Kyle city leaders earlier this month approved a measure to bring its administrative systems into one package.
On Sept. 19, the Kyle City Council unanimously approved a contract and purchase order of $374,579 with Tyler Technologies in order to integrate the city’s finance, utility billing, human resources and municipal court services into one package under the Enterprise program. Tyler Technologies had already integrated the city’s Park and Recreation modules, building services and code enforcement services under the same program earlier this year.
Scott Sellers, Kyle city manager, said this measure would allow city services to work more efficiently.
During the meeting, Sellers said some current services work on independent programs that don’t interact well with each other, leading to extra time spent processing information through multiple programs. As a result, it could open up the possibility for error.
“For example, if someone wanted to sign a child up for a league, the payment would go through a Parks and Rec software and then a finance software to process,” said Sellers. “Under the system it would go through one finance software.”
While the city has internal safeguards to help avoid errors such as having a minimum of two employees look at every transaction, and having two signatures on each check, the city has received notice that its financial reporting was inaccurate during its yearly audits.
Sellers said these errors will dissipate once Kyle fully updates their systems to Enterprise.
“I’m very confident we will not receive a note on the audit this year,” said Sellers. “The fiscal year 2016-2017 may have a note but with an asterisk saying that the city is actively working on its financial software.”
This update would also help increase the effectiveness of the city’s law enforcement information transfers to San Marcos, Sellers said.
The current method involves burning information to a disk and having an officer deliver info by vehicle.
“This will save the city on overtime as the programs will allow officers to take care of these tasks inside of their vehicle rather than dedicating time at the end of the day,” Sellers said.
