Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) is the regional government serving the residents of the Sunshine Coast, a picturesque area located along the southwest coast of mainland British Columbia. SCRD’s 313 employees provide the region’s 32,170 residents with a wide range of diverse services, from recreation to regional water.
When we met the District's team, they managed their complex and highly specific financial reporting needs with Caseware Working Papers.
95+ Distinct Entities Create Complexity
The complexity of SCRD’s financial reporting requirements is due in part to the more than 95 distinct services it provides. “It is appropriate to think of each of our different services as a separate company,” explained Tina Perreault, Treasurer for SCRD. “Each has its own set of financials, and we need consolidated reporting as well.”
With an annual report more than 50 pages long, the work required to gather financial statement data was extensive, and potentially error-prone.
Changing Requirements
SCRD began using Working Papers in the late 1990s, but as changing public-sector accounting requirements demanded adjustments to financial reports, the District relied more and more on spreadsheets to balance components of the financial statements.
“We knew that [our platform] was more than capable of handling the new requirements, but we didn’t have the knowledge to make the necessary adjustments,” explained Tina. “So, instead we used dozens of different methods to balance sections within the financials, from leadsheets to spreadsheets. When a change was required, we had to make adjustments to each component.”
SCRD was looking for a better way.
Review Reaps Rewards
“We met F.H. Black & Company at a GFOA (Government Finance Officers Association) conference and spoke to them about our situation,” Perreault recalls. “The firm’s knowledge of both governmental accounting [and our chosen platform] is impressive. I was quickly convinced they were the partners we wanted,” said Tina.
F.H. Black performed what it calls a Health Check of the District's use of Caseware, and provided a list of resultant recommendations. As an example, FHB suggested using the GAAP Financial component of Working Papers; the results of its application have been significant.
“We learned that there are a number of things that we could have been using [the platform] for, to help streamline our operations,” said Tina. “[It] offers extensive forecasting, budgeting, and statistical analysis capabilities that we can now use to our advantage.”
Saving Time, Effort, and Money
“We are saving so much time and effort,” said Tina. “F.H. Black was able to precisely duplicate our financial reporting structure... so we get the results we need with a fraction of the effort.”
SCRD’s auditing firm uses the same platform, which Tina anticipates will result in lower audit fees for the organization. “Our auditors will be able to gather the information they need much more quickly, and it’s in the format they are already using. They spend less time, and it will save us money,” she said.
Training the District's staff was a simple task thanks to [the software’s] intuitive nature. “After an introductory class, they can navigate and problem-solve easily,” noted Tina. “It is a tremendous benefit to the organization to have multiple people capable of sharing the workload. In the past, we really had only one person who understood the whole system, and that is risky for the organization.”
Visibility and Control
Tina appreciates the level of control SCRD maintains by producing financial statements in-house. “We are working to more fully automate our entire audit process, and [the software] is making that possible,” she said. “We have visibility into our statements long before we hand the data off to the auditors. Having this information more quickly helps us be even better at what we do,” she said.
Ongoing Return on Investment
Tina reports that obtaining funding for the software review and implementation of GAAP Financials was a simple matter. “Our Board recognizes the value of investing in technology,” she said. “We were able to communicate the benefits, and [the platform] has delivered on those.”
Tina concluded, “I speak to local governments like ours about [automating financial reporting] and I’m always astounded when they say they still rely on spreadsheets and pivot tables. [Modern tools] are relatively inexpensive for the value they deliver, and the return on investment is rapid and ongoing. Frankly, I think it would be crazy not to use [them].”
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