Agenda Packets - 1997/10/06 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Item No. o'ZD Staff Report No. 97-a2�{-�-C, Meeting Date: October 6, 1997 • Type of Business: WK WK: Work Session;PH:Public Hearing; CA: Consent Agenda; CB: Council Business City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council From: Bruce A. Kessel, Finance Director Item Title/Subject: Selection of accounting software Date of Report: October 3, 1997 Background. During the 1970's, the City, along with numerous other cities, used a firm to batch process its transactions on a central computer system. During the 1980's, this firm developed software that would operate on mini-computers which we upgraded to. Initially, this firm upgraded and enhanced the software, but in the 1990's, it made a corporate decision to not enhance its product. Over the last five years, the number of cities using the software has decreased substantially and all the cities remaining on the system are all looking to move to other software within the next year. In addition,the hardware that is used to operate the system is obsolete and can no longer be replaced cost effectively. As such, the City has been looking to replace its software and hardware for the last several years. • Last April, the City reviewed several accounting software packages, and proposed purchasing software from Tauges Redpath. There were several procedural matters that were not followed in accordance with existing policies, including that the contract was not approved by the Council (issue was discussed and budget modifications were made but the software purchase did not actually get approved), the mayor did not sign the contract, and it is subject to interpretation as to whether the purchase was required to follow state contracting procedures. These issues were discussed with Tauges Redpath and in early 1997, the contract was terminated and $14,800 was refunded to the City. As a side note, it is my understanding that Tauges Redpath has only five customers using their product and has made a decision to no long enhance this product; as a result, if the contract would not have been terminated, we may have been in the same as we currently are with our existing software vendor. Over the last several months, we have contacted other Minnesota cities to obtain information relating to the software they use and their associated experiences, obtained names of additional vendors from trade magazines and seminars, etc. We then contacted the software vendors for additional information and eliminated software that we felt was out of our price range. For the vendors that were left, we then had them present detailed information including a demonstration of their product. We also placed a legal advertisement for bids for accounting software and did not receive any response. See the attached summary of the procedures that were followed. Method used to evaluate systems. Vendors all package their produce differently and as such, • we attempted to include comparable systems for all vendors to insure a fair comparison. For LOGIS, the information is stored on their mainframe computer at their facility and we would be