On July 1, the town will convert from the 10-year old SunGard Phoenix General Accounting System to the new SunGard eFinance Plus and K-12 financial and accounting software system. The change will update and automate more of the town’s financial management and accounting functions, reducing the potential for data entry errors, and provide improved capabilities for payroll and town budget development.

To prepare for the change of July 1, the account names and numbers as well as cost allocations had to be adjusted to match that of the new system. So the detailed budget format will be different than in recent years.

The change was coming, regardless. The new budget and system structure is based on the Uniform Chart of Accounts (UCOA), a structure for financial system organization that the State of Connecticut has mandated all municipalities now use. Since the town must migrate financial data from the old to the new system anyway, the Town Financial Director Lee Ann Palladino recommended a simultaneous switch to the UCOA too. In anticiaption, Palladino has prepared the proposed town budget for the next fiscal year to be consistent with the UCOA structure that will be in place on July 1. This is a change from past town practice and may confuse some budget reviewers seeking to compare town departments’ costs and expenses year to year.

“The proposed budget is just being presented in a different format, one that is consistent with UCOA and generally-accepted accounting principles. This is not the way it has been presented in the past,” said First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr. “The impetus for this change is the conversion of the Town to the new accounting system being implemented on July 1.”

How will the budget book change? One example is that the new budget will re-allocate town employee salaries and benefits’ costs between accounts. In the UCOA system, each employee’s salary and benefits’ costs will be lodged in the budget of the department or cost center in which they work. Other costs carried previously in department accounts will be moved to new Town Hall-wide accounts such as the cost of Town Hall copiers moving from each department’s budget to the Town Hall Information Technology (IT) department account.

As a result of these shifts of dollars between accounts, some departments will log higher percentage and dollar increases from year to year than usual. Others may see expenses drop more than normal.

“We’re moving salary allocations to each cost center in this budget,” said Fortuna, explaining how shifts to UCOA will mean budget presentation changes. “What we have to look at in the budget is the bottom line.”

Director of Finance Lee Ann Palladino in a presentation to the Board of Finance on Dec. 6, 2016, explained how the budget process would changes due to the software conversion and movement to UCOA accounting.

First, the town currently categorizes funds as 1. The General Fund and 2. all other off-budget accounts. The UCOA will separate “all other funds” as follows: Special Revenue, Capital Projects, Debt Service Funds, Permanent Funds, Enterprise Funds, Internal Service Funds, Trust Funds, and Agency Funds.

New under the UCOA are that employee benefits—FICA, health and dental, life insurance premiums, and pension costs—will now be charged to each department. Also town pension committee costs will now be withdrawn directly from the pension plan, which will move the town’s pension contribution from 7 to 8.25 percent. Under UCOA, listings for salaries, expenses, and contractual services will be split into seven categories: salaries, employee benefits, purchased professional services, purchased property services, other purchased services, property, and supplies.

The new UCOA-compliant accounting system will split the former Department of Public Works’ budget from one into four component budgets: one for Administration, one for Highways and Streets, one for Snow and Ice Removal, and the last for Vehicle/Equipment Maintenance. The transfer station would be divided into two budgets, one for the Station recycling operation and the other, for waste transportation and disposal.

Conversion Planning

On Aug. 16, 2016, the Town Meeting approved $170,000 to engage SunGard services to support the town’s accounting system conversion and to pay for purchase of SunGard eFinancePlus/K-12 integrated government financial management accounting system. Both the town and the Board of Education will convert to the new system. In Phase One, the town government will move to the new system on July 1. The Board of Education financial accounting system conversion will occur in Phase Two.

During fall 2016, Palladino and the town’s Accounting Department worked with SunGard services to map how the town’s financial information will move from where the data appears now to the new accounts in the SunGard K-12 system where the same information will reside. This mapping of data movement is time-consuming and critically important to a smooth transition from the old to the new system on July 1.

The budget development process will be done for the last time using Excel spreadsheets. However, unlike in prior years, the town departments’ budgets will present expense and revenue categories in a manner consistent with the new UCOA financial accounting and reporting system to which the town will convert on July 1, 2017.