Agenda Packets - 1986/01/22 - Laserfiche WebLink

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January 16, 19n6 Page i Finance staff has proposed implementation of an encumbrance accounting system. Encumbrance accounting system would record outstanding purchase orders for goods and services in the financial statements and indicate that amounts encumbered are commitments against budgeted funds. .At the present time our accounting system does not allow for encumbrance dveountinq. Encumbrance accounting would enable the City to have greater budgetary control over expenditures. Finance Department staff also proposes to become mu nr involved in cash forcasting. This would involve scheduling major purchases, such as Capital Improvements, to coincide with time during the year in which the City's revenues are received. Doino so would enable the City to earn a groan! return on its temporarily idle cash and would result in greater amounts of interest income. The purchase of d Computer system will he a drain upon available Finance Department staff time. Initially I will be involved in contract negotiations. Later I will be involved in the conversion and implementation of rxistinq systems to the computer on a City wide basis. 1 have been appointed the City's coordinator and it will be my duty to work with the vendors, the consultant, and the department heads in implemrntinq the conversion to Uu• computer sysh•m on a tim.•ly basis. Finance Department staff will be involved in the conversion of existing computer systems, namely, payroll, utility billing and financial reportinq on the new system. Initially this will involve a great deal of time as we have been informed by both the consultant and the vendor that most likely conversion of existing data into the new s,,•stem will be performed manually. That is, someore will have to keyboard the information into the computer system. After present data has been entered into ''he system testing of all systems to ensure that they perform according to bid specifications will be conducted. After all systems a m in place and running in the marner in which they a:e supposed to it w'il he the duty of the Finance Department to maintain the computer system and order needed supplies. Additional Finance Department staff time will be needed to operate the various systems after successful conversion. This is because the system proposed is a more powerful system than our present system. As such more information will be available to City staff. 9ecause of this more time will be spent in data retry, processing, and check.rq that the information has been processed correctly. Additional Finance Department staff time will he spent in budget preparation. With an additional staff person I anticipate that we would Se able to spend murn time in developing and maintaining work sheets which would track historical costs and in developing work sheets to more accurately forcast future costs. By so doing we feel that we would he able to make more arcurate hudget estimates of future expenditures.