Washtenaw County, Mich., Optimizes Deposit Processing
Organization Profile
- Industry: County Government
- Location: Washtenaw County, Ann Arbor, Michigan
- Number of Employees: 1,400
- Population: 369,000
- Tyler Client Since: 2013
- Tyler Products/Solutions: Cashiering, Content Manager, Enterprise ERP (powered by Munis®), Enterprise Justice (powered by Odyssey®), Enterprise Permitting & Licensing (powered by EnerGov™)
Challenges
The Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor, Michigan) Treasurer has faced the dual challenges of doing more with less and staff turnover. In addition, an increase in payment deposits added to the pressure on treasurer staff, which was handling an average of 70-plus deposits per day. Many of these deposits required multiple, labor-intensive steps, such as entering receipts into Tyer’s Enterprise ERP, the county’s financial system, and managing multiple charge codes.
Recognizing an opportunity to streamline operations, the county decided to combine the strength of Tyler’s Enterprise ERP with a robotic process automation (RPA) solution to optimize payment receipt tasks.
“As with all government, Washtenaw County has too few staff and very limited budgets,” explains Catherine McClary, Washtenaw County treasurer. “And recently, we’ve had tremendous turnover in our frontline entry-level staff. So, we decided to add automation designed to replicate a person’s repetitive, rules-based tasks.”
The county’s core goals were to:
- Automate processing tasks to free up staff time for more meaningful work.
- Improve the accuracy of deposit operations.
Solution
The time was right for the county to automate processes, says Kirsten Osborn, Washtenaw County chief deputy treasurer.
“We’ve had Enterprise ERP since 2017 and Tyler Cashiering,” she says. “And we got to the point where it felt like we were skilled users of the software, but we just had so much volume, so many bank deposits coming in from all of our various departments. We were having trouble keeping up with the workload and needed to figure out a way to handle the transactional work more efficiently.”
The treasurer partnered with the Washtenaw County Information Technology Department to implement a third-party RPA tool that scans downloaded depositor files from the bank for certain easily identifiable deposits. The tool also maps the information to a transmittal spreadsheet that assigns charge codes, general ledger dates, and reference information needed for receipting.
The RPA then uses the payment entry program in Enterprise ERP to enter a receipt, putting it into “In-Review” status to be checked by a person before posting.
Thoughtful preparation was a critical component in the county’s success in setting up the new processes.
“Don’t be afraid to put the time in upfront,” says Keith Shoemaker, Washtenaw County treasury services manager. “You’re looking at ROI because it is an investment of time. To automate our first process, we put over 200 person-hours into it before we really started reaping the benefits. But once you start, it will really snowball. You start with something small, and you can build it out to similar processes. You can copy and paste processes and then update them to whatever slightly different needs you have. So, you will get a return on investment, but you do have to invest the time upfront.”
The software has freed up our frontline staff for more interesting work, customer service, direct customer service, customer service with other departments, and problem-solving.
Catherine McClary
Washtenaw County Treasurer
Results
The county’s efforts are paying off. This automation tool is saving four hours each day in handling receipts and general ledger entry, with a near-zero error rate. The savings equate to about $2,000 a month. The automation has not displaced any staff. It has freed up time for customer-facing work and allowed treasury staff to manage transactional work more efficiently.
In addition, the county, which received a Tyler Excellence Award for its work, has:
- Benefited from detailed, accurate revenue receipting that facilitates the reconciliation process and timely reporting.
- Used Tyler Content Manager to provide additional proof of deposit information.
“The software has freed up our frontline staff for more interesting work, customer service, direct customer service, customer service with other departments, and problem-solving,” says McClary.
“It’s great to work with Tyler,” says McClary. “We appreciate the award recognition, and we will be glad to provide technical assistance to other Tyler customers in governments across the nation.”