Chatham County, North Carolina

Primary Objective

Improve transparency and efficiency in the budgeting process by replacing outdated, manual workflows with digital, accessible, and user-friendly tools.

“ClearGov does not rest on its laurels. There have been constant product improvements over the course of our time with ClearGov that have allowed us to make minor tweaks that make our budget document better.”

Darrell Butts, Assistant County Manager, Chatham County, North Carolina

Background

Located in central North Carolina near the rapidly growing Raleigh-Durham area, Chatham County is undergoing a period of major population growth and development. While maintaining its rural, agricultural character across much of the county, Chatham also is embracing development in its increasingly urban communities.

After working at several larger North Carolina counties, Assistant County Manager Darrell Butts sought out Chatham County for its smaller size and the ability to have a broader organizational impact. Butts initially joined Chatham County as Budget Analyst. He was later promoted to Budget Director, and he now serves as the Assistant County Manager. Butts still maintains oversight over budgeting, and he sees it as a critical area for making organization-wide improvements. “I can’t really give up that first love I have, with budget,” he says. 

“One of the biggest benefits of the Digital Budget Book for staff and residents is that they can access the budget data or the information that they’re interested in much, much faster. It’s very similar with our CIP document that we create.”

Darrell Butts, Assistant County Manager, Chatham County, North Carolina

Challenge

Before implementing ClearGov, Chatham County used a manual, high-touch process to handle its capital budgeting and the creation of its budget book. Chatham County managed its capital budgeting by using a cumbersome 30-year-old Microsoft Access database. The database was slow to load, prone to crashing, and accessible only to the budget team. From there, the County prepared its capital improvement plan (CIP) documents by taking data from the Microsoft Access database, putting it into multiple spreadsheets for each capital project, and then formatting it into a document.

Once Chatham County finished building its budgets, the budget team stitched its budget book together using a similar manual process to its CIPs. The County worked with up to 30 separate Excel spreadsheets of data, copied them into Word documents, and converted them into PDFs. 

Chatham County’s manual budget book preparation process took away from the County’s ability to share its financial information with staff and residents. Because the County’s budget book took so long to compile on time, the County had to de-prioritize its focus on data storytelling and cross-departmental goal alignment.  Once staff and residents had the final PDF, it would be challenging for them to find specific pieces of information. 

“Before ClearGov, we had to focus on the output of a document, so that we were not able to spend the time ensuring that we were sharing the good work of our departments as part of the budget document.”

Darrell Butts, Assistant County Manager, Chatham County, North Carolina

Solution

After the end of a particularly taxing budget cycle, a new budget team member pointed out to Butts and his colleague how manual the County’s budget book workflows had become. This led Butts to begin searching for solutions that could modernize their budget book processes. Butts especially wanted a solution that could produce a digital-first budget book, as opposed to PDF pages. 

At the same time, Chatham County’s aging Microsoft Access database had run its course as a capital budgeting tool. So, Butts was independently searching for an improved solution for the County’s capital budgeting process.

Among other solutions on the market, ClearGov stood out because it addressed both Chatham County’s capital budgeting needs and their budget book needs in one platform, via Capital Budgeting and Digital Budget Book. With Chatham County being so large, address tagging stood out as a major benefit for the County’s staff. Butts also loved Digital Budget Book’s ability to seamlessly make organization-wide changes. 

Following the product demo, Butts and his team realized how much time they’d been spending on budget book preparation and how much time ClearGov could save them. So, ClearGov became the clear choice for Chatham County.

“I know that department directors really appreciate the ability to include documentation or attachments on those capital projects with Capital Budgeting.”

Darrell Butts, Assistant County Manager, Chatham County, North Carolina

Implementation

Chatham County first implemented Digital Budget Book to align with their budget cycle’s timing. The team took ClearGov’s standard template and customized it to match the structure of their previous PDF documents, ensuring familiarity for staff, commissioners, and residents. By maintaining the legacy structure while upgrading functionality, they eased the transition for all stakeholders.

In year two, Chatham County leveraged ClearGov’s cloning feature to reuse their document layout and make only necessary updates. This streamlined the process even further, as the team only had to modify text and figures instead of recreating structure from scratch. By the third year, all members of the budget team felt comfortable working independently within the platform. 

For Capital Budgeting, the County created a submission template that mirrored the old request forms. The budget team also provided step-by-step guides to help department heads submit and manage capital requests through ClearGov. The team designed their CIP to resemble the previous format, but enhanced with new visuals, location data, and attachments. This approach helped departments transition smoothly to the new system while maintaining their familiar layout.

After implementing Digital Budget Book and Capital Budgeting, Chatham County also adopted ClearGov’s Recite Me accessibility toolbar add-on, which enhances the accessibility of budget content in compliance with WCAG 2.1AA standards. This allows all members of the community to easily access budget information.

Chatham County’s ClearGov onboarding experience was efficient and seamless, led by Chatham’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system administrator. After sending data to ClearGov in the required format, the County quickly completed onboarding with minimal effort. ClearGov’s support team proved highly responsive, proactive, and knowledgeable throughout the process and continues to provide consistent value. “It was absolutely a breeze,” Butts says.

“Since we’ve been with ClearGov, we’ve had a dedicated support staff member that reaches out regularly, and keeps me informed about ClearGov product changes. It’s been a fantastic relationship.”

Darrell Butts, Assistant County Manager, Chatham County, North Carolina

Results

By implementing Capital Budgeting, Digital Budget Book, and the Recite Me add-on, Chatham County achieved the following key outcomes:

• 50% reduction in document creation time: Chatham County’s budgeting team used to spend two full weeks manually compiling its budget book. With ClearGov, that time has been cut in half to one week. Now, more time is spent writing narrative content and describing accomplishments, rather than troubleshooting financial tables.
  
• Automated table and chart updates now take minutes, not hours: With Digital Budget Book, changes can be made once and automatically updated across all related tables and charts. Butts saw this firsthand during a ClearGov product demo, when a County-wide change that would have taken his team hours to complete was accomplished in a few minutes.
  
• Year-round capital project update visibility with attachments: Capital Budgeting allows departmental staff to provide capital project updates, photos, and documentation throughout the year. Adding attachments to requests — whether they are schematics, renderings, or photographs — has also been a game-changer for the County.
  
• Accessibility for Spanish-speaking and older populations via Recite Me: A large portion of Chatham County’s community speaks Spanish as a primary language. The ClearGov platform’s Recite Me accessibility toolbar add-on makes budget content available in Spanish and allows screen reading for residents with visual impairments. These improvements ensure broader access to financial information across Chatham County’s community.

• Transparent, searchable budget data on any device: ClearGov’s mobile-friendly interface allows anyone to look up department budgets or capital projects instantly—whether they are at a park, at a board meeting, or at home. Butts often uses it in real-time to answer questions from constituents.
  
• Increased collaboration and empowerment among department leaders: With access to update their own project entries, departments no longer have to route everything through the budget office. This has improved timeliness and reduced the burden on budget staff.

Chatham County continues to refine and improve its ClearGov implementation each year, benefiting from frequent product updates and strong support. The platform has helped the County transition to a modern, digital-first approach to capital budgeting and budget book building that better serves both staff and residents.

“With ClearGov, if we find an error, we fix it one time, and it’s done. And the ability to not spend hours and hours making these tables has allowed us to focus on the story behind the budget and the important work of all our departments instead of just putting numbers in a spreadsheet.”

Darrell Butts, Assistant County Manager, Chatham County, North Carolina