After nearly four years of attempting to install a $2-million software program, city hall has made solid progress in completing the project and has a few steps left to finish.
City hall purchased a program in 2019 called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which allows organizations to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance, and supply chain operations.
Since then, the municipality has been working out the bugs and attempting to meld the previous system with the new one.
However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, based on information city administration presented during the March 13 regular city council meeting as part of the 2022 fourth-quarter update.
Taxation system
Implementing the taxation system has gone well, with the city focusing on cleaning up the database before transferring to the new system, finance director Brian Acker said. The system was supposed to launch on Feb. 1, but the service provider — Central Square — could not work discounts into the new system, so the go-live date was pushed to April 1.
However, the service provider still has several software modifications to make beforehand, including discounts, duplicate tax base issues, phase-in, and several reports and forms, including assessment and tax notices.
Another complicating factor is that the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA) has not provided the municipality with the 2023 preliminary assessment roll, which will delay the assessment notice and tax notice processes.
“At this point, the plan is to complete the assessment notices in the old system and potentially go live with the new system for tax notices, but this will be dependent on Central Square completing the software modifications,” Acker said.
Virtual City Hall
The city rolled out a Virtual City Hall program in December and January to municipal employees first, which allowed them to use the system and uncover issues that the service provider is now attempting to fix, the finance director said.
The city will test those fixes soon, and once that’s finished, staff will have access to the program again, followed by council and the public.
Business Central implementation
Eight modules under the Business Central program are either operational or require further modifications. Those modules include:
- General ledger and financial reporting is functional, but some smaller configurations are required
- Purchasing/accounts payable is functional, but staff are facing a learning curve and modifications are needed to address how purchase orders and standing purchase orders are completed
- Inventory is functional; everything is now fully digital
- Accounts receivable has been tested, but the city is awaiting the processing of the first completed billable jobs
- Job costing is functional, although the module is complex and staff are spending considerable time ironing out processes
- Fixed assets: Implementation is still ongoing
- Cash management: Implementation is underway, with the module consisting of Electronic Funds Transfers (EFTs) for supplier payments and bank reconciliations
- The integration of Questica Budget, Dayforce (payroll) and Central Square are still in development
Meanwhile, since August, the city has installed roughly 1,700 smart water meters as part of its $7 million program, which is providing the municipality with information about properties’ water consumption, said Acker. The finance department will use the data to produce monthly utility billings.
The city has made good progress with the project overall, while it has been transformational for the City of Moose Jaw, he continued. Once the new system is fully operational, everything will be electronic and very little will be done with paper.
“(Overall), a tremendous transformation from where we were to where we are now. However, there is still a lot of work to do over the next year,” Acker added. “We will be working to maximize that system to make it as efficient as possible.”
The next regular council meeting is Monday, March 27.
