Cass County is a government entity serving citizens in the Kansas City, MO area. They provide basic government services such as law enforcement, road & bridge maintenance, health services, and 911 administration. In order to provide these valuable services to the public, Cass County has to effectively manage their resources. Two departments within Cass County are responsible for keeping finances on track- the Treasurer and the Auditor’s office. Steve Cheslik is the Cass County Treasurer and manages all cash flowing in and out of Cass County. He is also in charge of investments and payroll for all departments.
Like many government entities, Cass County managed their finances with a number of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. They had a spreadsheet for all incoming cash flow, another for disbursements, yet another one for investments and one to track all daily activity. Although Cass County had developed a manual system to meet all regulations, the system did not provide a real-time view into financials and it took hours to create a complete picture of their financial position at any given time. Steve Cheslik recalls that the Treasurer’s office was bogged down with redundant data entry, wasting valuable time within their department.
In addition to extremely manual management of their data, Cass County had a paper based receipt process that was causing great redundancy between departments Steve Cheslik explains, “When money came in, we wrote paper receipts in ‘fourplicate’ ditto receipt booklets. The process was very old fashioned and we were getting buried in paper.†The major problem with this paper based process was in the fact that the Treasurer’s office needs to connect with several other offices throughout Cass County. For example, the health department, the clerk’s office, and the assessor’s office produce cash receipts through selling licenses, zoning permits, etc. to the public. All of those receipts need to align with the Auditor’s office who then assigns the correct General Ledger code for the final financial reporting. It was not uncommon to improperly code receipts and then have to track down the cause of discrepancies across multiple departments.
Cass County knew it was time to find a cash management solution that could eliminate these redundant processes and streamline their receipt management.
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