Why Lawrence County Board of Developmental Disabilities Chose VIP

The organization has about 60 employees, and its fiscal office manages accounting and payroll while also keeping up with purchasing and employee time.

The Board was doing that work with a combination of systems and manual processes. Its general ledger and payroll were handled through one system. Employee hours were handled separately. Staff submitted timecards using spreadsheets, and departmental time entry happened in another system.

That was becoming hard to manage.

So the Board started looking for a way to bring more of that work together. They recently chose VIP to bring its accounting, purchasing, payroll, and employee time processes into one system.

And while the Board won't be live on VIP right away, the reasons behind the decision already tell us a lot about what they want to change.

So, what was the problem?

The Board's financial information was not all living in the same place.

That created extra work for the people responsible for keeping everything together.

The Board needed financial information that made sense for the programs and services it provides. That meant having its own database and an account structure designed around its own needs.

The County Auditor has different questions to answer than the Board does.

The Board needs to know things like:

• What does this program cost?

• Are we on budget?

• How much did we spend on a particular service?

• Where should that spending be tracked?

Those questions are easier to answer when the books are structured around the organization asking them.

The Board wasn't looking for a single fix.

It wanted accounting, payroll, and employee time to work together.

It also wanted to move away from some of the manual work that came with its existing processes.

The goal was to have the information live in one place instead of asking staff to keep the pieces connected themselves.

So why VIP?

The Board chose the VIP Cloud Product Suite because it could address those needs in one system.

The Board's VIP solution includes:

• VIP Accounting with Departmental Purchasing

• VIP Payroll

• VIP Employee Portal

The Board will also have its own VIP database (separate from the county's) so its financial information can be structured around its own programs and services.

VIP supports account structures with up to nine levels, so the Board can budget and track spending at the level it needs.

And then there is the connection between the different parts of the system. Accounting, purchasing, payroll, and employee time can all work together.

And that's where the Board will start seeing some of the biggest changes.

What will change for the fiscal office?

Accounting will be built around the Board's programs

The Board can build its chart of accounts around the programs and services it manages.

That means a service that needs to be tracked by name can have its own account and budget.

Instead of building a separate spreadsheet to answer a question about program spending, the information can live in the accounting system.

Purchasing will have a clearer path

With Departmental Purchasing, the person who needs to make a purchase can start the process with a requisition.

The request can then move through the appropriate approval process.

Budget checking can also flag or stop a purchase before an account goes over budget.

That gives departments a way to see where a purchase stands and gives the fiscal office another point of control before the money is spent.

Payroll and accounting will work together

Payroll will live in the same system as accounting. When payroll runs, wages and employer matching can post to the general ledger automatically. The fiscal office won't have to create a separate journal entry for those amounts afterward.

VIP also includes direct deposit file processing along with quarterly and pension reporting.

That's one less place where staff have to move information manually.

Employees will be more autonomous

Employees will enter their own hours through Time Entry. Those timecards can then move through a review and approval process.

Time-off requests will also go through the portal, and employees can see their available accrual balances.

Employees can also access their own pay stubs and W-2s.

So instead of every question about a pay stub, tax form, or time-off balance landing on someone's desk, employees can get that information themselves.

What happens before Lawrence County Board of DD goes live?

The implementation process includes three environments: a classroom for training, an internship sandbox for practice, and the live system.

During the internship period, the Board's staff will work with its own converted data in the sandbox.

They can run a payroll.

They can post a journal entry.

They can pull a report.

They can try something and see what happens.

And if they make a mistake in the sandbox, it doesn't affect live operations.

That gives the team time to get comfortable with the system before the real work moves over.

SSI's implementation team will also handle data conversion and validation, lead training, and stay involved after go-live while the Board gets settled.

What can your public-sector office take from this?

While Lawrence County's Board of DD's situation is specific to them, the problems are probably pretty familiar.

Separate systems. Spreadsheets. Repeated data entry. Financial information that doesn't quite answer the questions your organization needs to ask. And staff spending time keeping systems connected instead of using the information inside them.

And if any of that sounds familiar, you don't necessarily have to start by shopping for new software.

Start by looking at where the work is getting repeated.

How many times does the same invoice get entered? How many spreadsheets are involved in payroll? How much time does someone spend tracking down missing information? And what questions does your governing body ask that your current reports don't answer easily?

Those answers can tell you a lot about where your current process is working and where it isn't.

For Lawrence County Board of Developmental Disabilities, that review led to VIP.

Now the Board is preparing for implementation and a move toward a system built around the way it needs to manage its finances, payroll, purchasing, and employees.

We're looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Welcome to the SSI family, Lawrence County Board of Developmental Disabilities!

 Wondering what a move like this could look like for you? Let's talk!

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