District Gets More From ERP Pro With Flexible Budget Tools

Organization Profile

• Industry: Special District
• Location: Joshua Tree, California
• Number of Employees: 25
• Population: 7,500
• Tyler Client Since: 2007
• Tyler Products Used: ERP Pro, Content Manager, Notify
• Tyler Excellence Award Category: Operational Efficiency

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Challenges

Joshua Basin Water District serves about 7,500 residents in Joshua Tree, a small, rural community in San Bernardino County — the largest county in the United States. The state of California designates Joshua Tree as a severely disadvantaged community, where the median household income runs about 60% below the state average. “Responsible stewardship of the financial resources of the ratepayers is very crucial for us,” said Anne Roman, director of finance with an 18-year tenure at the district.

In recent years, the district expanded how supervisors and department heads participate in budget development and monitoring — a deliberate shift away from the finance department setting the budget on its own. But that change exposed a gap in how the district was using ERP Pro. Budget responsibility at Joshua Basin doesn’t follow a traditional organizational chart. Employees within a department may each manage specific accounts, while some accounts span shared “allocated” departments to split costs for things like office supplies across the entire district.

Finance managed the entire budget process in spreadsheets, then manually parsed reports for each manager. “We had to break down any reporting to be able to hand that out to the responsible budget manager — all of that manually, usually within a spreadsheet,” Roman said. “The way that we did this in the past really left a lot of room for error and took a lot of time.”

Solution

From the start, Roman was interested in learning how to use ERP Pro more completely for the district’s budget process. She discovered ERP Pro offered an advanced financial configuration and alternate segment schemas. She spent a weekend exploring the features on her own. “I got the notion pretty quickly that it had a lot of potential,” she said.

By configuring alternate segment schemas in ERP Pro, the district created a flexible association between each general ledger account and the specific staff member responsible for managing it — independent of the formal departmental structure used for audit reporting. “We’re able to maintain that original audit reporting need, but we have this alternate way to report on budgets and monitor performance,” Roman said.

Each budget manager is assigned to their accounts within the alternate schema. Staff who want direct access can log in and view only the accounts that belong to them. Those who prefer reports receive targeted, role-specific budget information on a regular basis. The district also created report groups based on the schemas, significantly improving data grid searches and reporting precision.

“The budget managers know that they’re tied to these accounts. They’re more engaged. There’s a feeling of ownership that comes along with that configuration. It might appear just to be a technical adjustment in the software. However, as a small agency serving a disadvantaged community as we do, these kinds of improvements have significant weight.”

Results

The shift eliminated the manual spreadsheet process entirely. Roman estimates the new configuration saves the district at least 80 hours annually — and at a high pay rate, that translates to roughly $7,000 saved per year. That figure increases when additional reporting time is factored in.

“The payoff was immediate and measurable,” Roman said. “Using multiple schemas — rather than constraining all activity within a single structure — provided the flexibility needed to reflect how budget responsibility is managed in practice.”

The district now maintains clean, concise structures for audits and external reporting while running the internal budget process in a way that reflects how work actually happens. Budget managers who previously had no connection to the financial system are now engaged, accountable, and can monitor their accounts directly. The general manager can also view reporting by individual staff members — on the front-end during budget development and on the back-end during reporting.

Looking ahead, a new GASB 103 pronouncement will require clearer explanations of budget variances — and Roman said the segment schema setup positions the district well for that requirement.

Roman points to internal accountability and fulfilling the district’s responsibility to their ratepayers as the biggest wins. “The alternate segment schemas bring accountability and efficiency into the picture and reduce manual processes,” she said. “That strengthens confidence in the financial data, and we’re able to make better decisions because of that and really just do our jobs as stewards of the public.”