Eagle County School District, Colorado
A School District Brings Budget Book Production In-House and Keeps 9-Year Award Streak

Primary Objective

Efficiently modernize the budget book process

Adopt a more efficient and user-friendly solution for creating the school district’s budget book, reduce the time-consuming back-and-forth processes, and earn the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award and the ASBO Meritorious Budget Award — continuing their 9-year winning streak.

Challenge

A manual, disjointed budgeting process

Like many school districts, Eagle County traditionally relied on Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and a publishing software to compile their annual budget book. They also contracted with a local marketing agency to assist with document assembly. This approach created challenges, including lengthy processes, delays in making corrections, and limited control over the budgeting timeline. The school district had to spend a considerable amount of time double checking numbers and narratives for accuracy. As a school district committed to transparency and excellence in budgeting, Eagle County has applied for and received the GFOA and ASBO budgeting awards for nine consecutive years. While the effort was worth it to provide their community with a comprehensive budget book, the district agreed it was time to modernize their processes in an effort to save time and resources. As a mid-size school district, Eagle County lacked a dedicated budgeting department. They needed an easy-to-use digital solution to bring the budget book in-house so that they had control over the content and timeline.

ClearGov helped us meet the criteria for the GFOA and ASBO Awards. The checklist ensured we met all the criteria, and the software automatically generated information that fulfilled the requirements.

Solution

Implementing ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book

Chief Operating Officer, Sandra Farrell, attended a Colorado Government Finance Officers Association conference where she discovered ClearGov. The user-friendly interface, clean design, and inclusion of GFOA award criteria checklist made ClearGov stand out among the competition. By transitioning to ClearGov’s website-based budget book, Eagle County School District’s processes became more efficient and they saved significant time creating the budget book. Fund Summary pages and other elements were created automatically based off their budget data — giving them confidence knowing that the figures in their budget book were accurate. The school district saw the benefits of ClearGov’s easy-to-use tool right away, including how simple viewing the budget book was as they effortlessly went from one section to another to access the information they needed. The digital format received positive feedback from internal stakeholders, while the website’s interactivity and easy navigation impressed board members, the superintendent, and the community. The school district also continued its successful track record of earning the GFOA and ASBO budget awards by submitting their new digital budget book. ClearGov’s user-friendly platform and responsive support team have made the budgeting process more manageable for Eagle County School District, which has allowed them to focus on their mission of providing quality education with a commitment to fiscal transparency. The district is excited to explore other ClearGov solutions, including the Strategic Planning tool for its strategic planning process.

Results

Streamlined process & award-winning transparency

Thanks to ClearGov, Eagle County School District:

• Built their budget book more efficiently, eliminating much of the manual wrangling with spreadsheets and documents
• Auto-generated accurate fund summaries and other critical sections directly from their data
• Impressed stakeholders with a modern, easy-to-navigate digital budget book format
• Maintained their 9-year winning run of prestigious budgeting awards (GFOA and ASBO)

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