Finance panel to get update on long-delayed upgrade; investment review also slated

A proposal request for Benicia’s new computer finance software is being prepared, the Finance Committee will hear Friday.

And by June, an assessment recommendation should be put before the City Council, according to a pre-implementation schedule prepared by interim Finance Director Brenda Olwin.

Until early this year, the expected improvement to city finance computer software was ONESolution, a program that has become the primary focus of the city’s longtime computer vendor, SunGard.

Since 2010, SunGard had been working with city employees to get ONESolution operating on Benicia’s finance department computers.

The program, then seen as a system upgrade costing about $66,000, was expected to work on computers in other departments as well, to streamline some of the budget and financial tracking procedures and to let computers from Finance and Human Resources share data.

Because this was described as an upgrade to an existing system, the city didn’t seek bids on the project.

Paperwork would be reduced, and the time it takes to generate financial reports would be slashed, the Finance Committee heard through earlier staff reports.

But the conversion ran into difficulties and would take months longer than expected, then-Finance Director Karan Reid told the committee early last year. After she resigned to take another position in Concord, Olwin began examining the project, calling in the Government Finance Officers Association to help her analyze the complications.

In January, she and City Manager Brad Kilger announced that city staff would be looking at “a new paradigm.” They had learned that whether the city converted to ONESolution or sought a different software system, the price would be much greater than expected — ranging between $300,000 and $500,000.

Kilger and Olwin said city staff would develop a request for proposals to determine if another system would be more compatible with the city’s computers and cost less to operate.

At that time, instead of the oral reports the Finance Committee had been receiving, Olwin started providing a progress chart, outlining the stage of development of the new approach.

At Friday’s meeting, the committee will hear that if the Council agrees, the request for proposals will be issued July 15. Vendor responses would be evaluated by Aug. 30, and contract negotiations would be under way by Sept. 30.

In the meantime, the Finance Department is trying to make interim improvements that would reduce the workload and streamline report generating.

Among the improvements that are under way are providing departmental access to Web-based reporting, timecard uploading, lockbox payment processing, charting of accounts and cost accounting and coding.

Olwin also will give the committee a progress report on the development of a 10-year General Fund forecast.

The committee will review the investment report for the quarter that ended March 31. Benicia’s portfolio has Local Agency Investment Fund, treasury bills, federal agency notes, corporate notes, certificates of deposits and trustee accounts, in addition to cash balances in its checking accounts, Olwin wrote in her introduction to the report.

“The city has adequate investments to meet its expenditure requirements for the next six months,” she wrote.

In addition, the portfolio complies with government code requirements, she wrote.

Committee members also will review Olwin’s all-funds summary reports for March, the third quarter reports for the General, Wastewater and Water funds, and the March warrant registers, the city’s monthly audit of payment to vendors that supply services to the city.

The Finance Committee meeting will start at 8 a.m. Friday in the Commission Room of City Hall, 250 East L St.