20 - Financial Software Upgrade - Laserfiche WebLink

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Item No. 20 Memorandum TO: Mayor, Mayor Pro -Tem & City Council Grayson Path, City Manager FROM: Gene Anderson, Finance Director SUBJECT: FINANCIAL SOFTWARE UPGRADE DATE: June 26, 2023 BACKGROUND: The City's current financial software is located on a server in the West Annex Building. The software vendor is STW, Inc. which the City has used for many years. STW provides periodic software updates but the server is maintained by the City's IT department. A few years ago, STW, Inc. was purchased by Open Gov, Inc. which utilizes cloud based software and has begun to phase out server -based. STATUS OF ISSUE: The City has two major problems with the current software and hardware arrangement. First, the server currently in use is aged, failing, and cannot continue to function in the long term. Second, Open Gov, Inc. is phasing out all of STW, Inc.'s server based software and replacing it with cloud based software. This amounts to a technological upgrade for the software as cloud based software is much more flexible than server based software allowing users to develop their own custom reports in addition to the standard reports already developed. An additional advantage to cloud based software is that updates and maintenance is provided by the software vendor on a continuous basis. The City's IT staff will be freed from all responsibilities related to the software and hardware. In many ways the Open Gov software will look similar on screen to the STW software thus reducing the learning curve for City employees. However, the Open Gov software offers some new features such as workforce planning, collaborative online budget book, performance reporting, and capital planning. Critical financial modules such as general ledger, accounts payable, cash receipts, fixed assets, and utility billing will be available in the cloud based format. Open Gov does not currently have a payroll module, but will maintain our current payroll software for the near future. The City may decide at a later time to contract with a different vendor for payroll if Open Gov does not develop its own cloud based payroll module. Another advantage of cloud based software over server based software is that security in the cloud will be much stronger than what we currently have on the server. The primary purpose for pursing this change now is should our local server fail, the City's general ledger, accounts payable, cash receipts, and utility billing would cease operations, effectively stopping all municipal operations, until restored. This is in many respects the backbone of our operations and must be maintained and protected from failure.