| Project: | Budget Book Automation |
| City: | Dubuque, Iowa |
| Population: | 58,877 (2023) |
| Platform: | Workiva |
Chief Financial Officer Jenny Larson has been with the City of Dubuque, Iowa, for 18 years. For much of that time, she served as director of the city’s budget department. Recently, she was asked to take over the finance department, which left the budget team short on staff and experience.
“The budget staff has been built to accommodate my move,” said Jenny. “Two budget analysts came on board in 2022, and Laura (Laura Bendorf, Budget Manager) came on board in 2023,” she said. By late 2024, Jenny was still devoting part of her time to guiding the newly formed budget team.
As she brought the City’s new hires up to speed, Jenny quickly realized that the team needed both a new approach for data storage and an improved process for budget book preparation.
FHB conducted a Workiva Health Check for the City, evaluating their use of the Workiva platform and identifying ways to improve or expand it. Up until that point, they had been using the platform for report writing but had not tapped into its functionality as a single source of data.
Their existing process involved using Workiva Sync to sync data from different Excel workbooks into their Revenue Consolidator and Expense Coordinator spreadsheets. Data visibility was poor, and their review process disjointed.
As a result of the Health Check, the Dubuque team enlisted the help of FHB to meet a series of goals:
As part of the improvement process, FHB used keystones to calculate the numbers in the City’s report, instead of variable, complex formulas. So, when they’re reconciling or reviewing their numbers, it’s easier to identify issues; they can clearly see which segments make up each number.
“That is really going to be a time savings,” said Laura. “It’s a lot more intuitive to just see it,” she added. Before the implementation, in the case of a discrepancy, they had to go back to individual departments to investigate its origin.
“The implementation was smooth, it was fast—which was a very good thing. FHB kept me going and kept me on track. In the weekly meetings, there was always something to cover. I appreciated that kind of general check-in. We were always on the same page with FHB,” said Laura.
Jenny compared her experience with FHB to a recent ERP implementation, which took four years to complete. The ERP project was initially led by a software consultant with no accounting knowledge. “We had to fire her...and we had to fire a project manager...we went through several implementation consultants and at least two project managers,” she said. In comparison, “working with FHB was hands-down a great experience,” she added.
The Dubuque team was quick to praise FHB Principal Consultant Faith Olanipekun, CPA, who led the implementation. “Faith was very responsive. And I really enjoyed the energy and positivity she brought to the meetings. She really kept the project going forward,” said Jenny.
Technical Consultant Myra Rogers also stood out as a key FHB team member. “It was helpful that she had a government background, because she understood,” said Jenny. “She was really knowledgeable,” added Laura.
The Dubuque team is convinced that the project would not have been as successful without the help of FHB.
“I think my five years in finance have taught me that we just don't have the staff capacity required,” said Jenny. “Even if we had the time...FHB's knowledge base made it so much faster,” added Laura
Jenny and team are looking forward to reaping the full benefits of Workiva during their upcoming budget process for fiscal year 2026. "Using Workiva definitely has streamlined the process. I can only imagine it will get better once we're able to use everything that F.H. Black has done,” she said.
The City has a few more FHB-led projects in the works, including organizing their documents, relinking the formulas in their spreadsheets, automating department budget forms, and linking their operating form to their all-expense consolidator.
Six months after FHB spoke with Jenny and Laura about their Workiva database implementation, we checked in for an update on their subsequent initiatives.
Jenny found that completing projects incrementally worked well for her team. “Doing progressive projects really helped. As we did each project, there was less and less involvement from our side, until the final project just went so quickly.”
“There was a lot of work on the FHB side, but limited interaction from our side,
because Faith and the team knew our structure so well and how the files work.
It was really impressive. I don’t think we could’ve asked for a better outcome.”
–Jenny Larson
With FHB leading their projects, the City’s team was able to focus on other essential duties. "We only have three full-time staff, so quite honestly, I don't know when or if we would have gotten to the projects that FHB did. I just don't think it would have been possible. It allowed our staff to focus on budget amendments, annual budget department training, and now we're into the next budget cycle,” said Jenny.
Not only were the projects managed adeptly, but they were also finished, “way before” deadline. “FHB just way exceeded our expectations,” said Jenny. “Nothing was overlooked.”