Keeping up with the numbers could be much easier for the Webster Parish School Board’s finance department after a Monday vote to allocate just over $440,000 for a new accounting software system.
School Board members voted unanimously to approve a recommendation for the purchase of Tyler Technologies Munis software system with Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) from the U.S. Dept. of Education as the funding source.
“This is a software system that has so many functions to help us,” school board Chief Financial Officer Crevonne Odom told board members.
Odom said many features of the new system would help end redundancy and save time by combining activities that have been entered individually. With the new system, balances of contract can be initiated, sick leave documentation will automatically be rolled over without manual entries and general ledger entries can be automatically generated.
“We can generate reports on trends for multiple years such as payroll, retirement, money in each maintenance fund in real time and it will allow employees to get into the system and check their records…so many areas that will increase efficiency,” she said.
Odom said the Tyler Technologies system was selected after a request for proposal was issued earlier this year.
During his monthly report, Superintendent Johnny Rowland asked board members to consider contracting with an outside agency to study system employees’ salaries after the removal of a pay freeze in 2017. Rowland said the study from an independent point of view will help determine whether employees whose salaries were frozen a number of years ago were impacted differently than those who were hired after the freeze was lifted.
If changes might be possible, Rowland said, the independent study would help determine who was affected and the cost of those adjustments.
A number of projects funded through various district maintenance funds and sales tax money also received approval during Monday’s meeting.
