City officials discussed the benefits of a new finance and payroll software that the City Council will vote on. Pictured, from left, are Mayor Eddie Sundquist, Mark Roetzer, acting Public Works director, City Council President Anthony Dolce, R-Ward II, and Matthew Coon, deputy fire chief. P-J photo by Timothy Frudd

City officials believe the potential benefits of a new finance and payroll software could balance out the additional yearly cost of the software.

Elliot Raimondo, corporation counsel, and Mayor Eddie Sundquist presented City Council members with an updated estimate for the new finance and payroll software the City Council is expected to vote on. After putting out a request for proposal and receiving three different bids by finance software companies, the city administration recommended a $106,286.50 software package installation and maintenance agreement with Springbrook Holding Company, LLC. The cost of the new software for the city would be covered under American Rescue Plan Act Transparency and Tracking funds. The annual cost of the proposed software would be $42,300.00, with the initial installation costing $63,986.50.

Unlike one of the other software bids, Raimondo said the Springbrook finance and payroll software includes “everything to do with payroll,” employee retention items, benefits tabs and other helpful tools.

“We are basically going to migrate every paper system that we have now to an electronic system when it comes to payroll, timecards, insurance invoices and general city invoices,” he said.

The city administration previously received a bid of $91,683.50 from Springbrook and reported it to City Council members when John Sellstrom was still the city comptroller; however, Sundquist explained that the original RFP did not include everything needed for the city’s finance and payroll software. He explained that after the information technology department reviewed the bid proposal, the recommendation was that the city include an additional component of the software.

“We are having an increase in fees,” Raimondo said. “Right now, we do pay approximately $19,000 per year, with a new server the that costs between $5,000 and $8,000 every three to five years. This is an increased fee; however, we’ve been using the same software for the last 20 years. Our finance staff has very much justified the need for this.”

Instead of the city paying roughly $19,000 per year for its current KVS financial software, Springbrook’s software will cost $42,300 per year. While the city administration acknowledged the increased yearly cost for the software, Raimondo said the transition from KVS to Springbrook will allow the finance department to migrate the city’s files from paper versions currently in the city vault to an online system that will help increase the finance department’s workflow.

Although the new software would allow the city to transition financial items onto the online system, Sundquist told City Council members that the city will keep various paper files in compliance with local government retention requirements.

“Some things we do have to keep,” he said. “However, we have been scanning, invoices, receipts and things like that for quite some time.

This would allow us to continue to digitize some of that. It would also allow us to approve purchase orders and other things from departments, as well as remove all of our timesheets online. Right now, we do all timesheets on paper, as well as paper slips for each different department.”

According to Sundquist, the new software would allow employees to have their own digital access to pay stubs and allow them to be able to change their tax filings mid-year, both of which, Sundquist said are important to city employees, especially newer employees. He added that the new software would allow city employees to make changes online that could then be reviewed and approved by the city without staff members being required to manually change everything for the employees.

With the additional digitization of the finance and payroll system, City Finance Committee Chairwoman Kim Ecklund, R-At Large, emphasized the importance of ensuring that employees could not sign into work from their cell phone.

“If they are to report at work, that needs to be very clear,” she said.

Sundquist agreed with Ecklund and explained that the city currently has a separate time clock to prevent employees from signing into work on cell phones.

As the city moves towards increasing digitization, Sundquist reported that the “majority” of city employees and officials have signed up for direct deposit, except for some members of the City Council.

While Ecklund said she was fully supportive of the new finance and payroll software, she reminded the rest of the council that the $23,000 increase in annual maintenance costs would have to be accounted for in the city budget.

“That is correct, which is in line with what other systems are currently running,” Sundquist said. “This would be a fully cloud based program. We would no longer have an in-house server, although we would continue running the in-house server for a period of time in order to do lookups if needed for data. The requests using ARPA funds does include the first year’s maintenance. We don’t have to do but we certainly could and can use the Rescue Plan funds for that.”

Ecklund suggested that the city could see yearly saving in paper and other finance expenses with the benefits of the new Springbrook software system. Sundquist agreed with Ecklund, adding that the time savings alone would be beneficial for the city’s staff. Jennifer Williams, city clerk said the benefits of the new software and the increased maintenance costs could ultimately balance out.

In addition to the benefits of the Springbrook software system highlighted by city officials, Sundquist said the new software would allow the city to follow the recommendation from its last audit, which indicated that the city should transition to a new finance and payroll software.