Databus Issue: 2005 1 02/07/2005
A “Perfect” Integrated Financial System? How Perspective Alters Perception
Frank Fish and Jeff McLaughlin Director of Documentation and Training, Account Ma
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California school districts and county offices of education (COE’s) have been become increasingly sophisticated and demanding in terms of features they want in their integrated financial software systems. As the primary home base for these systems, COE’s have come under intense pressure from their local school districts to procure or develop, maintain, support, and provide training on a host of administrative information systems. At the same time, the financial and human resources available to accomplish these critical tasks are increasingly scarce!
For the purpose of discussion, consider the question, “What would the ideal integrated financial system be like?” Before even considering features, we submit that the ideal integrated administrative software system would be backed by years of accumulated business logic that has been thoroughly tested by many school districts and COE’s, and it would be supported by professionals with many years of experience working specifically with California’s local educational agencies (LEA’s). The software vendor and the COE host of the system would each have sound financial footing, competent and stable management, an investment that proves strong commitment to the future, and a culture of service orientation and responsiveness. In addition, the ideal system would be replete with features such as:
• Full support for SACS-compliant account codes, including edit checks for valid SACS field relationship combinations
• Flexible district-defined account code structure that can vary from district to district (even though all are supported by the same COE), including a multi-dimensional balance sheet and the ability to use abbreviated pseudo-codes
• A full-featured accounts payable system, including a variety of user-selectable reports and year-end rollover options
• All-encompassing purchasing systems that include [1] online requisition entry by school site and department staff members; [2] hierarchical schemes to automatically route the requisitions through various levels of approval; [3] laser-printed purchase orders with digital logos and signatures and custom layouts; [4] extensive purchase order change order capabilities; [5] receiving modules with links to fixed assets and warehouse/inventory systems, and; [6] integration with e-purchasing vendors (such as Epylon)
• A full-featured accounts receivable system, including customizable laser-printed invoices and aging reports
• A flexible budget development system that enables multi-year projections and supports separate “models” that can be maintained independently of each other and then merged together for final reporting purposes
• A fixed assets system with GASB 34 compliant reporting features
• A warehouse/inventory system that supports, for multiple warehouses, online requisitions, multiple approval levels, and a wide variety of audit and other reports
• A full-featured general ledger system, to which all the modules listed above post automatically
• Flexible, user-controlled financial reports, with access to multiple years of financial history, including detailed and summary options and cash flow reporting
• Human resources software with flexible query and report-writing tools, including applicant tracking, credentials monitoring and reporting, and job history tracking
• Flexible, district-specific system for maintaining and reporting employee leave data
• Sophisticated position control systems that [1] enable quick labor and benefits costs projections (especially helpful for negotiations); [2] allow direct loading of projected labor and benefits costs into budget development; [3] facilitate generation of pay lines, and above all; [4] provide controls and reports to help administrators maintain informed control over the hiring process and placement of employees
• Ability to easily extract ethnicity, position assignment and credentials data for the CSIS reporting functions of an integrated student information system
• Benefits management software for tracking and reporting benefit plans and dependent eligibility, fully integrated with payroll
• Payroll/retirement software with full support for Section 125 plans, W2 and DE-6 reporting, STRS, PERS and alternative retirement systems
In the “perfect system” all features listed above would be fully integrated to work seamlessly with each other. They would include flexible, user-controlled inquiry and reporting tools. The same look-and-feel would permeate all modules to help decrease training and support requirements.
With all these new features comes increasing expectations for user-friendliness and ease-of-use. Districts now demand a user interface that’s either Web-based or GUI (graphical user interface) in nature. Many LEA’s are demanding that their software providers move in this direction, without losing (or breaking) the features that were built into the text-based systems that dominated in years past.
System-wide controls must be present to ensure data integrity, and the system must be reliable and easy to manage. Security controls must be available at the system, district, employee group (such as “payroll clerks”) or individual user level.
All these features must be designed with flexibility in mind to allow individual districts to configure systems to their unique specifications, without impacting other districts in environments where the system is shared among numerous districts by a hosting COE. This is the area where the authors have noticed the most dramatic change over the past several years.
Although COE’s and school districts share the common goal of educating California’s student population, when put into operation, certain fiscal oversight and fiduciary responsibilities create naturally opposing forces that could easily be perceived as contradictory and even mutually exclusive! A COE team reviewing the list of ideal features bulleted earlier in this article might circle some as mandatory while labeling others unnecessary, while a district team performing a similar review may identify an entirely different set of needs. Cooperative reconciliation of these two “competing” lists can be crucial to successful collaboration between the COE and its local districts.
Some COE’s have developed administrative software in-house for use by LEA’s. If the COE isn’t sensitive to districts’ information processing needs, districts will begin to look elsewhere for software solutions independent of the COE. All too often, the resulting district software solution is neither compatible nor easily integrated with the COE’s solution, creating a potentially adversarial situation that places even more stress on both the COE and district business office staff members.
In years past, it seemed that most of the “maverick” districts (from a COE perspective) pursuing their own administrative software solutions were larger districts – those with enrollments of 30,000 students or more. Fast-forwarding to the present reveals a distinct trend among districts in the 5,000- to 10,000-student population range that are willing to forgo the security and potential cost-savings of county office-hosted systems in favor of alternative systems that are at least perceived to more closely meet their unique information processing needs.
A comparison of the information requirements of districts and COE’s reveals several idiosyncratic differences. The most evident differences include the types of reports required, the specific software modules purchased (or developed) and implemented, and even the types/depth of training needed by end-users. To address these differences, a number of our COE clients have negotiated shared purchasing agreements with one or more of their local districts to provide features, functionality and training that, although unessential for the COE’s operations, are essential from the district’s point of view.
From a cost perspective, collaboration between districts and COE’s generally proves to be much less expensive than districts purchasing their own independent systems simply because fixed costs can be shared over a larger user base. In addition, information sharing is greatly facilitated when districts and COE’s share a common financial system. Despite this, the absence of required functionality, regardless of whether the functionality requirement is real or perceived, is a common motivation for districts to explore beyond their local COE for alternative financial information systems and services. Commonly, the missing functionality most often required by districts and yet unavailable on county office-hosted systems includes position control, benefits management, and other human resources related modules.
Another variation within our client base includes a number of implementations where both the COE and one or more districts in the county are using QSS/OASIS on separately licensed and managed systems to meet their integrated administrative software needs. Sometimes this is due to a wide divergence between the needs or philosophies of the district and its COE, and sometimes it’s due to historical reasons (the district implemented QSS/OASIS first, then when the COE implemented the same solution the district decided to remain independent). This allows each organization to maintain their own system management structure, while facilitating the ability of the COE to review the district’s transactions. This setup also generally makes it very easy to pass data back and forth between the two agencies’ systems.
Another model among our COE client-base includes districts that purchase or develop their own systems for particular ancillary modules, and then the COE and district work with us (QSS) to develop an interface between the COE’s system and the district’s system. Compared to the cost of the district purchasing a completely independent integrated administrative system, the savings realized by this arrangement can be substantial.
A growing number of our COE clients have recently formed creative liaisons with their districts to fund additional software training opportunities. These agencies have realized that economically, it makes the best sense to pool their resources. This arrangement also works well even when the two agencies have separate systems, but are running the same QSS/OASIS software.
Other key areas in which our more successful COE clients have helped satisfy their districts’ financial information processing needs include:
• Proactively providing updates to the districts regarding recent software enhancements (prior to those enhancements being installed);
• Testing and installing software enhancements in a timely manner;
• Providing regular software training opportunities to accommodate changes in staff and their responsibilities, and to empower end users to take advantage of new features and modules;
• Fostering regular meetings of countywide job-alike software user groups, including both district and COE staff.
Balancing the disparate needs of district and COE clients can be a formidable challenge. However, at no time in the past has keeping districts on-line with COE-provided solutions been as important as it is today for cost-containment, information sharing, and fiduciary oversight reasons. COE’s and their districts must remain aware, agile, and adaptable to changing information processing requirements in order to promote and continue these mutually beneficial collaborative relationships.
Quintessential School Systems (QSS) provides integrated school administration software (QSS/OASIS) for countywide use by 23 of California’s COE’s, and for use by several dozen other K-12 and community college districts operating independently of their COE. QSS/OASIS provides most, if not all, of the “ideal” features listed in this article. For further information, e-mail Sales@QSS.com. See our ad below.
