6.1b ERMUSR 12-12-2017 Elk River
Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING
TO: FROM:
ERMU Commission Theresa Slominski—Finance & Office Manager
MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER:
December 12, 2017 6.1b
SUBJECT:
Staff Update
ACTION REQUESTED:
None
DISCUSSION:
• Letters have been created for the four billing cycles we will be moving to as we
implement multiple billing cycles in January. There are four separate letters, one for each
cycle, that depicts their new billing and due dates, and gives specifics for the first bills to
be received in January. Some cycles will have two weeks in their first bill and some will
have five weeks, so we are letting the customers know what to expect. These letters will
be distributed with the bills sent in the December 20th billing.
• We continue to have good communication with NISC regarding the accounting upgrades
that they are working on for fund accounting. They are working on fixed assets now, or
so it seems from the line of questioning that they are posing. As I mentioned last month,
the latest improvement they passed along with upgrade 2.39 reduced the due to/due from
entries immensely. This month we had approximately 160 entries compared to
approximately 600 entries per month previously. This has been a very welcome change!
• As year-end approaches, the accounting staff has been concentrating on efficiencies. A
significant efficiency was the ability to import the journal entry detail from an excel
spreadsheet and we will be utilizing this for the large recurring monthly entries for
prepaid expenses, bank reconciliation, payroll splits, investment income, etc.
• We implemented barcode scanning for inventory processing in the electric department
earlier this year and have just recently moved to barcode scanning for the water
department. This speeds up the process by eliminating the need for creating
the worksheet to enter from, as well as reducing keying errors and errors from writing
down the incorrect item number.
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