Unlock Greater Success: Why Finance Leaders are Adding These Tools to Their ClearGov Toolbox

Overview

Public sector finance teams face the ever-growing challenge of managing complex budgets with limited resources, increasing expectations for transparency, and coordination across departments. To meet these demands, many finance leaders are expanding their ClearGov toolbox, adopting key tools to streamline processes, enhance collaboration, and improve reporting accuracy.

In a recent webinar, finance leaders Alicia Massey (Assistant Finance Director and Tax Collector for the Town of Indian Trail, NC), Mike Folkers (Director of Finance and Administration for the Port of Grays Harbor, WA), and Tristan Gately-Sweatt (Former Planning & Capital Programs Manager for the City of Memphis, TN) shared how expanding their use of ClearGov tools transformed their budgeting processes and set them up for long-term success.

This article will outline why finance leaders are adding tools such as Personnel Budgeting, Operational Budgeting, Digital Budget Book, and Capital Budgeting to their ClearGov subscriptions and how these tools can drive greater efficiency, collaboration, and transparency.

The Challenges Facing Finance Leaders Today

While the benefits of ClearGov’s tools are clear, the path to adopting them often starts with addressing the major hurdles finance teams face. From managing increasingly complex budgets to ensuring transparency and collaboration across departments, public sector finance leaders encounter several common challenges in operating more efficiently.

Managing Complex Budgets with Limited Resources

As budget components grow in complexity, many teams struggle to keep pace with evolving demands. Resource constraints and inconsistent processes across departments can make it hard to manage budgets efficiently, especially when workflows aren’t fully integrated. This often results in longer work hours and increased pressure on finance teams as they attempt to handle complex tasks manually. Without a unified approach, scaling processes and meeting growing community needs becomes increasingly difficult.

Ensuring Accuracy in Budgeting

Accuracy is key to building trust and ensuring that budgets are reliable. When teams rely on inconsistent or manual methods, errors are more likely to occur, leading to inefficiencies and miscalculations. Alicia Massey described how her team faced these challenges: “We had a lot of spreadsheets that were floating around our office. It was not accurate all the time, there were multiple folks editing those spreadsheets, and so we really chose ClearGov to help us be more accurate in what we were doing in our budgeting process.”

Demands for Increased Transparency

Citizens, stakeholders, and leadership expect clear, accessible reporting on how public funds are allocated. However, simply sharing large amounts of data without context isn’t enough—true transparency requires making information easy to understand. Finance teams often find it difficult to present data in a unified and coherent way, which can lead to confusion and undermine trust. Ensuring that reports are clear, accurate, and easy to digest is essential for maintaining transparency.

Coordination Across Departments

Collaborating between departments is critical to successful financial planning, but maintaining consistency and alignment can be difficult. Disconnected systems and processes create communication bottlenecks and delays. Tristan Gately-Sweatt highlighted this issue: “There was not a clear line of communication between department heads and the administration and the finance team. That was our primary motivation to start with ClearGov, and then to expand the use.”

Key Tools These Finance Leaders Added for Success

ClearGov offers a range of powerful tools, and many finance leaders, including Alicia Massey, Mike Folkers, and Tristan Gately-Sweatt, have successfully expanded their use of these tools to drive better results. Here’s how each tool played a role in their success:

Personnel Budgeting: This tool provides an accurate, real-time view of staffing costs, enabling teams to run quick scenario comparisons. For Alicia Massey, this was crucial in answering complex budget questions without having to manually adjust spreadsheets. Personnel Budgeting enabled her team to generate quick, precise estimates for salary adjustments and benefits scenarios, helping them improve decision-making while saving time.

Operational Budgeting: Both Alicia and Tristan utilized Operational Budgeting to streamline their daily processes. The tool allowed them to centralize their budgeting workflows, eliminating the inefficiencies of managing multiple systems or spreadsheets. Operational Budgeting helped Alicia’s team collaborate more efficiently, while Tristan’s team used it to manage and track budget performance in real-time, which greatly improved transparency and coordination across departments.

Digital Budget Book: Alicia and Mike turned to Digital Budget Book to improve how their financial data was presented. This tool automatically generates professional, GFOA-compliant budget reports, complete with customizable charts and graphs. For both leaders, it transformed how they communicated their budgets to stakeholders, allowing for clearer, more polished presentations that saved time and improved transparency.

Capital Budgeting: Managing large capital improvement projects can be complex, but with Capital Budgeting, finance teams like Mike’s and Tristan’s were able to centralize project data, track funding, and prioritize projects more effectively. This tool allowed them to ensure that all departments had access to accurate, up-to-date information, facilitating smoother project management and better decision-making across the board.

Why Expanding the Toolbox Delivers Long-Term Growth

For finance leaders, expanding their use of ClearGov tools is not just about solving immediate challenges—it’s about building a foundation for sustainable growth. By adding key tools to their ClearGov toolbox, teams can drive both short-term efficiency gains and set themselves up for long-term success. Here’s how expanding the toolbox delivers value:

Maximizing Efficiency Gains

When finance teams expand their use of ClearGov tools, they can expect to see the same efficiency gains they’ve already experienced with their initial products. By adding tools like Personnel Budgeting and Capital Budgeting, teams can further streamline manual processes, improve accuracy, and reduce time spent on repetitive tasks. These tools are designed to work seamlessly with existing solutions, allowing finance teams to automate complex calculations, centralize data, and improve collaboration across departments—all while reducing the likelihood of errors that come from manual entry or disconnected systems.

Seamless Integration Across Tools

One of the biggest advantages of expanding the ClearGov toolbox is how well the tools integrate with each other. By adding tools like Operational Budgeting alongside Personnel Budgeting, Capital Budgeting, or Digital Budget Book, finance teams benefit from a cohesive platform where data flows seamlessly between modules, reducing duplicate data entry and minimizing errors.

For example, Digital Budget Book auto-generates key content based on your budget data, providing customizable charts, graphs, and financial pages that improve both data accuracy and readability. This integration ensures that budget reports are not only accurate but also easy to understand for both internal and external stakeholders. Instead of manually creating these elements, finance teams can rely on ClearGov to automatically produce polished, professional presentations with consistent data.

Building a Foundation for Long-Term Success

Alicia Massey – Improving Accuracy and Winning a GFOA Award

Alicia Massey, Assistant Finance Director for the Town of Indian Trail, NC, transformed her team’s budgeting process by adopting Operational Budgeting and Digital Budget Book. “We had a lot of spreadsheets floating around our office. It was not accurate all the time. ClearGov helped us be more accurate in what we were doing in our budgeting process,”  Alicia said. With Digital Budget Book, they produced a more polished budget presentation and won the GFOA Distinguished Budget Award on their first submission. Her team later upgraded to Personnel Budgeting, which allowed them to run multiple salary and benefit scenarios quickly. “The scenarios feature is huge, especially in Personnel. Now, any time [council] asks, ‘What if we do this?’ we can pop off those answers in minutes.”

Mike Folkers – Enhancing Efficiency and Streamlining Reporting

With over two decades of experience in local government, Mike Folkers, Director of Finance at Port of Grays Harbor, WA, used Digital Budget Book and Capital Budgeting to streamline budget reporting and manage capital projects. “I’ve used a lot of different tools over the years, but ClearGov stands out. It’s intuitive, and it makes the entire budget process smoother,” Mike said. After expanding to Personnel Budgeting and Operational Budgeting, his team saw improved accuracy: “I feel a lot more comfortable about the accuracy with using ClearGov versus the spreadsheets I’m using today.” The flexibility of ClearGov’s tools allowed his team to handle updates and changes with ease, further boosting their confidence in their budgeting process.

Tristan Gately-Sweatt – Centralizing Capital Planning and Improving Communication

Former CIP Manager for the City of Memphis, TN, Tristan Gately-Sweatt initially adopted Operational Budgeting to manage the city’s complex budget but soon expanded to Capital Budgeting to centralize project data and streamline communication. “Being able to have one centralized place for departments to submit requests made a huge difference,” Tristan shared. This expansion not only improved internal workflows but also enhanced transparency, allowing department heads and finance teams to collaborate more effectively. Additionally, his team received positive feedback on their 5-Year Capital Plan from stakeholders: “It directly led to more confidence in our ability to manage debt obligations effectively.”

How to Expand Your ClearGov Toolbox

For agencies already using ClearGov’s tools, building on your ClearGov platform is a natural next step toward enhancing efficiency, collaboration, and long-term success. Whether you’re looking to improve scenario planning, streamline capital project management, or create professional budget presentations, expanding your use of ClearGov’s tools can help you reach your goals faster and more effectively.

Assess Your Current Needs

Start by identifying the areas where your current processes could be improved. Are you still relying on manual methods like spreadsheets for personnel budgeting or capital project tracking? Are there bottlenecks in your reporting or collaboration efforts? By assessing your existing workflows, you can pinpoint the tools that will bring the most value to your team.

Explore Key Tools for Expansion

ClearGov offers a suite of tools designed to integrate seamlessly. Here are the top products finance leaders have expanded into for greater efficiency and collaboration:

• Personnel Budgeting: Gain an accurate, real-time view of staffing costs and run scenarios with ease, saving time and improving accuracy.
• Operational Budgeting: Streamline day-to-day budget management, track department requests, and monitor budget performance in real-time, all while reducing manual data entry and administrative tasks.
• Digital Budget Book: Automatically generate professional budget reports with charts, graphs, and customizable pages that improve data accuracy and readability.
• Capital Budgeting: Centralize capital project data, track funding, and prioritize projects with a single platform to improve decision-making and collaboration across departments.

Get Support for Implementation

Building on your ClearGov platform is easy with the support of ClearGov’s award-winning team. Whether you’re adding one tool or multiple, ClearGov’s implementation specialists ensure a smooth transition. They’ll guide you through the setup process, help you integrate the new tools with your current system, and provide training to get your team up and running quickly.

Take the Next Step

Ready to expand your ClearGov toolbox? Reach out to your ClearGov representative to discuss which tools make the most sense for your team’s needs. Whether you want to improve accuracy, boost collaboration, or streamline reporting, ClearGov has the tools and expertise to help you achieve your goals.