers collected from USAC’s E-rate data.  Applicants are limited to states which correspond to your account’s data access plan.  Applicant details include: Address, C2 Budget Information, Site addresses and student counts, and recent Form 470/471 applications

Invoices (Advanced and Enterprise Plans)
These pages show Invoice details from BEARs and SPIs collected from USAC’s E-rate data set of processed Invoice information.

Key Features

Filters

Filters allow you to find data on list pages in E-rate Manager.  They are used for searching and can be combined to allow you to use several different data points to narrow down the list of records being displayed.  Filters can also be combined with Custom Table columns and Saved Views to make displaying the exact data you need easy and repeatable.

Saved Views

Saved Views allow you to store the current Filters and table customizations applied to a view so that you can quickly recall the data you previously searched for in the format you need.  Saved Views are available with the Advanced and Enterprise plans.  With the Enterprise plan, you can save private views or share useful ones with your team.  Advanced plan users can save shared views.

Custom tables

With Custom Tables, you can modify the columns displayed as well as the order they appear.  Columns are updated in real time as you change the settings.  Most lists also include a large set of available options to allow you to build results that contain the data you need to access.

Download

Once you have updated a list table’s Filters and Columns, you can use the Download option to export the displayed results to a file that you can load into Microsoft Excel for additional reporting capabilities.

Notifications

E-rate Manager can provide notifications when changes to funding requests are detected or when new Forms 470 are posted (availability based on data plan).  Notifications can be set up to be delivered via e-mail and within the E-rate Manager app itself.

The FRN Monitor service monitors funding requests and notifications can be configured to alert users when changes are made to important applicants’ or service providers’ funding data.  These notifications are available under the Advanced and Enterprise plans.

Form 470 notifications can be configured to alert you when new Forms are posted and collected by E-rate Manager.  You can also configure filters to help you focus on forms that meet your specific reporting requirements.  These notifications are available under the Enterprise plan.

Account Management

Account admins can easily manage users and the account data plan.  Admins can add and remove account users and create and assign access roles.  They can also manage the data plan used to determine what funding data is accessible.  This includes selecting the Advanced or Enterprise plan as well as which states’ funding data is available.

If you have questions or need assistance: How to contact FFL?