6.1b ERMUSR 09-11-2018 Elk River ,—
Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING
TO: FROM:
ERMU Commission Theresa Slominski—Finance & Office Manager
MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER:
September 11, 2018 6.1b
SUBJECT:
Staff Update
ACTION REQUESTED:
None
DISCUSSION:
• The fund accounting implementation site visit with NISC staff that was delayed from
July actually occurred this past month, August 28-30. We now have a "mini" upgrade for
AP, Payroll, and Bank Reconciliation as a beta test site (Fixed Assets is still to come.)
We had some software settings changes to make, which changed some processes
minimally, but the overall reduction in manual processes was huge. The success of the
implementation and the preliminary testing all indicate overall success with this long-
awaited project. We have a month end process to run yet for payroll that we were not able
to complete while they were here, but did run the process in a test company to get an idea
of how it will work and that was successful. I have attached an internal blog that NISC
posted to their employees working on the project.
• As previously communicated by Troy, our health insurance renewal was very favorable
with a 5% increase, the lowest renewal rate offered. Our ancillary insurances of dental,
life, AD&D, and disability are renewing with no increases, per our contract.
• We are going to be refunding customers for some deposit interest that they were owed in
2016 and 2017. The interest rate was not accurate in iVUE and did not refund enough
dollars. NISC helped create a spreadsheet of what people are owed and we've mass
applied those credits to customers' accounts. There will also be a special message on the
bill ONLY for those customers that actually receive a refund. That message will say
"Deposit interest from 2016 and 2017 is refunded on this bill."
• Assessment letters will be sent out to applicable customers in the 4 respective billing
cycles of September. Cycle 4's letters were mailed out on Wednesday, September 5, and
letters for cycles 1-3 will be mailed out in the subsequent weeks. This may generate
some phone calls so just wanted to give you a heads up. As a reminder, these letters refer
to past due balances of services that are assessable to their taxes (water, sewer, trash,
stormwater, and some electric). They will have until October 31 to pay or it will be
assessed.
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• The annual Member Information Conference (MIC) provided by NISC is this month,
September 11-13, 2018. We annually send the Customer Service Manager, a Customer
Service Representative, and the Inventory Person; we will also be sending an Accountant
and the Billing Specialist this year.
ATTACHMENTS:
• Picture and internal blog/report from NISC visit
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ABS (internal): Enhanced Divisionalized
Accounting (EDA) #1
Posted by John Weber Aug 30, 2018
This week Ben Cannady and myself were at Elk River Municipal Utilities (just northwest of Minneapolis) to
implement our Enhanced Divisionalized Accounting. Overall, the week was a resounding success.
We kicked off on Tuesday morning by walking through the configuration of the various modules with their staff.
By 10 a.m. we had flipped the switch for them to run using Enhanced Divisionalized Accounting.
They had copied their production company to a test company prior to running their last payroll. This allowed us
to do a parallel payroll and compare. The totals all matched. There were a few questions, but we were able to
answer.
We proceeded to run a preliminary labor (update no) on production and reviewed the current
month's entries and all looked good. We then copied the current production to a test company
and was able to process labor and walk through a few employees. Again, there were a few
questions, but we were able to explain exactly what was happening. They officially do payroll
next Tuesday (Sep. 4) and will run August labor on Wednesday (Sep. 5).
They were very excited about what they saw. They were very eager to give this new functionality
a try. They decided to split this week's AP Check run into two batches just to see how it
functioned. We officially processed two separate AP check runs.
Elk River was a strong advocate for NISC to make these changes -- especially as we look to grow
and expand our presence in the municipal market. Jenny Biorn, one of their accountants, said
"This is awesome. We are so excited." She continued with, "we will tell everyone how smooth the
process went". We took time to have a little bit of a celebration before we left on Thursday as
they have been very patient in waiting for these changes. They couldn't be more pleased.
Thank you to the many NISC employees that invested countless hours in making these
improvements. We know that these changes spanned multiple releases. The week couldn't have
gone any better and thank you for the role you played in this success!!
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