Whether you are a financial professional working for a large or small community, there are lots of recurring tasks and reports in your day-to-day life. Identifying opportunities to prepare ahead of time can help strike a balance between getting the most current reports out the door while setting yourself up to prepare next month’s reports more efficiently.
Here are a few suggestions that scale no matter the size of your utility.
Documenting the Financial Plan
Beyond the budget, what are the three-to-five-year goals of the city or utility? Municipal and utility projects and initiatives often take more than a year to complete. Having an outlook to review and update can help decision makers as they balance future city business with their immediate concerns. Keeping copies of the financial plan readily available to see how it changes from one year to the next gets bonus points. This historical record can provide a useful timeline of projects and expenditures.
Reconciliation
There are certain reconciliation tasks that are required monthly, quarterly, and annually. As you work through them, make sure they are right-sized to the demands of your funds. Beyond that, take a fresh look at some of the other activities and see if there’s a year-end reconciliation that can help improve financial sustainability. Ask questions such as:
Did the water utility sell as much water as expected?
How did sales tax collections compare to the forecast?
Transparency
Identify the appropriate place to publish the work you do. Whether it’s a section to upload financial plans on the city’s or utility’s website or ensuring the reconciliation reports are included in council meetings are accessible to the public, small steps can improve transparency. The results of greater transparency can be improved working relationships between decision makers, staff, and the public.
With all of these recommendations, it may take a little time upfront to set up, but once you do, much of it will become easier to complete moving forward. Hopefully these tips simplify your workflow as you go through the cycles of government – from budget to new council to audit and back again.
If you have questions, feel free to reach out to Ryan Graf, AE2S Nexus Senior Consultant.