​​​Budget Module

​Due to the complexities of government budgeting, our software​ provider Infor CloudSuite offered a partnership with Sherpa Government Solutions. Sherpa is a boutique public sector budgeting software and consulting firm founded in 2004.

The proposed Budget Formulation and Management (BFM) software has been implemented at some of the largest and most complex state and local organizations. Sherpa’s consulting team has implemented more than 100 public sector budgeting projects and averages more than 20 years of direct public sector experience. This team is part of the entire process, from implementation to support.​​​

 

The budgeting solution moves the State’s budget development processes into a single system, including revenue and expenditure planning, cost allocation, base budget development (technical adjustments), agency decision packages, budget office review, reporting, analysis, scenario building, performance monitoring, and budget monitoring. In doing so, the budget module provides:

  • Immediate access to budget, performance and financial information
  • Elimination of redundant data entry and reconciliation processes
  • Elimination of external cuff systems and data residing outside of the tool
  • Ability to track decisions and open items
  • Improved security
  • Lower operational costs
  • Systems that easy to use and roll-out to new or infrequent users
  • ​Systems that are integrated with budgetary and administrative procedures​

Budget Formulation Management (BFM)

BFM supports the critical workflow and analysis requirements in public sector budgeting. BFM provides budget formulation, budget review and decision tracking, base budget development, incremental budgeting, capital programming, strategic planning, budget allocation, budget transfers, and supplemental appropriations.
BFM provides comprehensive personnel cost forecasting, allowing users to forecast salaries and benefits by position, employee, job class, and bargaining unit. Positions can be assigned to incremental decision packages with all the calculations and formulas automatically applied to provide consistent and accurate labor costs. Built on a data structure specifically designed for speed and reporting. BFM table structure provides an environment where any user, at any technical skill level, can prepare their own ad-hoc queries, execute models, and create budget scenarios that meet the complex needs of state budgeting.

 
BFM meets the requirements of all components of the budget cycle, from integrating with source data, preparing budget requests, tracking recommended and legislative changes, through reports and publications and posting the budgets into the financial system. BFM will deliver:

 
  • Operating budget development including the ability to save any number of budget phases, expenses, revenues, FTE’s, attachments and supporting text.
  • Personnel forecasting that will forecast salaries, wages, benefits, supplemental pays, while modeling for inflation, union negotiations, and vacancy management.
  • Capital programming with the ability to build project budgets over multiple years with numerous funding sources, subprojects, line items, phases, etc. The system will track scope and budgetary changes over the projects' entire duration from initial concept and planning to completion.
  • Insert narrative and explanatory text wherever needed. The text will flow into user reports and into published documents.
  • Budget implementation capabilities that systematize the development of monthly, quarterly and annual allotments and spending plans. Tracks performance on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis with integrated expenditure projections including salaries and benefits. Provides forms for requesting budget transfers and supplemental appropriations.
  • Budget forms that can be configured to use client-specific dimensions, read-only data columns (i.e. prior year actuals, original budget, etc.) and any number of data entry columns. Forms can be associated with programmatic initiatives, new service levels, and project phases. Allowing reports to be produced without any manual intervention.
  • Audit trail on all budget entries to ensure data can be traced to the user with a timestamp and reason for the change.
  • Performance management with the ability to track metrics (outputs, inputs, outcomes, etc.) All performance metrics can be connected to strategic missions, goals, strategies, objectives, etc.
  • Performance management can be linked directly to Organizations, Programs, and chart of account elements.
  • Integration with Excel; not only can users upload their requests from Excel with a full audit trail they can also export any report to Excel.​​